AM I AUTISTIC
by
Anthonystjoseph
My first
encounter with another human being that was measured by others as lacking or
mentally challenged but still able to communicate was when I was a young boy in
high school. I was fourteen years old
and had been invited by my good friend Dedra, over to her house for
dinner. Dedra had a crush on me but I
only liked Dedra for her mind… You see,
Dedra and I were in a lot of the same advanced high school classes together and
her conversational responses to my probing universal questions were always
interesting to me. Upon arriving at
Dedra’s house I learned that her world was a lot larger in its understanding,
just like mine.
When I first walked into Dedra’s house I
was introduced to her mother who seemed and looked to be older than my
grandmother… Dedra’s mom was a lot older
than most of our mothers at that age.
Then I met Dedra’s younger sister who was all smiles and immediately
gravitated toward me and could not get enough of studying me very closely indeed.
I decided that she wasn’t going to out
study me so I studied her BACK! It was a
contest of wits and I hated to lose contests and she could tell. At a certain point we started to laugh and then
she physically dragged me by the arm over to the piano to show me her ‘skills’
on the keyboard. Dedra smiled broadly in
the background as her sister and I had a blast…
I think Dedra was surprised at my ease with her sister since her sister
clearly suffered from Down Syndrome and made some people uncomfortable, but I
was having a ball…
After a while on the piano, as I talked
and she talked, I realized she was winning the talking ‘contest’ and ignoring
some of my conversation… Oh no, she will
NOT win the ‘refusing to listen war’
with ME! I went into my wonderful and
overflowing treasure chest of battles and used an old skill I developed on my
young cousin. Since she wouldn’t listen, neither would I! She then went to say something and I
proceeded to sing nonsensical syllables like, “LALALALALALALA” over her talking. She stopped mid sentence and stared at me and
my ‘LALALALALA’s, and I stopped. She
then went on to say something else and I hit her with it again and louder,
“LALALALALA”. She fell out laughing and
couldn’t stop. I had created a monster
because every time I went to talk to her throughout that evening she did it to
me, “LALALALALA”. She won but I had a
blast… Every time somebody else went to
talk to her that evening she went, “LALALALALA”.
Dedra later told me that her sister suffered
from Down Syndrome as a result of her mother giving birth to her at such an old
age. As I said, Dedra’s mother was very
old compared to the rest of our mothers…
Who knows if this is the reason, doctors told folks anything in those
days and other folks told YOU anything in those days and most folks believed
anything in those days, so who knows…
I left Dedra’s house that evening having
met one of the most enjoyable people that I had ever met in my life up to that
point… The fact that she had Down Syndrome
didn’t bother or hinder our friendship and bonding and as a matter of fact, it
probably helped. With Dedra’s sister
there was no pretense or barriers of decorum.
It was just pure feelings and both of us expressing ourselves truthfully
which is why we were able to share and connect.
Neither one of us cared what anyone else thought about us; she, for lack
of being mentally confined due to her condition and I because I’m just not
programmed that way, or…
A few years ago I talked to Dedra whom I
hadn’t spoken to in over twenty years and the first thing I asked her about was
her sister. I think she told me her
sister had passed on but I blocked it out because the girl I met will never die
in my mind… She was the happiest person
I had ever met and shared that happy with me because she made me feel that I
brought her happiness and that felt good.
It was the most honest laughter I had ever encountered. I enjoyed her happiness because unlike us,
she wasn’t encumbered with report cards, puberty, peers, fitting in or any of
the other happiness killers I had to fight off in my youth.
The valuable lesson I took and learned
from Dedra’s sister is that sometimes when someone seems to be out of the loop
they’re actually IN THE LOOP! I learned
that sometimes one can be wise to not participate in this foolery we call
humanity and maybe a wise genius might check out early or even choose a
different ‘modus of operandi’. Sadly, sometimes that different mode or
behavior is chosen for them. Like most
of us, I later learned of autism and that sometimes autistic children ARE
actually geniuses.
Later in my personal education and studies
I came across a book by an autistic girl and her mother, titled, ‘A Child Of
Eternity’ written by the girl, Adriana Rocha, and her mother Kristi Jorde. The book was remarkable to say the least and
a must read for ANYONE! Autism hadn’t
taken a hold of our current ‘educated’ population by knowledge or numbers so
information was rare and often incorrect…
Kristi Jorde was told her daughter Adriana was everything from deaf to
retarded before she came to the correct diagnoses of autism. It was a journey her and her daughter would
take together and is well told in the book.
I devoured the book in two sittings and put sleep aside to finish it
because it was so good and so enlightening.
I will never forget the first attempt and time Adriana was able to
communicate with her mother and she typed the words, ‘I am not stupid’. That was a WOW moment for me! The book goes on and ventures into areas not
too many minds are able to go but I was on board for the full ride of their
adventure and I thank them to this day for living and sharing their life.
So I am in the library today and I am
picking out some movies to watch over the next few days because I love watching
movies on DVD from the library because if they aren’t any good you can just
return them… The benefits are that you
get to see a lot of good movies that you may not have rented and if you don’t
like the movie you don’t lose a dime watching it. I actually think the aspect of free DVD’s at
the library is what is keeping our library system alive… Sadly, most people you see in the library
these days are either there for the free internet and computer usage or getting
great movies at the low price of FREE.
