Tin Cans With Strings to You
I’ve taken a break from blogging the last two months to pursue some screenwriting. And yes, that means I am writing an autobiographical web series in which my son and I are indie wrestlers who fight zombies.
Charlie turned 5 last week. He received many presents, which he opened with great enthusiasm. When there were no more presents, we turned in his gift cards to buy him more presents. When there were no more gift cards, he began walking around the house reciting a line from Peppa Pig: “It’s almost Christmas time!” in perfect queen’s tongue.
It’s August, which is close enough for Hallmark to begin decking the halls, but for the rest of us Christmas is still far away. Part of Charlie’s autism is a strong tendency toward echolalia, a condition in which he repeats words or phrases when he’s stimming. When he’s walking around the house reciting something like Peppa Pig it usually means he’s worked up.
Charlie has developed some interesting communication methods recently. If I point out something to him that is obvious, he’ll respond “obviously” as if I’m being simple. But still he spends much of his time lingering within his own repetition of what words and phrases he’s picked up from songs or YouTube. To many, I’m sure it sounds like meaningless noise.
Sometimes I think one of the most damaging films to the ASD community was Rain Man. The story, as told from the perspective of a non-autist, invests more in the surface level fears and challenges of dealing with somebody with autism than it does searching for meaning within Dustin Hoffman’s behavior or what he may be trying to emote to his non-autist counterpart. From this narrow perspective, the autistic character is a soulless puppet with a brain capable of only performing a few neat tricks within a thousand misfires of human thought. And for decades that’s been the takeaway. Autistic persons are affection-less jabberwockys and their human experience is only as meaningful as what those around them can make of it.
The spectrum of human communication is so narrow that any form of communication that doesn’t involve language is treated as either alien or curiosity. Like the concept of time, language has become a shared reality. This is a pompous assumption whose history is more rooted in conquest than compromise. And despite an age in which we communicate more than we ever have non-verbally, in our appearance and our clothing and our use of gestures and symbols and emojis, there has yet to be an attempt to “reach” those whose methods of communication aren’t as binary as the construction of words and sentences.
Charlie is walking around the house reciting Peppa Pig. Like most children, after all the birthday presents have been opened the next thing to look forward to is Christmas. In the absence of language, he communicates the way one would if they had nothing but a cassette player with prerecorded dialogue to communicate with. He finds an expression most closely aligned with his thoughts and feelings and speaks it as though he’s pressing a play button.
“It’s almost Christmas time!”
To some, a meaningless recital. But beneath it is an expression of joy, happiness, and hope for whatever toys and jubilee he’s imaging as he immerses himself in new toys and leftover cake.
I think he had a good birthday :)
