Autism

These kids are blessed with terrific good looks--tall and straight, with big dark eyes, glossy hair and a movie staffs smile-but this wasn't what was turning heads. Some of these kids were not actually walking towards the line at McDonalds; some were running and somehow skipping at the same time. And the kids were looking and smiling directly at everyone they passed with their fingers in their ears, their elbows flared out on either side. And, further baffling the bourgeoisie, they occasionally stopped and flapped their hands. I was all too aware of the faces of the people we passed. Some smiled, even laughed appreciatively, at their obvious joy at McDonalds. Some nodded to me sadly and knowingly: "Ah, I know how hard their lives are," they seemed to say. Some flinched in exaggerated horror as though from some ghastly space alien from Warner Brothers. Others were cool, spotted them far off and pretended not to see them when they passed. Still others were so used to such surpassing weirdness that our little show came nowhere near their threshold of surprise.

One reaction, however, was more puzzling to me than all the others. I have come to think of it as "The Look." The passerby's face becomes still and thoughtful. The eyes become narrow, like those of the cunning psychiatrist in an old movie when he asks a patient what the inkblots look like. A hand goes up to the lips and, shifting into field anthropologist mode, the eyewitness stops and stares and nods silently as though making a mental note to write this one down in the journal. It's a locked-on-target look. A piano falling onto the pavement nearby wouldn't jar the stunning logical processes at work. Having been upset by "The Look" about a thousand times, and being something of an amateur field anthropologist myself, I have often asked this question: "Why do these people act this way?" The best answers that I have been able to come up with are these:

(a) They are heartless and rude and should be tortured in some hideous way for upsetting a really nice teacher.

(b) They are ignorant and think that humans come in solidly "normal" and "abnormal" forms and have no doubt about what kind they themselves are.

(c) They saw the movie "Rain Man" and are now experts on autism.

(d) They are fearful and are trying to achieve