The Story of Hedy

                                                                                                           copyright © 1999 by Robert L. Blau

    Once upon a time, a baby was born.  The birth of a baby is usually an occasion for celebration, and this birth was no exception.  But there was one problem.  Well, perhaps "problem" is the wrong word.  We could call it a bump on the broad, smooth highway of life, a hiccup in the untroubled digestive process of fate, an almost imperceptible ripple in the unperturbed surface of the ocean of existence.  Or, in the fork-tongued language of business, it was an "opportunity."  Ok, let's stick with "problem."  The baby had a birth defect.  It was born without legs.  Or arms.  Or a body.  In short, it was only a head.
    "What shall we do?" asked Father.  "It's only a head."
    "But a healthy head!" observed Mother.  "We'll call her "Hedy" and raise her just like her brother."
    Thus was the child's gender determined.  And Hedy's parents indeed treated her, within reason, just like her sibling.

    It came to pass one day that Hedy was playing football with her brother and his friends.  The brother dropped back to punt, but, under a withering rush, he accidentally shanked her into the family swimming pool.
    Everyone was very upset.  Brother's team knew they would have very poor field position.  The other team could see their best scoring opportunity of the day disappearing with the lost football.  Mother and Father rushed to poolside, expecting to see their daughter floating face down.
    To everyone's surprise, they found Hedy bobbing, diving, and spouting water happily.  She was in her element.  It was, however, the end of the football game.

    But it was also the beginning of Hedy's swimming career.  First came the swimming lessons.  These were rather a failure, since the swimming instructors lacked both the vocabulary and the anatomy to teach someone like Hedy.  In spite of this, she flourished.  Before long, she was swimming against, and defeating, bodied competition.  The breaststroke and the butterfly were beyond her competence, but she smoked the field in the freestyle.  Her motto was, "Don't quit while you're a head!"
    Once again, however, there was one small problem.  The typical way to begin a swimming race is to dive into the water from the end of the pool.  Obviously, Hedy couldn't do this.  So, for each race, Mother would carry her to the edge of the pool and drop her into the water when the starter signalled "Go!"
    The bodied swimmers quickly tired of being bested by a head.  It was embarrassing.  They decided that it had to stop, but no one knew how to do that.  Until one unusually clever bodied swimmer had an idea.
    "That ... limbless head thing ... has an unfair advantage," she complained to the officials.  "She gets to have her mother drop her into the pool.  All the rest of us have to dive for ourselves.  It's not fair!  If my mother dropped me into the pool, I'd be faster, too!"
    "If your mother tried to lift you, she'd be in traction for months," replied the officials.
    But that was not the end of it.  The bodied swimmer sued.  And the case went to court.

    Hedy faced a difficult battle in court.  The opposition had a leg up on her.
    "This is the Land of Equality," argued their lawyer.  "Everyone has to play by the same rules.  What would happen if you let one person's parent drop her in the pool?  You would have to let everyone's parents drop them in the pool!  Chaos would ensue!  The collapse of the American Way!  The fall of Western Civilization!"
    "But Hedy has a major disability that the others don't have," replied her lawyer disarmingly.  "All she asks is a tiny bit of help to level the playing field.  Or the swimming pool.  It's only fair."
    "These limbless types aren't motivated to succeed," said the other lawyer.  "If they were, they would have limbs like the rest of us.  Mollycoddling them is unfair to the limbed and bodied majority.  Not only that, but it's also unfair to the unlimbed and unbodied.  It makes them dependent.  It removes the incentive to better themselves."
    When all the arguments had been given, the judge ruled.
    "Everyone is equal under the law," the judge intoned.  "But equality under the law implies responsibility on the part of the individual to be equal in the first place.  Equality is for people who are equal.  If you aren't equal, you're not covered.  On the contrary, the law must protect the truly equal against the demands and the whining of the unequal.  This court therefore finds, as usual, for the privileged.  Did you expect anything else?"