It was the 60s. It was Southern California. It was an experimental age in which they placed challenged children with gifted children together into a classroom with Mrs. Mankin. She had been a Disney artist before the first Disneyland was ever established, which meant she was creative.

Mrs. Mankin earned the love and trust of her class with her excellent teaching style, helping us act out scenes in history instead of simply reading about them. I never knew how she managed to corral so many children with such varied abilities and backgrounds.  I was just one of her students.

I was not raised in a prejudiced home. My friends and neighbors were Jewish, Brazilian, Navajo, Alabamians, Hispanic, German, African American. I had a cousin who was mentally challenged and I loved her. Being in Mrs. Mankin’s class was never uncomfortable for me–okay, at least not most of the time.

During that school year, the children in my class learned how to see each other through different eyes, and it changed everything. They got to know Joe, who was Hispanic, and Heidi, who was fresh from Germany, or Dewey, who was negro (yes, that’s what African American’s called themselves then.) Dewey’s family had left Los Angeles to avoid the race wars. We all learned to be patient with Billy and Cody, who had different stages of Down’s Syndrome. Billy was in love with me and he followed me everywhere–even into the girls bathroom. My best friend, David, had to help distract him at recess.

And then there was David’s situation. His parents were told one day that he was retarded. Yes, that was the term used at the time. He didn’t take it well and neither did I. Yes, he was different from the other children–or rather, he would have been different if he’d been anywhere but Mrs. Mankin’s class. He didn’t learn the same way other children our age were expected to learn and so they decided he was “retarded.” The term of the day. I knew better. Later, after his family moved with him to another town, it was discovered that he had an IQ of 150. He simply had dyslexia. He recently retired as a department director at one of the top technical universities in the world.

Sometimes it takes a lot of creativity to learn to live in sync with personalities all across the spectrum, interact with different nationalities, appreciate the input from people who have higher or lower IQs than our own. The thing is, when I’m writing a book, if I use the same kind of character in every role or viewpoint, I’m going to lose readers. The differences in characters are what make the novel exciting, just as the differences in humankind make our world an interesting place to live.

It isn’t always comfortable but learning to interact with people from all walks of life can be greatly rewarding. Never forget that God made each of us. He created man in His image. Do yourself the favor Mrs. Mankin did for us: learn to embrace all the different facets that reflect the image of  God.