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Break Out: Finding Freedom When You Don't Quite Fit the Mold

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"Break Out" is a modern literary memoir of 51 short stories about what it means to be presumed different. It's an easy read for raising disability awareness among family members, friends, co-workers, students. As a book club selection, it stimulates discussion and generates insight about false assumptions. As a collection of personal-experience stories, it illustrates the importance of addressing common presumptions in diversity training efforts.

Jim Hasse was born with cerebral palsy in 1943. The 51 true stories that make up his book, most of them only three or four pages long, are all from his personal experience. But that does not mean they speak only about the challenges of living with his particular disability - or even that they are exclusively concerned with issues of the physically disabled. Each vignette brings out some truth about how people who "stand out" struggle for acceptance in the midst of society's reactions which include discomfort, indifference, embarrassment, incomprehension, condescension, insensitivity - and sometimes, well-intentioned but over-done solicitude. One touching story involving Jim's wife brings out the thoughtlessness that is often shown toward people who must struggle to do what others do easily. Pam, with a milder form of cerebral palsy, has some language difficulties because of hearing loss in one ear. To compensate, whenever she is assigned to read Scripture in worship, she practices throughout the preceding week. One Sunday, however, she found that the text had been changed. Still intending to read, she spoke to the pastor, explaining that she had not practiced this text and asking for the correct pronunciation of a certain name. But when the time came for the reading and she was about to stand up, another woman rose to read. Apparently the pastor has appointed a substitute reader without informing Pam.

Jim, a perceptive observer of his own behavior as well as that of others, turns the tables on himself in one anecdote. He tells about having to squeeze past a very overweight man sitting at the bar in order to get to the men's room in a restaurant. Maneuvering through the too-narrow space was very difficult for Jim on crutches. After making the journey both ways, he turned at the exit to look back - and caught himself staring rudely at the man's obesity, in the same way others had often stared at Jim.

Although all of the stores in "Break Out" are Jim's experiences, the book is not autobiography or even a chronology of is life. The anecdotes jump back and forth from his college career, to his high school experiences, to his first date with Pam, to his retirement from an executive position with Wisconsin Dairies, to his first job after graduation, to a trip to East Africa etc. However, the stories are grouped under thematic headings, with a list of questions following each section; for example, after Chapter 6, "Obtaining Balance": "What experiences have helped you form your perception of human nature?" "What do you do to reconcile the difference between perception and reality in awkward situations?" A reader doesn't have to be disabled to have answers to questions like these!

Other questions we Telephone Workers of the Emergency/Assistance/Referral Service might ask as we read "Break Out": Do I recognize anyone here, among the many friends and strangers who Jim includes in his stories? And am I here? How do I look (or not look) at a person who is obviously "different" - in a wheelchair or on crutches, or unusually short or tall or heavy or thin? What preconceptions do I have about a person whose speech is difficult to understand because of a disability? (One night in college, someone who was trying to telephone Jim's roommate thought Jim, who answered, was drunk.)

But you can read Jim's book simply to enter into the well-lived life of a very balanced person who has made the best of what life gave him. The epilogue is a quote from the Gospel of John:

"As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'

"'Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' said Jesus, 'but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.'"

Dr. Nancy E. James, Editor, The Inner Ear, Fall 1999