The lucky fin*

by Alessandro Capriccioli

I usually watch films – normally cartoons - with Andrea, the elder of my two sons. He’s turned five on Spring day and has known about disability ever since he was born from meeting my brother almost every day.
It’s a habit we’ve been developing kind of satisfactorily every weekend: every Saturday morning, as I pick him up, we go to the supermarket, choose the food we will eat in the weekend, walk the dog, and then think about the cartoon we will watch together in the evening. This usually leads to a fiery and intricate dispute, which ends up being the funniest part of the day. However, a few weeks ago, when “Finding Nemo” appeared on the store shelf, we skipped the usual half-hour discussion and went back home with few doubts and a brand new DVD case in a Blockbuster bag.
I’ve been identifying myself a lot - perhaps too much - with the educational role, intrinsic in the father figure; every time I watch a film with Andrea I can’t help asking him if the film means to teach something, or if it simply gives us a message; then, of course, I also can’t help giving him my own explanation of what we have just watched together. Not to be mistaken, you know, I often prepare some kind of speech while the movie is still on. As a result, I find myself being the first to think it over and, to my surprise, much more carefully than I would do alone.
The film is about Marlin, a clownfish bringing up his only surviving son (Nemo) after his newly built coral home is attacked by a barracuda. The young fellow is smart and curious, but was born with an atrophic fin. This makes his daddy worrisome, as he would always like to preserve him from the dangers of the endless ocean.
Soon the situation becomes so unbearable for Nemo that, in order to show his father that he’s able to lead a normal life despite his “unlucky” fin, the little fish swims off to deep waters, gets caught by a skin diver and ends up in the aquarium of an Australian dentist.
Daddy Marlin courageously launches himself after him, swimming across the ocean to the other side of the world and beating his own insecurity. During the journey he meets Dory, a friendly regal blue tang fish who decides to help him find his son; she has a slippery memory though, and is constantly unaware of where she is or what she is doing.
As for Nemo, he receives help and comfort by the fish he meets in the aquarium: among them there’s Gill, a tropical fish who’s been living his life fearlessly and intensely although having the same disability as Nemo. He’s the one showing the young fish the trust that his overly apprehensive father couldn’t put in his son. Thanks to him, Nemo finds the strength to jump out of the aquarium, swim towards his father and regain freedom.
The rescue is successful, of course, and the story ends with all the fish getting happily together in a grand finale typical of Disney. The most important thing though is that Marlin finally realises he has made quite a few wrong judgements: first about his son, whom he thought unable to lead an independent life despite his malformity; secondly about the forgetful Dory, whom he considered a burden, and who proves instead to be essential for the success of the adventure; and ultimately about himself, being too anxious and apprehensive to face life till that very moment.
As I was running over the credit titles I thought about what I would tell my son: I figured I would tell him how true it is that people with disability are human beings capable of going their own way independently; how useful those people can be to the others, if only the prejudice of them being just a weight and a worry were finally disproved; how often, beyond all definitions, we - the so called “normal” - happen to be the disabled, and how often we are the victims of our own limits, precluding us the possibility to employ at best the means we have at our disposal. I would explain to him that in the end everyone, and I mean every single person, has a “lucky” fin somewhere, and that helping and being helped are part of the same mechanism, purely based on respect and trust towards the others.
Then, just as I was about to open my mouth I realised that the message of the cartoon was not for my son, but for me. So I got up, went to the freezer, took some ice-cream and asked him to explain to me the film we had just watched.
Andrea, of course, had it all clear already.

* this text is to be published on “Sindrome Down Notizie”, the four-monthly periodical of the AIPD (Italian Association of People with DS).

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