I think it was just a regular menial job at a place that may have been accustomed to the imperfections and could handle such. A seizure at a hospital would be a common occurrence and safely managed. However he being in that place, the odds were good it might eventually lead to something more long-term at some point.

Run, Danny, run!

Now I can't even remember what facility it supposedly was.

Did I miss something here, or am I over-analyzing it?

It's a big MM hyperbaric chamber, I can inhale the "toasted" goodness, and the chat gets me to the next Sunday.

See me in a verbal tussle, please jump on in!

And OT, I share your disgust of the Stankees. I'm not a Philly Phanatic at all but before last night, I was hoping they could find a way to beat NYY in THREE games! Such a thumping Selig calls it off by Sunday. Mercy rule or something.
I know. I'm still hoping my parents get me a pony too. Oh well.

The self-help movement was so far off at this time, however stories like Danny's and Freddy's et al. show how it was just as inevitable as civil rights and the women's movement.

Dick/Don was able to transcend his affliction though his own form of self-realization. The fact that he stole a comrade's identity, deserted the US Military and left at least three families destroyed in his wake is what makes for great drama.

But contrasting Don's self-realization with Guy/Freddy/Danny reminds us that America rewards the exterior without examining the interior.

Yes, I have been known to haunt Michael Berube's blog on occasion. And since he's become a late-adopter and happy-discoverer of Mad Men, I've made multiple references and posted links to BoK, which I call "The Official Unofficial Mad Men blog". I've also received at least one "thank you" over at Michael's blog the tip about Basket of Kisses. I'm pretty sure Mr. Berube first found out about BoK through yours truly, as well.

It reminded me a bit of my baby brother. He is autistic but because my mother was adamant in getting him help at an early age, he is much more functional than most autistic children his age. He's been lucky to have therapists working with him all his life and he's been around his classmates since kindergarten and they love him. I really had not taken the time to understand what he deals with because I have lived on my own most of his life. Now, due to the crazy circumstances of our economy, I am at home and see him every day. I am more and more impressed each day with how amazing this kid is. Academically, he is number 2 in his class(he's a sophomore) and he gets better and better each week. He is not the most sociable person but he can relate to other people on a level that most autistic kids aren't able to do. My mother worries constantly about what life will be like for him once he's an adult, but I think we are so fortunate to be in this time. Even a mere 20 years ago he could have been sent away to a facility and not given the opportunities he is fortunate enough to have today.

What I find is that we are more accepting of different people but there is still ignorance. Even within my own family(about my brother). I think that is what my mother worries about. Plus she has her own memories of growing up in a time when people like my brother were hidden away and untreated. But, I constantly tell myself that even though my brother may be aware of his difference that does not stop his positive attitude. He is happy as long as we love him(and he can watch tv shows on dinosaurs, which are his obsession).

Thanks for this post. And thanks to freelancewoman and acdavis for sharing your stories. I've been thinking about my brother's future a lot lately and this helps me sort it out.

Yet he's being treated as though he's crazy, retarded, you name it, and unemployable except in an insane asylum as a janitor.

I had a stepnephew who was dyslexic, but in the '60s was undiagnosed and so then warehoused at his school with the mentally retarded, and his dyslexia was never addressed.

Finally, in his twenties he taught himself to read, passed numerous licensing requirements for major electrical work, was likeable and employed, but the damage had been done. His father, too, had rejected him, and he fell back repeatedly into drug use, spent some time in jail on drug use charges, and died of an overdose in his early 30s.

If their world repeatedly tells someone they're damaged, despite evidence to the contrary: they may become damaged, or bitter.

And wonderful comments from the posters. freelancewoman and acdavis, thank you in particular for adding your voices.

This is the topic I considered posting about as well. I prefer yours, though.

I found Danny abrasive, meanest of all to himself. I saw in him a young man who has turned his "affliction" into a combined swindle and cause: No, this pain is mine, I am different from you. I'm over here, you're over there, across the great gulf of ability. Help me: I can't help myself.

If Danny were doing something to change his circumstances, change others' perception — say, showing Don how the two of them are similar — I might have reacted differently. But he isn't. Danny isn't so much trapped in his affliction as building a foundation on it, planning to move right on in.

"The problem is other people," he says to Suzanne. Well, maybe. But the problem is also in his perspective, and the words he's chosen to describe who he is.

When my husband and I were dating, he told me a story about the power of words and what they say about us:

A patient arrives at a hospital in an ambulance, unconscious. Everything is wrong: internal injuries, head trauma, broken bones, the works. The patient remains in a coma for days, andearns a nickname among hospital staff: "the trainwreck". As in, "Please check the trainwreck in IC 4."

On day five, the patient regains cosciousness. A nurse asks, "Do you remember what happened to you?"

Says the patient, "I can't remember anything … but I think I was in a train wreck."

Words have power: more than we know. Danny Farrell's argument for his own marginalization works because his sister loves him, and because Don is broken enough to see the seams in a fellow con man; but most of all, because it means Danny gets to keep it.

Perhaps the character Dan — and those epileptics surveyed who are in the main, jobless — have a more severe form of seizure disorder, that can't be controlled by medication.

The prescription drug Dilantin is also an anti-depressant, so that may have had something to do with my brother's upward mobility when they got the level right.

The point is, we all have our afflictions, some more noticeable than not. And in the early '60s those that were obvious tended to be discriminated against.

Don's afflications are hidden, but there, none the less.