CHRISTMAS IN JULY: A beautiful friendship

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Most kids with disabilities have no friends. None. One Canadian university study put membership in that lonely kids’ club at 53%.

Sad but true.

Not so at Variety Village.

Which brings us to the bustling lobby of that iconic east end sports centre the other day.

Georgio Gonsalves, 12, glances out the big windows and his eyes spark. He bounces up and down.

“K!” he exclaims. K as in Kaden Jaglowitz, 13. The two boys are best buds. They have not seen each other for all of three days. They love each other. I mean real love.

“Kaden is so sweet,” Georgio tells me. “I love Georgio,” says Kaden.

They have other things in common, including Down syndrome and heart surgery scars and the like. Loneliness, too – until that vanished three summers ago at Variety Village’s legendary camps.

By chance, their moms had enrolled them in the introductory sports camp.

At the end of day one, Georgio’s mom, Mary Kapetanos, came to get him.

“This is Kaden,” Georgio said, solemnly. “He’s my friend.”

It was music to Mary’s ears. Georgio had classmates, of course, but those relationships ended at the school bell. No one invited him for sleepovers. There were no BFFs – until that Variety camp, and Kaden.

Kaden’s mom, Julie, says: “The camp counsellors told us Georgio got all sad about something and was sitting alone on a hill (on Village grounds) and Kaden came to him with a water bottle and put his arm around him, then they went off to play.”

The boys have been a dynamic duo ever since.

“They’re like brothers,” says Julie.

“Georgio is the sensitive kind of kid and Kaden is the nurturing type,” says Mary. “Their relationship is so sweet, so kind and tender.”

Their moms say the boys even have their own language, which sounds like garble to you and me but is Shakespeare to them.

The moms, both single, are like sisters now. Kaden and Julie have become part of Georgio’s extended Greek family. The moms and sons went to Disney World together.

In the Village fieldhouse, the boys demo their basketball skills for Sun photographer Jack Boland. Basketball is their sport, born of a Variety summer camp. They play for a junior Special Olympics team called the Basket Hounds.

They learned to boogie at a Variety summer dance camp. Fave tunes include JoJo Siwa’s Boomerang.

Hey-hey-hey, I don’t really care about what they say

Won’t let the haters get their way

I’ma come back like a boomerang. Hey-hey-hey.

Haters gonna hate. A total stranger once marched in off the sidewalk and asked Julie, who was on her porch with baby Kaden, “does your child have Down syndrome?” The gall. “I’m never wrong,” said the woman and marched off.

Kaden spent weeks in ICU and could eat no solids until he was two. He was tiny.

“People used to come up and ask, ‘Don’t you feed your baby?'” says Julie.

Baby Georgio, meanwhile, faced so much resistance from educators – one rejected him after an “interview” at age two-and-a-half – his mom, a Montessori teacher, started her own school.

Every parent of Down syndrome kids I’ve met over decades of the Sun Christmas Fund for Variety Village has similar stories.

Society may be more open to the disability world these days, but we’re a long way from real “inclusion.”

But back to Kaden and Georgio.

Tuckered out from basketball, the boys get out their “Barbies.” That’s what they call them all. Their stash ranges from Iron Man and dinosaurs to anime to actual Barbies, including one with Down syndrome features. The boys use them to work out thoughts and feelings, to confront troubles at school.

For instance, one Barbie says to the other, “Oh, yeah, you said I was stupid,” and a third doll cuts in, “No, you’re not!” And so on. You get the idea.

Two boys boisterously playing with dolls would draw stares in many places. But not at Variety Village.

“I don’t know anywhere else, other than our homes,” says Julie, “where kids can foster real friendships based on who they are without having to mask any part of themselves to fit it.”

The boys are back at Variety’s summer camps in July – starting together with swimming, though they both fret that they’re going to sink. Other camps, for kids of all abilities, include taekwondo, art, drama, track and field and rock climbing – and basketball.

You are lucky if you have a friendship like that of Kaden and Georgio. Variety Village remains its backdrop. You can help keep it so.

Any donations in June to the Sun Christmas Fund – Christmas in July? – will be tripled thanks to Canadian Tire Jumpstart and a private donor, to a total of $150,000.

Donate at varietyontario.ca/the-sun-christmas-fund.

Could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

northchannelmike@gmail.com