Children who, like my friend Sally, can not feed themselves are spoonfed by attendants who are in a rush to get back to their wards. An attendant who has become proficient in the art of spoonfeeding can scoop a meal into the mouths of nine children in less than twelve minutes. The food given the residents can be described only as mush, and I have yet to meet a normal person who would agree to eat the food served to the residents of Willowbrook.

The clothes provided for the children are of a rough cotton fabric and they rarely fit the child who wears them. Oftentimes, there aren't enough clothes to go around for all the residents in the ward.

There are other degradations. The filth, the stench, the constant and unending stream of violence to which the children are subjected each day of their unhappy lives.

For all of this there is no excuse. But to my friend Sally, I must apologize for the way she is forced to live. I apologize because there is no excuse for the way she is forced to live.

It is never very certain how people come to be friends. I don't know exactly what it was about Sally that attracted me to her. Perhaps it was her slightness of size. I think the real thing which caused me to like Sally was her defiant air when she was around normal adults. She would look over her shoulder at whatever adult happened to be around, grimace at the sight of them, stick her ass out at them in an emphatic sort of way, and then tip-toe off.

In any case, Sally and I became friends as best as people in our circumstances possibly could. Although Sally did not live on the ward on which I worked, I would spend the best part of my day carrying her around with me. I did all I could to make her happy. She never failed to reciprocate.

A week after I quit my job at Willowbrook, I returned with a friend from Harvard and, together with Sally, we spent the day at the Staten Island Zoo. Sally was deathly afraid of the lions and tigers, as a normal child might be, but once we came to the part of the zoo where the ducks ran around she was unabashed in her desire to play with them. In these days when joys are hard to come by, I had an amazingly good time just watching my friend play with the ducks.

I am now Sally's "official friend. "Even friend-ship is bureaucratized at Willowbrook. I miss her sorely and when I return to New York in November I will find some other way to make her feel like a human being.

Sally remains in the misery and degradation of Willowbrook while I enjoy the comforts of a Harvard education. There is no way to justify the radical diversity in our positions. The fact that she is retarded and I am "normal" explains nothing. We are both human in a moral and personal way, and that I should enjoy all the fruits and comforts of humanity and she none remains mystifying to me.

So in the name of all that is decent and good about humankind I apologize to my friend for the inhuman treatment she must put up with. I hope that it is in her power to forgive us our sins against her. I pray that children like her might not live the same tortured and unnecessary life in the years to come.