I was an adult and on a visit back to the town where I was raised.  Mother and I were returning to her house from a trip to the grocery, and as we drove the car into the driveway, we saw a boy sitting on her front steps. 

Mother said, “Oh, that's Robin, my neighbor's boy.  I guess he wants another piece of candy.  I keep candy for him.”

Robin was not a child.  He looked as big as Mother and I, and he must have been at least a teen.  Why would a teenage boy be waiting for candy?

“Why is he swaying and clapping his hands?” I asked.

“Oh, well, you know he is not quite right,” she answered.

For many years, in the rural community, population @ 3,000, where I live, among the citizens there were the “not-quite-rights.”  The term carries no connection to librals nor conservatives and did not refer to any constitutional or legal rights to be “not-quite,”  no similarity to phrases like “gun rights” or “abortion rights.”  Instead the term referred to the members of our population who, to use the contemporary term, were “mentally challenged.”

I like the "not-quite-right" designation better.  It indicates a spectrum, a degree, not a classification that isolates an individual within a group.  The words contain an optimism.  These people are close to right, to being within a normal range of mentality and behavior, just not quite there.   The phrase seems to express the spirit of contemporary P.C. wording before such was ever introduced into our national consciousness. 

When spoken, the words seemed to be  an effort by the rural community to find a polite means of description without exclusion, without isolating, and offers me a joyful memory of that effort. 

Today, I seldom hear the phrase as the locals adopt more contemporary P.C. designations like “oh, she’s a special ed student,” or the typical “he’s mentally challenged.”  I miss the former reference.

 Sometimes I feel that I am also on this spectrum and “not quite” all the way to “right.” Are there really any of us who are all the way to there?  The phrase leaves me open to that thought.  On my imagined graph, I may be a little closer to the goal of total rightness than Robin, but he is not far from me.  I like candy too.