An open letter to anyone who thinks its okay to use the word Retarded as slang. First lets start off with some statistics, about 26.2 percent of American adults ages 18 and older suffer from mental disabilities, that is about 57.7 million people. There are also many children who suffer from a mental disability, my nephew being one of them. People who have these disablities do not want them they can't help that they have it and they shouldn't be treated any different than someone who doesn't have a disability.

There are so many other words you can possibly call someone if they did something stupid. You can call them silly, foolish, crazy, dumb, stupid, idiotic, careless, strange, illogical, dull, childish, and there are so many other words you could possibly use that aren't the word retarded or I like to call it the "R" word. Lets be honest here all of us have used the "R" word once in our lifetime, but when you know someone who has a disability your whole perspective changes.

What if you happen to be insulting someone and use the "R" word and someone who has a disability lets say down syndrome happens to be standing right there? Well they are a person to right? Yes they are a person and they can understand what you're saying and even though you weren't directing it towards them it could still hurt their feelings and make them feel like they are unwanted or making them think that they aren't a normal person when they are. A lot of people with mental disabilities can function just as well as you and I can. My nephew who has Autism is probably more talented and a whole lot smarter than most people I know and he's only seven years old.

If you are seriously that uneducated that you can't spread your vocabulary just a bit to say something else other than the "R" word than that is sad for you. I hope to anyone who reads this will have a better understanding on why it's such a bad word and it should not be used in today's society when there are so many other English words that can be used. So next time you go to insult someone try and use one of the other words I listed before.