Ruminations on Dissimilarity

The other day, I was out with my brother, and we ran into some people collecting donations for Misericordia: an amazing organization that provides people with developmental disabilities a continuum of care and a network of services. I talk about my brother a lot. I am unashamed about it and proud to call him my own. So obviously, Henry Jaeyoon “Jay” Ham, who is on the ASD spectrum, immediately became the topic of conversation during pleasantries and introductions. Then THAT question came up.

“So is Jay an autistic savant? What kind of exceptional qualities/skills does he portray?”

Having heard questions like this all my life, I sort of just danced around the topic… talking about things he likes to do and so on… and in the course of this spiel, I began to see her eyes glaze over in growing disinterest… but she, like all others before her, still remained attentive, politely smiling and giving the occasional nod. At the end, we said our farewells; she had my dollar, and I had my small bag of sugary goodness.

On the ride home, with my brother nibbling away at a blueberry Jelly Belly, I began to ponder this nagging feeling I have every time someone asks that question. The extent to most people’s experience with someone with ASD the past few decades have been through the media, quintessential examples being the movie Rain Man, and current TV show Touch. Dustin Hoffman and David Mazouz both play autistic characters that are significantly disabled in a social sense, but who have a sort of purity and innocence that enabled them to play a central role in each narrative.  But these roles have established a stereotype in popular culture of autistic people as these secretly-super-abled disabled people (I hope that made sense). This, like most stereotypes, does an injustice to most people in the stereotyped category… what if you can’t count cards or the number of toothpicks dropped by a busy waitress at a glance, and instead face poverty or homelessness because places don’t want to hire even skilled employees who aren’t good at navigating social hierarchies?

That was really verbose, so I'll put it in another way.  “Why do we want autistic people to have superpowers?” Here's what I think… it’s because we’ve become a culture obsessed with exceptionalism. Deep down, I don’t think any of us can handle that fact that some people are just simply different without having something fabulously acceptable (whether it's by our own or worldly standards) as balance. Otherwise we’d just have to accept not just autistic people, but ANYONE, on their own terms.  And that’s hard and challenging and takes patience, work, and prayer.