When your life becomes a legislative clause

Lately I’m feeling like I can write my profile merely with obscure little references to tax code and/or sections of legislative acts:

HamIam:

Marveling at the fact she now has a 401 (k) with more than $1,500 in it – does that make her a grown up? Really??

Working with just about every 501 (c) 3 in Larimer County – and she hates it that when writing a new organization to ask them for their 501 (c) 3 designation letter MS Word autocorrects the (c) into a ©…talk about wasted time and energy.

Doesn’t even want to get started on the Code of Federal Regulations…but has to keep up with CFR’s pertinent to HUD programs. Yawn….

Thinking Colorado’s passage of House Bill 1023 is the most retarded legislation ever – a prime example of government saying, “Do this, this and this” without any help to implement or enforce.

Now tackling a 504 plan for LMNOB’s transition to Local Neighborhood School.

I mean, sure, I’m a grown up now who itemizes her deductions and thus is acquainted with IRS code. Sure, I work in government, so legislation is going to have a profound impact on my professional life. But what a stretch to think that federal legislation has an impact on my everyday personal life.

Or so I, like many Americans, thought….

When the school psychologist from Local Neighborhood School called me at home Friday morning, asked me a few questions, cited some legalese that made the distinction between special education and regular education with special accommodations, and summed it all up saying she thought we were in need of the latter, it was an odd feeling to know that since LMNOB’s diagnosis of Sensory Integration Dysfunction, we are now “covered” by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Odd, because now an act of the federal government is directly impacting my personal life in a real and everyday way. And for the better.

In an era where people are disenfranchised and disillusioned from and with our nation’s legislators, where people don’t follow politics because “it doesn’t affect me,” I will admit to feeling as if they were right. But then I think about things like this, moreover, things that we take for granted, like the Civil Rights Act or the Women’s Suffrage Movement – and think, “Wow… our government really does have the peoples’ best interests in mind – or at listens to the people enough to see that they’re missing the boat.”

It makes me grateful. It makes me hopeful that perhaps we really are on our way to being an inclusive society?

And it makes me want more.