One time I surprised a woman named Anthea into a bonbon of self-discovery when she introduced herself to me for the first time at a party.
“Wow!” I exclaimed immediately. “What's it like having a name that's comprised entirely of articles?” I'd quickly parsed it into “an,” “the,” and “a.”
She stared back at me blankly. At 30 years of age, it had never occurred to her.
Ever notice the similarity of “rudder” and “udder?” There's something poetic there, right? How both of the things hang down from the bottom of what they're attached to? Words are an intense and gratifying special interest for me. Etymology is a topic that, as my hero Louise Chandler (@neurodivergent_lou) would say, “can live in my brain rent free.”
Names are an area where this pattern-finding neurodistinction shows up a lot. When I first met my friend Lisa Poggiali, she told me she was an anthropologist. A few days later, I began a text to her with “Dear Anthropoggialigist.” A weird one on my part, for sure, but she was stunned that nobody in her entire career had ever made the connection before.
A similar thing happened when I asked my friend Bridget how she spelled her name. “Do you have a special relationship with bridges?” I asked. Her face broadened into a smile as she thought about it for the first time.
And with my friend Roya: “Doesn't Lorde have a song about you? 'Roya LS?'”
“Of course she does,” she replied, grinning from ear to ear.
I’m personally responsible for half a dozen new words on Urban Dictionary. Condesunshine, which I co-created with my sweetheart Jess Abralind, is a particular point of pride. So is the definition I came up with for it: “Don’t parade on my rain.”
My mind hitches on the details of words. I never think, “Communication abnormality → Autism → disorder,” though.
I think, “Wonder → delight → superpower.”
I get so much joy out of holding the simultaneity of word meanings in my non-binary-thinking mind. When good ones come to me, I am compelled to capture them and squirrel them away. I keep an ongoing list of band & album names in my elbibi, the “little black book” (LBB) that I keep in back left pocket at all times. Below, you'll find a photo of the page of my 2022 elbibi with all of my entries for that year.
Every once in a while, a moment will arise when I'm able to multiply that delight by sharing the wordplay with someone else, and I can pull out an item my list for a recitation. Thank goodness for neurodiversity, y'know?
The poet e.e. cummings was neurodiverse, to say the least. His eccentric, mixed-together, made-up style of writing "helped to give life to the [English] language," according to U.S. Poet Laureate James Dickey. It also made him one of my personal heroes.
Imagine if he hadn't had supportive friends, family, and a good healthy dose of personal conviction. In his heyday, the early 1900s, he could easily have been marked as mentally ill.
What if he'd been given the humiliating label “Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)?” During his lifetime, this diagnosis was just entering medical rhetoric, courtesy of psychiatrist Leo Kanner and other problematic pioneers like Dr. Hans Asperger. The deeply-damaging ABA “treatment” of Autism-expressers that one early researcher, the well-intentioned psychologist Ivar Lovaas, advocated for, remains tragically common, even today. It might've nipped cummings' genius in the bud, obliterating my favorite poem, "here's to opening and upward."
I'm unendingly grateful for the wisdom of Dr. Devon Price, Steve Silberman, Judy Singer, and other modern researchers who are shining new light on Autism.
Neurodivergence is not weakness.
In the spirit of my hypermagical poethero, I welcome the difforder.
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P.S. Does anyone know the story behind the website Redefine School? After following a hunch to google “‘Don Norman’ Autism,” I found their article on him. I was mystifascinated (= mystified + fascinated). Still haven’t figured it out, but it reminds me of the auties chapters in the sci-fi novel Existence, by David Brin, and I love it.
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