The essay prompt:the struggles Melody has experience in this book
Physical struggles:she can’t move except kick,flail her arms, move her fingers and her head.
Emotional struggles:she’s bullied because of her condition and they think and say she’s retarded
Communication struggles: before she got her media chair she couldn’t talk she could kind of say things but she can’t say words, so she had many frustrations of people misunderstanding her.
In out of my mind Melody is born with a condition called cerebral palsy, it’s kind of like Steven Hawkins condition except you get it when you’re born, she has Physical, emotional, communication struggles, in this essay I’ll be telling you the struggles Melody has.
Melody can’t move, well she can move some of her body parts but she can’t walk, run, stand up,hold things, and sit straight leaning to the sides or forward or backward and falling and if she falls some one has to pick her up and put her back in her wheel chair or Medi chair, it depends when she fell, also due to Melody condition she can’t go to the washroom by her self so she needs help, she says it’s embarrassing but it isn’t when her mom helps.
Melody’s emotional struggles is that she get bullied by people saying she’s not intelligent and that she looks retarded, even a doctor named Dr Hugely and a teacher thought she wasn’t very intelligent. Dr Hugely was very mean, Melody was having a test to see how smart, she was asked to say some colors, she was told to say blue but she could just say blu instead but it was good enough, then Melody was asked to say green, she couldn’t say green (obviously) and she couldn’t make the g sound so Melody made completely different sound, after the test was over Dr Hugely said she failed the test, he also suggested that her parents should send Melody to one places where people like Melody except… not so smart, that got her scared but her mom deafened her and made Dr Hugely feel ashamed. The teacher didn’t even have to say she wasn’t very intelligent, that especially made her sad.
Before Melody got her Medi chair she couldn’t talk she could only make sounds like blu, to communicate she had to use cards with words on them. when she was a little kid she remembered that on T.V they said that toy wooden blocks were painted with led paint when she was in a store with her mom and they went passed them and they weren’t taken off the shelf’s, she tried to tell her mom but she misunderstood and thought that Melody wanted the wooden blocks so Melody tried again by screaming and flailing her arms and legs but that didn’t work and people started looking at Melody, her mom got embarrassed so she took melody to the car and went home, another thing like that happen when she was older and in her room, her gold fish jumped out of it’s fish bowl and surprised Melody, she tried to save it by tip the fish bowl so the water would keep the fish alive for a while, then she call to help save the gold fish when her mom came she thought that Melody tipped the fish bowl and killed the gold fish and then got mad at Melody. I know how Melody feels people misunderstanding her, not taking a second guess at what shes trying to say, and sticking with their first assumption about whats happening, even though my communication struggles are kind of completely different.
Melody’s struggles are kinda depressing, not being able to move her entire body, having to depend on people to pick her back up if you fall and to go to the washroom, people bullying her just because you look retarded, and people misunderstanding her and never thinking about what else could be happening. And now you what Melody’s struggles are, hopefully when people who read this essay and the book will learn about disabilities, not assume that every one with disabilities are retarded, and to be kinder to people that have disabilities.
References
Out of my mind by Sharon Draper
Lansdowne Class – A.J. Elliott School Intermediate Class – Edublogs
lansdowne.edublogs.org/
OutOfMyMindBook – Selected Quotes from Out of My Mind https://outofmymindbook.wikispaces.com/Selected+Quotes+from+Out+of+My+Mind