NeuroTalk Support Groups - Here's To Peter Dinklage

I watched the Golden Globe awards last week. It's the looser, drunker, more “the gang's all here” version of the Academy Awards show. A-list celebrities in couture gowns rattle off designer's names like sponsor endorsements as they are interviewed on the “red carpet” before the show. These are among society's winners. These are the current beautiful people that half the country so envies that they tune in just to get a look at them.

But among the winners this year there was a stunning anomaly that could not be ignored, could not go unnoticed, even if no one said anything out loud. The winner for best supporting actor in a TV drama was a dwarf, or "little person," Peter Dinklage. If he was a man of normal size and proportion he would probably be considered handsome. But he is not really handsome. He suffers from what is referred to as "disproportionate dwarfism." His head appears too big for his body, as do his hands. His legs are disproportionately short, and he walks with that odd Popeye-the-Sailor side-to-side step that probably results from having to move two-thirds of an adult's weight using legs not much longer than a six-year-old's.

There was applause, of course, but the audience seemed unsure of the applause etiquette for little people actors winning major awards. Should they applaud more loudly for his triumph over his disability, or ignore his dwarfism and applaud as one would for any fully able winner? As a result, the applause itself was tentative and hesitant. The audience was confused, and that you could hear the confusion in their applause only made the physical incongruities of the man walking to the podium that much harder to ignore.

Peter Dinklage is a fine actor, having appeared in numerous television shows and motion pictures, including a terrific performance in “Death at a Funeral.” He is married. He has a young child, to whom he referred quite conventionally in his acceptance speech. But I doubt that he will ever star in films like “Moneyball,” or “The Descendants,” or any other film that is casting for a conventionally proportioned leading man.

As I watched him make his way to the podium to accept his award, I had several reactions. I was glad I did not suffer from disproportionate dwarfism, but was merely a man of somewhat smaller than average height. I wondered how a person with his particular disability could endure what no doubt had included a lifetime of stares, taunts, schoolyard bullying, or even the practiced un-noticing employed by the kinder, more polite people he encountered. I must admit that I felt sorry for him. Part of me pitied him, and for that I felt a bit ashamed.

For the most part, however, I was in awe of his bravery and courage. I admired him for his ability to endure his disability, to choose and to succeed in a profession in which all the cards seemed stacked against him. He can't change his condition, or wait for any scientific breakthrough to help him. So he is left with a choice, every day. Is it better to continue to live in the world as he is, doing what he can to make his time on earth as joyful and rewarding as possible, or turn out the lights and leave the pain, and hardship, and humiliations large and small, forever. Every day Peter Dinklage chooses life.

I think that we all face that choice, consciously or unconsciously, regardless of our abilities or disabilities. For most people the decision is easy, even unconscious. For most people the downside of choosing to live another day is very small. It is only when the downside increases dramatically, and the choice becomes less obvious, that we pay serious attention to it in ourselves.

When the "temporarily healthy" see others with serious disabilities or illnesses (including our own) choose life day after day, with as much grace and acceptance as they can summon up, I don't think they (at least most adults) gossip about those people, laugh at them, or smugly condescend to them. I think most people respect and admire their ability to find sufficient joy and meaning in life to carry on. And when and if the day comes that on balance they decide that oblivion is preferable to life as they must live it, most people understand and respect that choice as well.

So here's to Peter Dinklage. In some measure he lives in all of us. May we have in some measure the courage and grace to face life as he does.

Greg Wasson