the difference between retard and retard

My cousin is absolutely retarded.

Now that I have your attention, the word “retarded” is pretty interesting, because it's a good example of how language is ever-changing and fluid and societally constructed. Words and their meanings aren't just floating around out there in the ether. We make the words and we assign the meanings, and we change those meanings based on a variety of different factors. Nowadays, “retard” is a pejorative, a slur pretty much, an insult used to basically call someone a super idiot. The word “idiot” is interesting too, because that's another one of those words that highlights just how fickle language can be.

Until the 60s or so, the words “idiot,” “imbecile,” “moron,” and even “cretin,” according to Wikipedia, were widely used in the medical community to refer to someone with serious mental impairments, that is until mean-spirited people started using those words as general insults toward anyone they thought was annoying or stupid or whatever, at which point those words were reclassified as insults, after which the medical community came up with a new word to refer to people with serious mental impairments, that word being “retard,” that is until mean-spirited people started using that word to also refer to anyone they thought was annoying or stupid or whatever, at which point the word “retard” was reclassified as an insult as well, after which the medical community came up with yet new words to refer to people with serious mental impairments, those new words being “handicapped” and “disabled,” which have thus far withstood the pejorative tests of time, but it's really only a matter of time before mean-spirited people start using those words as insults as well, saying stuff like, “what are you fucking handicapped?” and “were you born disabled or what?”, and when that happens, the medical community will yet again have to come up with brand-new words to refer to people with serious mental impairments, and so on and so forth.

I'm of the opinion that any word we come up with for the mentally impaired will eventually be used as an insult, because it's just low-hanging fruit really, there are mean-spirited people out there, and no one wants to be labeled mentally impaired, so of course any officially dedicated medical term that refers to actual mentally impaired people will eventually be used as an easy insult by these aforementioned mean-spirited people, and these mean-spirited people aren't just going away anytime soon, so any mentally impaired classifiers we could possibly come up with are just kind of doomed to become pejoratives. The only solution here would be for people to just be nice to each other or whatever, but we all know that's a fucking pipe dream. But in the meantime, it's probably wise to steer clear of whichever words we societally designate as pejoratives, because, one, that's just the nice thing to do, and two, you wouldn't want someone to call you a “fucking retard,” so why call someone else one? The golden rule and all that.

So that brings us back around to my cousin, and why I'm calling him retarded. Because if I know, logically, that I shouldn't go around calling people retarded, then why am I so blatantly calling my cousin a retard? Like, what the hell’s wrong with me, right? Well, outside of the fact that I wanted an attention-grabbing opening line for this journal entry, the fact is, even if I were to call my cousin a retard to his face, he wouldn't understand what I meant because he is quite literally retarded. He is as retarded as they come. He is the prime specimen of retarded. He does not possess the necessary cognitive ability to know what words mean, much less even recognize that he himself is retarded. By the time he was like three the doctors had probably written something like “completely retarded” on his medical sheet. To this day, the doctors don't actually know what's wrong with him, just that something is seriously medically wrong with him. He walks around limp-wristed and flapping. He communicates by groaning and yelling and hitting and sometimes using one of those machines a really smart dog might use with big buttons that play pre-recorded messages like “Food please” and “I want to go outside.” As of typing this up, my cousin is thirty-five years old and still wears diapers. He often takes his clothes off and walks around the house fondling himself. He exclusively watches Disney films and gets violent when they're turned off. He was recently put on hardcore narcotics to control these violent outbursts, which puts him in a sort of light vegetative state. He is always dirty, with food and poop smeared all over his chest and face. 

So, if anyone fits the bill for retarded, it’s my cousin, because he's absolutely retarded. I mean, his own mother calls him retarded, if that tells you anything. My whole family, and my close friends, call him retarded, and sometimes we even make slightly off-color jokes at his expense.

Back when I was a young kid, I would live with my grandma during the summers, and eventually my aunt moved in and brought along her son, who is about my age and retarded, and I would share space with this retarded young man, who quickly became the focal point around which all things in that house swirled, because he demanded a lot of attention, on account of him being absolutely retarded. And when my aunt would go to work, she would hire a babysitter to watch her son, who she often comically referred to as retarded in the company of friends and family, and these babysitters were paid for by the government, through some disability program, but the babysitters were not always the most upstanding citizens, many came from sketchy backgrounds and had weird quirks and problems, like sneaking marijuana into the house then getting high in the backyard while they had locked my retarded cousin in his room, which is a huge no-no in the babysitting-mentally-impaired-people line of work, because the state government can and will take your mentally impaired children away if they catch you, or anyone else in your household, with illegal substances, so needless to say, many of these babysitters were very quickly canned, and sometimes it took my aunt a few weeks to find a new babysitter, meaning the babysitter would often end up being my grandma and me.

