Anonymity

Two Saturdays ago I took Kellen to our local Starbucks and the young man who took our order looked over at Kellen, then back at me and said, "Oh, are you D.Q.'s mom?". I said "yes" and we got into a conversation about how he knew my daughter, etc. One week later I drove through the drive-thru at the same Starbucks. The same young man came to the window and I said, "Your name is 'Tom', right?" He looked at me intently and it was obvious that he had no idea who I was. I reminded him that I had met him last Saturday and that I was D.Q.'s mom. He said, "Ohhh, yeah, you must have been wearing something different." I'm sure he wanted to say, "Ohhh, yeah, I didn't recognize you without your son with Down syndrome."

Having a child with Down syndrome means that your family will never again me anonymous. You will always kind of stand out in a crowd. I don't think it is necessarily a good or bad thing, it just is.

We live in a town of over 80,000 people and our county has a population of over 1.7 million. One day last summer I organized a picnic for families of young kids with Down syndrome at a wading pool in Seattle. The next day our family went to dinner in another city about 20 minutes from Seattle. The hostess at the crowded restaurant recognized us (Kellen) and said, "You were at the wading pool yesterday, weren't you?" I was really shocked that she remembered us, especially so far from where she had noticed us the day before.

Once or twice I've also had someone come up to us and think that Kellen is someone else. They will call him another name and I will correct them. Then they look at me sheepishly and say something like "Oh, he looks just like a kid I know named Riley..." I just sort of shake my head and want to give a retort such as, "Yeah, all of those kids with extra chromosomes look alike, don't they?."

Have you ever had a similar experience?