Free Laughing at My Nightmare by Shane Burcaw Page B

at Becca and see that she and a few kids were in fits of laughter over a story one of them was telling. They were all perfectly capable of yelling loud enough to hear each other. My tiny body couldn’t pull it off. From that point on, my interactions became pretty basic. Lots of one-word responses, exaggerated facial expressions (which became my one and only way of eliciting any type of reaction in a conversation), and head nodding. People tell me today that I communicate really well with my facial expressions. I mastered that skill over the course of a few years in middle school, as it became my only way to communicate with friends at all the loud events young people often find themselves at. That night though, I felt particularly robbed of a great time. As my friends became aware of my volume difficulties, they (perhaps subconsciously) stopped trying to have conversations with me.
    I danced with them, basically spinning my chair in circles and bobbing back and forth to the beat. We laughed and had a good time, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was one step removed from everyone because of my inability to communicate. I pretty quickly gave up on trying to win the attention of any girls. What was I going to do? Nod at them for three hours?
    Near the end of the dance, Becca came up to me and said, “Hey, can you let your dad know that I’m going home with Nicole? She’s having a pool party sleepover. I already called my mom, and she said it was fine.”
    “Sure!” I yelled, nodding my head. Listening to everyone’s conversation, I gathered that most of my friends were planning on sleeping over at Nicole’s house that night. She was rich and had a beautiful inground pool. Someone eventually extended an invitation to me, but my immediate response was, “I can’t tonight, I have plans. Sorry!” I didn’t have plans, but I didn’t want anyone to know.
    The truth is that it was very difficult for me to sleep over at other people’s houses at that age. Sleeping in my chair doesn’t work, which meant I needed someone to lift me into a bed, as well as roll me from side to side throughout the night. Since I had never even met Nicole’s parents, asking them to assume this responsibility wasn’t something I was comfortable with. My other option was to go to Nicole’s and ask my dad to pick me up late so I could just sleep at home. Never in my life have I been able to make this decision without feeling like an enormous burden on my parents, since both of them have to wake up early for work each day. For that reason, my typical response throughout those years of my life was to just pretend I had other things going on. In reality, I’d be in bed by 10:30 p.m. so my parents could get a good night of sleep.
    When my dad picked me up from the dance, he beamed with pride and asked if I had a good time. I told him I had, which wasn’t a lie. Despite some of the annoying aspects of my first middle school dance, I was still there, which felt like a big step towards achieving that much-desired sense of normalcy that my young mind so deeply craved.

chapter 18
    fun on the short bus!
    Normalcy, however, was at times elusive. Luckily, the funniest things in life are the abnormal. Throughout middle school, I was forced to ride the short bus, simply because they were the only buses that had wheelchair ramps. Everyone knows that the short bus is for kids with mental disabilities. Many people do not know that short buses are also for kids like me.
    As you can imagine, I didn’t particularly enjoy riding the short bus, especially when I was young and insecure about fitting in with my peers, but as I got older I realized the events I observed on the short bus were hilarious, and my annoying situation became much more bearable. Whether it makes me a bad person is up for debate, but throughout middle school and high school, I spent most of my rides to and from school laughing discreetly to myself in the back of the bus.
    Over the