A new release DVD on the shelf at your
local library can cause a stampede. I
just watched ‘The Hunger Games’ in it’s opening week of DVD rental for free
from my local library; I saw it on the
shelf and almost knocked over a little old lady trying to get to it before that
high school kid I had to trip got to it…
What can I say, I’m not always a saint, but neither was Augustus.
The reason I pose and ask the question as
to whether I’m Autistic or not is that I have come to realize that I have no
filtering system at ALL! This seems to
be a common attribute in most autistic people…
They have no filter in saying what they are thinking or feeling if they
are able to say it or feel it. They are
without fear of being categorized or labeled since they generally don’t
comprehend these labels we place on ourselves and others…
Whenever I go to the library to get movies
and the clerk brings out a new cart of returned movies, all of us ‘free movie seekers’ swarm the cart and
appear to annoy the clerk… The clerk is
generally always clearly despising us ‘free
movie seekers’ as in, ‘Cant you freeloaders WAIT until I put them back on
the shelf!’ No we cannot wait, because
if we wait then some old grandma or high school kid might see the movie
first. The clerk NEVER comes out and
says for us to wait or even openly expresses their feelings; it’s just
something that you can feel when you’re perusing ‘their’ cart… Some have
grunted and some have exhaled deeply when I’ve cornered the cart but NONE have
ever said anything because that would reveal their humanity…
So on this day, I quietly enter the
library to get some FREE MOVIES and then to my surprise the Library Clerk
brings out a new rack of freshly viewed and returned movies… I salivate as I am the only one in the aisle
and the pickings will be fresh. As the
clerk rolls the cart into the aisle, I pounce.
The clerk takes umbrage to my pouncing and starts rubbing his head in an
‘I can’t take these free movie seekers anymore’
manner. The clerk then starts moaning
OUT LOUD as I peruse the rack. NO
FILTERS is in the house. Then the clerk
starts really losing it and moaning more and more and does not seem to be able
to bare me looking at the freshly returned movies in HIS rack.
When two people with ‘no filters’ meet the
results can be wonderful or NOT. I
shucked what little filter I had put on that day in disguise and proceeded to
spew… I said, “Hey, I don’t know what
your problem is but we ARE allowed to look at these movies.” The clerk then rubs his head in a confused
and stressful manner and starts to moan again…
I then realize that I have met one of my fellow brethren who is
encumbered with Autism. My heart
immediately warms as I realize I was interrupting his task. You must understand that a task for an
autistic person is of utmost importance as it must be completed as ALL tasks
MUST be COMPLETED. A librarian comes up
to me and tells me the clerks name and says, “This is Kent, he has
autism.”
I explained to the librarian that I
finally picked up on that as she asks the autistic clerk for a Western Movie
and before she finished her request to him for the Western he grabbed a movie
off the bottom of his rack and handed it to her and said, “HERE”, and walked
off taking his cart and the movies with him to another aisle where him and his
cart could be alone and unbothered by ‘free
movie seekers’ and needy librarians.
The librarian shares a funny story with me how she watched another
librarian ask the autistic clerk for a movie once and the clerk told her,
“NO”. I laughed and remembered the good
times I shared with Dedra’s sister.
The encounter with the autistic clerk in
the library left me in contemplation of how I myself seem to have no filters in
telling friends and strangers alike exactly how I feel at any given moment
without regard to how I look or how they will feel about me afterwards. As I sat at a table in the library, with my
laptop and thoughts, the autistic clerk wheels his cart up to the section of
CD’s four feet away from me. The
autistic clerk then looks into a reflective surface above the CD rack and
starts having a conversation with his image… He says to his own image verbatim,
“Now even though Google is a blank page, it can STILL hurt your computer,
right, RIGHT!” Rut row, I talk to myself
all the time and definitely answer myself because if I don’t, then who
will… At that point I ask myself, AM I
AUTISTIC?
I GOOGLE autism and find an acronym that
basically says I might be. The acronym
is one that describes me in full: Always Unique Totally Interesting Sometimes Mysterious. I have always been described as unique
when people are being polite. In high
school I was voted ‘most eccentric’. I’m
so totally
interesting that I even amuse myself, thank the lord; and when I’m not
totally filter free I am sometimes mysterious. I even talk to myself all the time as my
fearless library clerk did.
In summation and never intending to make
fun of any of my autistic brethren, I feel that I do share and have a lot in
common with people who suffer from autism.
I am actually very thankful for the attributes we share. My life is so much more interesting by not
having or being encumbered by all the filters that ‘normal’ people have. My life is so mysterious since I open myself
up to all possibilities and imaginations.
My life is always unique and totally interesting and sometimes
completely mysterious. In regards to having few
filters and living a life without too many filters, I will refer to the words of a life lived by
Edgar Rice Burroughs who said, “If I had followed my better judgment always, my
life would have been a very dull one”.
By
Anthonystjoseph
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