While it does feel like the setup for a joke, it's a real something that we do every year. If you know the checklist of symptoms associated with high functioning autism, then you'll the understand that our trip yesterday to Beech Bend pushed the boundaries of endurance for such a person. In fact, we knowingly coaxed, tickled, irritated, antagonized and by late afternoon, had flat out violated the boundaries. For example, people with Asperger's may:
1. Not pick up on social cues and may lack inborn social skills such as read others' body language, start and maintain a conversation or take turns talking.
The best social experiment in the whole world is this: Put a kid with Asperger's in the place where waiting in line is of the ultimate importance, and you'll see pack mentality, social justice, and all kinds of other things come leaping out of the human psyche like monkeys. You've never seen people -kids, and even grown ass adults - lose their minds so quickly over someone who just refuses to acknowledge that a line even exists much less that he has to follow the rules of it. And if he's addressed about it by one of them, he probably won't even pretend to know that he's being spoken to. I would think it was funny if I wasn't so busy apologizing to the pack.
2. Dislike any change in routine.
Hey! Let's all get up at the crack of dawn, get on the road smashed in a car, spend our day doing things that are completely unnatural in the real world, eat all the things that we say we can't usually eat, and after we've hopped you up on overstimulation, then pile back in the car, wet, dirty, hot, tired for the return trip way past bedtime.
3. Appear to lack empathy.
See that sweet, cherubic, round-faced 4-year-old holding his mom's hand? The one with the smile, who is so excited about riding the shiny kiddie motorcycles that go around and around that have real horns that honk? He's going to cry in a minute when my kid pries his fingers from the handlebars and pushes him off of the green one because, well, it's the green one that he's ridden 22 times today, and he cannot ride another color. He will have a completely blank expression and seem un-empathetic, but only I will be able to see the oh-so-subtle expression that says that he knows what he's doing, and he's sorry, little boy, he really is, but it's the green one.
4. Be unable to recognize subtle differences in speech tone, pitch and accent the alter the meanings of others' speech.
I'm talking to you, Mr. Jumping Jumbos Ride Operator, who understandably tried to get his attention with a sharp tone when he tried to open the gate while the ride was (still very much) in motion. It doesn't work to yell unless you REALLY YELL. Makes me glad he hasn't taken a shine to roller coasters.
5. Have a formal style of speaking that is advanced for his her age
6. Be preoccupied with few or only one interest.
Those two go out to you, people of Kentucky, as you encountered him doing anything at any time in the Arcade. Go ahead and add numbers 1, 3 and 4 to that as well.
7. Avoid eye contact.
8. Have unusual facial expressions or postures.
9. Talk a lot, usually about a favorite subject. One-sided conversations are common, internal thoughts are often verbalized.
Those 3 are for you, Ms. Crazy Bus Operator, when he asked you about the control panel (without looking at you, of course as in number 7) and how it worked and then proceeded to explain in a quite lengthy way how that pertained to something in a video game (number 6), while holding his finger in the air like he was the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz after he'd just received a brain (number 8), and while a line of children and parents waited in the hot sun behind him. (Please see item 1 for how he got to the front of the line, and items 4 and 3, in that order, for his reaction to their reactions.)
10. Have heightened sensitivity and become overstimulated by loud noises, lights, etc.
By 5pm I am pretty sure that most employees and patrons of Beech Bend knew who Truman was, not just because of all of the above, but because by 5pm, he had had just about all the bells and lights and excitement he could stand and lost control of all impulses and any control that still remained. He doesn't shy away from stimulating things for the most part, but instead falls head over heels into being crazed by them, kind of like a passenger on Ken Kesey's Magic Bus Trip: He looks normal, until you realize that there's a person there who has drank orange juice laced with LSD and who is seeing and thinking things that aren't part of your own reality.
But by 5pm, everyone in the park also knew who he was because he's just so damn interesting and funny and so much unlike most other kids. He had won over the kiddie ride area with his "Crazy Bus" song (including the poor Crazy Bus operator from number 9). He's incredibly difficult, but he can have more fun with more exuberance and more abandon than anyone I know.
And so we weather this trip every year, and the 8 full hours it takes him to warm up to riding anything just so we can have the one hour where he has more fun than anyone else ever had in the history of all fun having, and so that we get to be around it, too and some of that fun can rub off on our adult selves.
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