The Unclad Soul

(Spoiler Alert: You may not want to read if you haven’t yet seen the movie.) I saw this past weekend the movie, “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” starring Shia LeBeouf as Tyler, Dakota Johnson as Eleanor, and new to the screen, an actor with Down Syndrome, Zack Gottsagen. His character, Zac, is a young man with Down Syndrome living in a nursing home where Eleanor, a kind and attractive staff person is assigned to him. Zac hates where he is and longs to leave. His roommate Carl, (longtime actor, Bruce Dern) is an elderly man who likes Zac and encourages him in his quest to leave. He knows he doesn’t belong there. Eleanor knows this, too, but she has no options for Zac since he has no parents or family to care or provide for him. Tyler (LeBeouf) is a failed crab fisherman, a sort of drifter and rebel who lives by his own rules. He wears the same dingy t-shirt, faded cap, stained shorts, and scruffy beard through the whole movie, and you begin to forget the actor and believe the c...

I suppose nearly everyone has now heard of Keaton Jones, the Tennessee middle school boy whose mom’s video of him went viral. Keaton apparently has had surgery for a cleft pallet that sometimes interferes with his speech and his appearance, although he’s a handsome boy with bright eyes. After kids at school made fun of his nose, called him ugly, and said he didn’t have any friends, they then poured milk on him in the lunchroom. Broken hearted and ashamed, his mom came to school to pick him up. Thankfully, celebrities and others have covered him with affirmation and offers of friendship. He knows now he’s not stupid or ugly. And what child doesn’t need to know that, always? As parents, we have the moral and human responsibility to teach our children to treat all children with respect and care. I don’t know where the teachers or monitors were when this boy was being so mistreated, but the real responsibility for bullying others lies directly at the feet of those of us wh...