#idr his name but he was a rowdy and loud autistic kid who would break out singing disney songs in the middle of class | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

abra-ka-dammit · 2 years

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a video of a comedian with tourette's crossed my dash a couple days ago and i keep thinking about it because i realized id never actually.... experienced someone with tourettes? like it was a Concept in my mind that i knew existed and was out there but i'd never encountered it, and finally seeing it happen with a real life person was... idk, kinda jarring? because watching him i was like. yeah... if i didnt know what was going on id be pretty freaked out by that thing he keeps doing. and since my main touchpoint of tourette's knowledge was a south park episode largely mocking it, i only had a vague idea of what a real person with tourette's was like. obvs i knew it was more than randomly screamed obscenities but written descriptions of tics really dont do the actual acts justice when seen live, so it really was like. being slapped in the face with A New Thing I Don't Understand--which of course depending on the person can either lead to fear-based hate or acceptance of the new thing. i like to try to be the latter person.

and in my life, honestly just plain exposure has almost always been what makes me emotionally connect with "minority" groups, especially of the medical variety. its easy not to empathize with groups you don't belong to if you never actually have to see or hear them. it's easy to hate, then, too. without exposure to them, "people with tourette's" can just be a theoretical group of people you don't need to care about, because hey they must not number enough to matter because you don't think you've ever met one. hell, maybe they're not even real! but being introduced to real people who are Real Dementia Patients, Real Autistics, Real Tourette's Havers, etc.... seeing their human faces, hearing their human voices, seeing their movements and behaviors, learning about who and what they are and their experiences as that minority from their own lips; it helps you see them as human, and their status a human one.

theres not really an ending thought here. just having that wild experience of seeing something atypical "in real life" and coming to terms between my instinctual "what the fuck" and my logical "he has a disorder" to meet at "that's a person with a life experience I will never have or truly understand but i have no reason to discriminate against them for it, because they're really just another person"

#brings me back to my very young days tbh #i was the weird kid in school that would befriend the Freak kids nobody else wanted to #so i had one friend in like 1st grade who entirely didnt speak english who i communicated with largely through Charades #who no one else wanted to play with bc they didnt speak spanish #and there was this boy with some developmental disorder who was wheelchair-bound in i wanna say 3rd grade?#his head lolled off to one side and he drooled and couldnt move his crunched up arms well #but i would sit by him at lunch and talk to him and his adult helper #just being introduced to their existence helped me go 'oh some people are different than me in X way but theyre still people'#then in uhhh 7th grade? maybe 8th? i was in a science class and we were gonna do frog dissections in pairs #and my teacher came to me specifically and said hey are u okay if i pair u with so-and-so #idr his name but he was a rowdy and loud autistic kid who would break out singing disney songs in the middle of class #most of the kids highkey hated him and thought he was annoying #i too found it annoying but not enough to be a dick especially since i have an autistic cousin i lived with when i was 5-7 #and through my time with her understood theyre not trying to be disruptive or annoying but they just cant help it #so she paired me w him bc i was the one kid she could trust to just be nice to him and do the stuff myself if he was uncooperative #stupid shit #wow this is a lot of tags lol

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