Tell Me You're Autistic. Let's See What Happens

Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

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What an exchange taught me about my ignorance

The bill nearly gave me a heart attack. My utility bill, already at $304.00 a month for ONE person leapt to $411.00.

Needless to say I was pissed. Not just pissed, LIVID. The moment the utility opened at 8:30 am I was on the phone with a customer service rep.

I was angry, and she was doing her best to explain.

All I heard were mealy-mouthed excuses, delivered in a flat, unfeeling, condescending tone that made me even madder.

Finally, after we kept talking over each other, she said,

“I’m autistic. I’m trained to help you understand your bill. I’m doing the best I possibly can.”

It would be an understatement to say that stopped me cold. I was hearing a lack of caring from her, and she was getting a lack of understanding from me.

A few minutes after she finished her explanation, I said,

Thank you. First, thank you for telling me you’re autistic. Second, thanks for advocating for yourself. And thank you for giving me the chance to hear you.

That changed everything. We continued our discussion, and she referred me to a customer service lead. But we weren’t done.

I said,

I appreciate that it took courage for you to say that to me, and you never know what kind of reaction you might get. Everyone is carrying something in their buckets, me too, and I appreciate that you stood up for yourself.

She was incredibly gracious, said thanks for the kind words, and we ended on a completely different note.

The later conversation with the utility did NOT go well, but that wasn’t the point. This moment of grace was.

You see, for Gen Xers down to kids being born right now, autism is a fact of life. When I was growing up I never heard the word, much less had any kind of regular contact with people on the spectrum.

Therefore, people my age often may not have the reference points to be able to spot behaviors which can signal autistic behavior, even if we’re doing our best to be sensitive.

That puts many of us at odds with folks just trying to do their jobs, but who may not have the kinds of skills many of us take for granted. That doesn’t make either side bad or wrong.

It does mean that otherwise well-meaning people can be brutally unkind to someone who perhaps doesn’t have access to emotional resources we assume they do.

Like what I had done.

Disregarding the idiotic, cruel, insensitive and just plain WRONG comments that RFK Jr made about autisic people, autistic folks are all around us, working, paying taxes, writing gorgeous poetry, adding value and living full lives.

Some of them have the courage to speak up for themselves, as this rep did with me. That allows us to grow, evolve and learn from those encounters. That moment made my entire day.

Why? Because she was so grateful that the was heard, seen and acknowledged.

I was so damned grateful to her for the opportunity to do just that.

This is not about patting myself on the back. I was angry and insensitive, and she set a critical boundary with me. That was the gift.

A whole community of Americans wants to claim that this woman has no ability, can’t work, can’t function, and will be crippled by autism her entire life. What are we going to do, institutionalize them?

In the US, an estimated 1 in 36 children and 1 in 45 adults are on the autism spectrum. This translates to roughly 5.4 million adults and a rising number of children with ASD. The CDC reports that in 2020, 27.6 out of every 1,000 children in the US were diagnosed with ASD.

THAT IS CRIMINAL.

What, we’re going to now criminalize autism, along with being Black, Brown, female, Asian, Democrat……? Read the headlines, that is where we are heading. You can’t make any of this shit up. George Orwell couldn’t possibly have imagined where we are right here, right now.

There’s nothing wrong with this woman. She’s on the spectrum, and like anyone else with something in her bucket to carry, as do we all, she’s doing the best she can. We all deserve that little bit of grace.

We’ve seen plenty of folks with Down’s Syndrome find jobs and plenty to add to society, folks on the spectrum do, too. Increasingly I wonder if there is an element of genius to some of it that we’re not seeing because society is so busy trying to shove folks into a predetermined behavior set.

I don’t buy the bunk that RFK Jr is selling. The more he runs his dangerously ignorant mouth the more damage he does, just like the rest of the morons-in-charge. I might have supported some of the pharma reforms he talked about but he is off the rails.

You and I have a lot to learn from people on the spectrum, who are being forced to function in a world that so often doesn’t see their fullness. What makes them full as people doesn’t conveniently fit into the sihouettes society is more comfortable with. The problem is with us, not them.

With so many protections stripped away as DEI is declared illegal, increasingly they are on their own. What happens to any one group of us also happens to us.

I need to be far more aware and sensitive to cues that are still very new to me. The essence of diversity is to sense those differences without judgement and to find ways of interacting which don’t do harm. Of course it’s hard work.

But we want people to bend to accommodate us, don’t we?

I won’t always be successful. But this exchange taught me a fine lesson.

I’m still mad about my utility bill. But I am deeply grateful for the exchange, which made my entire day.

Let’s play. And let’s make more room for others not exactly like us to play, too.

Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash

Thanks to my readers and those who support my work. I am finally able to sit up and work and walk again. Please consider supporting, and whatever you do, make time for you so that you can thrive.