I would help my grandma feed my cousin, clothe him, make sure his diapers were changed, clean his poop off the walls, make sure he didn’t get out of the house and wander into the street and get hit by a car, hold his hand sometimes and take him on walks, ensure his pill regimen was properly digested, usually by mashing it into his food, make sure his Disney VHS tapes were properly rewound and replayed over and over, take him for car rides to calm him down when he got violent, and make sure the refrigerator and cabinets were all properly tied up with slip knots so that he wouldn’t get into everything and make a huge mess. And we did all this stuff until my aunt came home from work, at which point my grandma would go back to watching her old television shows and I would go back to playing my PlayStation and Nintendo 64 games. And we did all this without resentment or complaint, because, although absolutely retarded, my cousin was part of the family and he couldn’t help how he was born and we loved him, even if we sometimes referred to him as retarded and made slightly off-color jokes at his expense.

During those halcyon summers, I grew to enjoy my cousin’s company. Whenever he was gone, the house just felt weird. I remember he was always very receptive to physical greetings, like if I put my hand up in a high-five position, he would smack it really hard with his own hand, and then he would go back to flapping his arms around, groaning, and watching his Disney films. He always had this blank look on his face, like a sort of vacant stare, but whenever we did those high-five greetings together, I felt something shining through the retarded shell he was trapped in, something deeper than the body and the mind, something like his soul coming through whenever we did those little high-five greetings together, so I would do those greetings with him every time I entered a room he was in, to build a soul-bond connection with him. It got to the point where, whenever I came home from hanging out with my friends, if my cousin wasn’t in the living room, I would go to his room, the walls of which were covered top to bottom in Disney pictures, and his bed was covered in plastic so that it was easier to clean for obvious reasons, and I would do the high-five greeting with him there to help build the connection, before going back to playing PlayStation and Nintendo 64 games in my room, which was actually the garage because my old room was now my cousin’s room, which was something that I harbored no resentment or complaints about, because, although absolutely retarded, my cousin was part of the family and he couldn’t help how he was born and I loved him.

Back then, I was never embarrassed about my cousin. I never tried to hide him from anyone. A good friend of mine, Miles, would often come over to play Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64 with me, and I remember the first time he came over, I hadn’t even warned him about my cousin, because I didn’t even think to do so, because my cousin was just such a normal staple of my life or whatever that the thought hadn't even crossed my mind that someone unfamiliar with him might feel a little uncomfortable. I remember when Miles and I got to my house, opened the front door, and there my cousin was, in the living room, flapping his hands and groaning while wearing nothing but a diaper, I said something like, “yeah, that’s my cousin, he lives here,” and Miles just curiously nodded, not saying anything mean at all, so I showed Miles how to do the high-five greeting, then we all exchanged high-five greetings, and then Miles and I went to my garage room and started playing Nintendo 64. This went on for many summers. Miles eventually became so close to my family that, after hearing my aunt refer to my cousin as retarded many times, Miles and I adopted this language and would casually talk about how my cousin was retarded, and sometimes we would even make jokes at his expense, as if we were just young boys teasing each other, and we did this, I like to think, because we both saw my cousin as a friend, a weird retarded friend, who was just born that way and couldn’t help it and it was whatever because we were all friends here and we had each other’s backs like friends do. We had brought my cousin into the fold of adolescent friendship, as one of the boys, so to speak, and although my retarded cousin could not comprehend that he was essentially one of the boys, I liked to think he could.

But one time, I remember, Miles and I were outside playing with this new kid, Jordan, and I had mentioned wanting to go back to my place to play some Super Smash Bros., not even thinking to mention to Jordan that my retarded cousin lived there too. It turned out that Jordan loved Smash Bros., so we all went back to my place to boot up the old N64, and after a long walk from the clubhouse playground, through the many verdant alleys nestled between the pale blue vinyl siding of cookie-cutter homes, we arrived at my place. Everything was going great until I opened the front door.

My cousin was in the living room, stark naked, pacing around in circles, touching himself with one hand and flapping with the other. I remember Jordan looked at my cousin with this frightened, disgusted look on his face, then looked back at me, then looked at my cousin again, then back at me one last time and finally said, “Who’s the retard?”

Miles and I went completely silent. It was as if a dark cloud had suddenly descended right over us. Eventually, I turned to Jordan, my eyes squinted and my eleven-year-old face just one big scowl, and I said, “What did you just say?”

Jordan repeated himself, “I said, who’s the retard? What’s wrong with him?”

I was pissed and shaking and wanted to scream in the kid's face at this point, but before I could do anything, Miles all of a sudden shoved Jordan’s shoulders real hard, knocking him over, and said,

“What’s wrong with YOU?”