Artie Abrams is Mobility's Person of the Year!

The 2011 Person of the Year is an unorthodox choice for the editorial brain trust at NEW MOBILITY. Unlike in years past, this year’s honoree is not a person of great achievement and stature in the world of disability and disability rights. He has not led the charge to enact new laws or break down historic barriers. In fact, he’s not even out of high school. A traffic accident in his mom’s car when he was 8 years old left him paralyzed from the waist down, but that has not stopped this product of Anytown, USA, from dreaming and working and living the fullest possible life of an American teenager.

This year’s Person of the Year is an extraordinary young man named Artie Abrams.

Despite his disability, or perhaps motivated by it, 16-year-old Artie Abrams excels in so many areas. At McKinley High School in Ohio, he is an active member of the school glee club, a mainstay on the Academic Decathlon Team, and even suits up and plays for the state-champion football team, the McKinley Titans. He’s easy to spot on campus: He wears thick glasses and dresses like a retro nerd. He’s a pretty skillful guitarist, writes hip-hop poetry, falls in and out of love regularly, and is not afraid to speak up when he or anyone else is wronged. He has the confidence of the faculty and staff of McKinley and was recently asked to direct the glee club’s adaption of West Side Story. He aspires to be a theatrical director and is clearly on his way.

Everything, of course, is not rosy in Artie’s adolescent life. He is sensitive about his disability and often lets that distort his view of himself and others. Friends will tell you that he has a prickly, unpredictable personality. He is sweet one minute and defensive, even nasty, the next. He’s known for sexist comments like this one once directed at a full-bosomed friend, who recalls: “Artie asked if he could make an omelet with the enormous ostrich eggs I was smuggling in my bra.” Sometimes his emerging self-confidence turns to arrogance and he pushes others away with a cynical aside. Artie is fighting two battles — being an adolescent, period, and being an adolescent with a disability. You can imagine the drama.

There is only one big problem with Artie — he is not real. He’s a fictional character on the ground-breaking Fox TV show, Glee.

source: newmobility.com