i talked about it a little bit already but i have things to say about it. for context, i was born with amniotic band syndrome. the amniotic band wrapped around my left wrist in utero and stunted the growth of my hand. i was born with about half a palm, four nubs for fingers, and a twisted half of a thumb. i can open and close my thumb and pinkie joint like a claw.
yesterday at work i had a shift in the room with 5-10 year old kids. i had my left hand hidden in my sleeve (a bad habit of mine). a kid asked if he could see my hand, and even though internally i was debating running into traffic, i said “sure you can” and showed him my hands. he stared for a moment, looking disturbed, and then said “i don’t want to look at that anymore”. that hurt to hear, but i understand that kids are new to the world and he probably didn’t mean it out of malice. i put my hand away again, told him that it was okay, and that i was just born that way.
he then went on to talk about how he knows a kid with a similar hand to mine and called it “ugly”. i told him that wasn’t a very kind thing to say and that he wouldn’t feel good if someone said that to him, and he replied that no one would say that to him—because he has “normal hands”, and he’s glad he does because otherwise he’d be “ugly”. i tried to talk with him for a bit about how everybody is born differently, but he just started talking about a girl he knows with a “messed up face” and pulled on his face to make it look droopy. i went on some more about how it wasn’t very kind to talk about people that way, but the conversation moved on to something else.
i’ve told my supervisors about it and they’re going to have a talk with his mom. what i wanted to say is this: i’m genuinely not upset with the kid. kids are young and naturally curious, and he clearly simply hasn’t been taught about disabled people and kind ways to speak to/about others. which is why i am upset with his parent(s). i know he’s encountered visibly deformed/disabled people before (he said so himself!), yet his parent(s) clearly haven’t had any kind of discussion with him about proper language and behavior. i knew from birth that some people were just different than others, but my parents still made a point to assert to be kind to and accepting of others. i wonder if adults in his life are the type of people to hush him and usher him away when he points out someone in a wheelchair. that kind of thing doesn’t teach politeness. it tells children that disabled people are an Other than can’t be acknowledged or spoken about; which, to a child, means disability must be something bad.
i’m lucky enough that this was a relatively mild incident, and that i’m a grownup with thicker skin. i’m worried about the other kids he mentioned to me. has he been talking to them this way? when i was a kid, i had other kids scream, cry, and run away at the sight of my hand. or follow me around pointing at me and laughing at me. or tell me i couldn’t do something because i was ugly or incapable or whatever. one time a girl at an arcade climbed to the top of the skeeball machine, pointed at me, and screamed at me to put my hand away and wouldn’t stop crying until she couldn’t see me anymore. another time, a kid saw my hand, screamed at the top of her lungs, and ran into my friend’s arms, crying hysterically about how i was scaring her. that second incident made me cry so hard i threw up when i got home. i can kind of laugh it off now, but having people react to me that way as a child is something i’m still getting over. why do you think i have a habit of keeping my hand in my sleeve? it just irritates me to see children that have clearly not been taught basic manners and kindness—their parents Clearly missed something pretty important .
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DP x DC AU
Danny's gonna adopt all the Halfas in Gotham whether he wants to or not, and it's gonna start with the little dead girl he found after crawling out of that portal in the league base.
Pt 2 here. My Au Art
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There's a dead little girl sitting on the rug in front of Danny's coffee table curiously eating Cheetos.
Well, she's not all the way dead, only half, could even be a little less then that, Danny would know he's sort of the leading expert on being half dead.
Her skins blue, like comic book mystique blue, vibrant and impossible to miss. Shes got these big black eyes and a nasty split going straight through her upper lip to just under her right eye.
She's also missing her nose, it's just gone, no cartilage left over just the gaping nasal cavity like skulls have.
The little girl looks dead, she is dead, or she's at least as dead as Danny is which is almost exclusively in name only.
Her name is Curaré, Danny only knows it because it's been branded into the skin of the little girls neck, just under the curve of her bald skull.
Curaré is terribly thin, the little toddler sized T-shirt she has on hangs loose around her torso where baby fat should fill it out.
She's horrible to look at, a tiny nightmare, her corpse like coloring doing nothing to mitigate the appearance.
Curaré was neither a healthy nor normal little girl, there was no way Danny could have left that league facility without her.
Oh and she almost exclusively spoke in Spanish which made finding her dinner hard.
