Susan Senator

My husband Ned Batchelder has written a blog post on the use of the word retarded when people really mean “functioning in a a disappointed manner,” or “frustrating,” or “ridiculous,” inspired by a very thoughtful letter in the Sunday Boston Globe Magazine, which turned out to be written by a friend of ours. Her son plays basketball with Nat on most Saturdays in the winter.

She was also in my first support group with me, and she gave me one of my first insights into autism. She told a story about how she and her then four-year-old son were walking down a crowded corridor in a school, where the walls were covered with art and other items. He stopped and suddenly said, “Green.”

“Green?” she asked. Green? She looked and looked, running her eyes over the myriad hangings on the walls. Colors, words, everywhere.
Suddenly she saw it, amidst the massive confusion. A tiny green dot on the wall. Green.

To me this story explained how someone with autism might focus on something very different than what I might focus on. That there is something zenlike and calming about the idea of picking out one small dot on the crowded, colorful wall, and seeing only that; it is similar to when you are dancing and you have to “spot,” in order to spin properly. You have to focus on one thing and keep your eyes coming back to that one thing as soon as your head has turned, so as not to become dizzy.

Hers was among the first stories I ever heard about autism that was positive, without being over-the-top wild like some of the savant stories we have all heard, “stupid autism tricks,” as my friend Kim would say. No one here has anything against savants, needless to say; it is the media’s use of savantism to sensationalize autism and make it seem like just one thing, a really neat circus trick.

If this were an SAT question, it would go something like this: Autism is not to circus trick as retarded is not to ridiculous.

Take it from me, one who knows how to be ridiculous.

Now here is something else for you to read and think about, this amazing speech written by a high school senior (thanks to our friend Bob Congdon).