Sometime over the summer, I went on vacation somewhere with my dad, stepmother, and siblings. I will not be more specific because I am going to mention a child I suspect to be on the autism spectrum without his name and I want to make sure no one could ever figure out who I suspected autistic no matter how much stalking they want to do. Because revealing someone else's disability or suspected disability without consent is a bad thing to do, period.
So: We went on vacation. While there, there was a community campfire and karaoke at the campfire. I signed up for and sang something. So did my siblings. Then there was this boy who signed up, but said he wasn't much for singing and did an interpretive dance for the song instead. He tried to get my youngest sister up to dance too, at least semi-randomly from the people there, but she didn't want to, so I went up instead. It was fun and everyone was having a good time. My Aut-dar was going off, but I didn't ask, and his parents didn't say anything. We did a couple more songs over the course of the evening, and he was very friendly, and I made a smore with him over the campfire.
Mostly this is an example of the fact that some people who at least might be autistic actually do just fine when everyone just decides to be OK with the difference instead of insisting on a mythical normal. It's something I can be all moralistic about all I want, but I've been told that neurotypicals usually like a person and a story attached, so here is a short story where one possibly autistic kid and one definitely autistic adult had a good time being a little weird and no one cared, with few enough details that I don't think anyone could track down the kid.
So: We went on vacation. While there, there was a community campfire and karaoke at the campfire. I signed up for and sang something. So did my siblings. Then there was this boy who signed up, but said he wasn't much for singing and did an interpretive dance for the song instead. He tried to get my youngest sister up to dance too, at least semi-randomly from the people there, but she didn't want to, so I went up instead. It was fun and everyone was having a good time. My Aut-dar was going off, but I didn't ask, and his parents didn't say anything. We did a couple more songs over the course of the evening, and he was very friendly, and I made a smore with him over the campfire.
Mostly this is an example of the fact that some people who at least might be autistic actually do just fine when everyone just decides to be OK with the difference instead of insisting on a mythical normal. It's something I can be all moralistic about all I want, but I've been told that neurotypicals usually like a person and a story attached, so here is a short story where one possibly autistic kid and one definitely autistic adult had a good time being a little weird and no one cared, with few enough details that I don't think anyone could track down the kid.
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