Not that Cheetos are really dinner, little kids need to eat more then that Danny was pretty sure, like 89% sure. Although they did have a lot of calories...
Danny tilts his head absently as he looks at her, the little demon being illuminated red and green by the glow of the TV. She's enraptured by the Scooby doo rerun Gotham's only spanish language channel is playing tonight.
As if she can feel his eyes she turns to him and tilts her head the same way.
Danny blinks at her, Curaré blinks back.
" Uh- " Danny starts, trying to remember anything from his Spanish elective from sophomore year. God, his teacher had been right he had needed to study more. " The Cheetos, you like them? They're uh...bueno? Oh! Son Buenos?"
He points his finger down at the snack sized bag in her grasp, her fingers are tiny , they must be so fragile, looking at the desperate grasp they have on the bag makes Danny's chest hurt. How could anyone be so small? Had Danny ever been that small?
Curaré blinks again, long and slow, processing Danny's words. She looks down at her Cheetos and back up at Danny then she carefully holds the bag out to him.
" Oh no that's ok they're for you kiddo" Danny insists.
Curaré shakes the bag at him, like enticing a stray cat with treats but he only shakes his head again.
She gives up after that, shrugging and turning back to her cartoons.
Inside her chest Danny can feel her ghost core vibrate placidly as Scooby and Shaggy run across the TV in a panic.
Danny's own core can't help but try to match it's frequency, a low contented humming echoes between them, safe it seems to say.
Curaré can't be older then 4, which means she was resurrected young and that she died even younger. Danny doesn't know how any of it happened, halfas aren't created easily, the amount of energy needed...
She's so small.
He hopes it was fast, whatever it was that did this to her, made her like him.
Danny also hopes that her injuries aren't permanent. Some ghosts keep the carnage of their corpses well into the after life but as a Halfa Curaré should heal, even if she got those injuries during her ressurction. For her sake it'll be much easier to find some sense of normalcy if she isn't always actively bleeding, even if the blood itself is just an ecto-echo of real blood.
Danny curls his knees up to his chest and hides his face for a moment just trying to breathe. He's too young to be taking care of a toddler, he's still six months away from turning 18 and hes got school on Monday. His eyes burn and his throat constricts as he tries to swallow.
No one else but Danny would know how to take care of Curaré, and she's got no family to try and stumble their way through it. Danny can't take her back to the league and he sure as hell isn't going to search for whoever put that brand on her neck.
Even if he dropped her off at the fire station Gotham only has one Meta focused orphanage, it's state run and all the kids in it have to wear little prison style jump suits. And the food sucks, Danny can personally vouch for that.
She doesn't have a home, she's just as out of place here in Gotham as Danny is. Danny really wishes, not for the first time, that he had an adult here. Like Jazz or hell even Mr. Fuckin Lancer.
Just anyone. Anyone who could tell Danny what to do about this. Who could help him out with the child he's suddenly acquired.
He wishes anyone else was here so it wouldn't just be him and Curaré. Two dead kids sitting on the floor of a studio apartment in the Bowery watching cartoons.
What a pair the two of them will make, oh God. Danny laughs as a few tears stain his jeans.
Curaré makes a curious little noise that has Danny forcing his head up. She's reached the inevitable end of her snack sized bag and she looks absolutely devastated. She turns to look at him, tilting the empty bag towards him as if to say ' can you believe this shit!'
Danny can't help but give her a watery smile, no more crying Fenton, and wipes his nose on the back of his hand.
" Okay, one thing at a time." Danny tells himself. " You finished your Cheetos and now it's time for dinner, right? Stop me if I'm wrong."
Curaré just looks at him.
Danny's not worried, they're gonna have all the time in the world to teach her to appreciate humour and also English.
" I'm going to take that as a yes. " Danny hops up off the floor and goes to find his phone, nobody does dinner like the local Batburger.
Little foot steps follow him into the hallway, he'll have to get used to that sound he's going to be hearing it a lot.
Food first, everything would be better after they ate.
...............
For BG I imagine he's been living in Gotham for a few months and found Curaré while popping in and out of different portals in Gotham. (Who woulda guessed that some portal in Gotham leads right to the lazarus pit)
Note: if u wanna see cool art for this AU it's all in the Danny and the little dead girl au tag on my pg!
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