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Tom T.'s Story
Howdy, I'm Tom. I just spent an emotional night reading your stories and decided to submit my own. I hadn't thought about my cleft in a long time, but this group convinced me that it's okay to be "loud & proud." I guess we'll start with the basics. I was born in 1968 with a bilateral cleft lip & palate. My folks tell me I was a happy child, I expect that was because they never treated me differently than they would have had I not had a cleft. I'm sure they were a little freaked out at first, but my Dad's "Damn them if they don't like it, that's my son!" attitude probably helped a great deal. I have found most of this out from my half-sisters in the past few years, and I thank them for it. My parents are pretty old school, "That there is your row to hoe, get to hoe'n" I like that. I never felt like I was sickly or different in any way. The surgeries sucked, and I still remember fighting with those ding-dang arm restraints. But I showed up, did my part and carried on. Then I started going to school. That's when everything hit the fan. I saw a side of people that I didn't know about, pretty ugly. I tried the "Mr. Fun" approach, everybody's buddy - if I made them feel comfortable right off the bat, I'm in. I walked into the ring with my arms down, and when you take enough shots you learn to go in swinging. So now I was 180 degrees away, I became "Mr. Bad Hombre" If I'm offensive and surly right off the bat, I'm off the hook(even though I was really a marshmallow). The hair started to grow, the cigarettes and dope started show up. How does the old joke go? "I smoked so much pot, the Zig-Zag guy had a tattoo of me on his arm." The normal adolescent stuff that fathers and sons have was compounded by my poor attitude toward the human race. We were like two bulls in opposite corners of the same corral, snorting and pawing the ground. I still had a passion for theatre, I got to be someone else for a while. I got into theatrical stage combat, and my look got me some small parts as your standard "heavy." Then I got the best job I ever had, as a stuntman at a wild west theme park in Scottsdale, Arizona. That platform got me some small film and commercial jobs, I was working!! But stuntmen get old in a big hurry, so after another injury, I was put to pasture at that job. My point in all of this jabberin' is that after all of my travelling and running and anger at the world, my family were the ones I went to. They were the ones who were there - no one else could have given me the hard support I got from them. No disrespect to any therapists or counselors out there, but I have found them to be mostly "soft" gentle individuals. That is not what I needed. I'm sure there are folks that know more than I on the subject of raising children in general, much less children with clefts, I'm just sharing what worked for me. While they grow, children need to defend themselves - not necessarily physically. At any rate, I'd like to hear from any of you. Email: tuckertet@aol.com
Thanks for this. -Tom