Rory O’Shea Was Here

If I could start a meme it would be this: Rory O’Shea Was Here. That’s the name of a movie (In England it was distributed as, Inside I’m Dancing.) Becky and I watched the other day. It’s the story of two young, Irish men, confined to wheelchairs who meet in a long term care facility. The one, Rory O’Shea, suffers from Multiple Sclerosis and is able only to use two fingers but can still talk and is a smart aleck, rabble rouser. The other, Michael Connolloy, suffers from Cerebral Palsy, and although he has greater use of his hands arms and legs he has great difficulty speaking, and no one but Rory can understand him.

The action revolves around the two friends trying to move out of the group home to live on their own. It’s a pretty funny movie but at the same time it shows the world treating these two men, who still have dreams and desires and thoughts, as somewhat subhuman and repulsive. At the end of the movie Rory is in a hospital bed hooked up to oxygen, when Michael comes to visit him. Rory tells him to look around the room at all of the equipment he’s hooked up to and says, apparently sarcastically, "Rory O’Shea was here." Here was a man who had dreams,who wanted to do something in the world, who wanted to exist, but whose  existence the world barely recognized. Rory O’Shea was here! If you decide to rent this movie be forewarned that the f word is used quite profusely, throughout.