We live in profoundly weird times, in case you haven’t yet looked out the window this morning.
And I don’t say this (only) because this post is coming to you as we careen through America’s big beautiful highways in excess of seventy miles per hour, with my laptop on my lap and my fingers making with the words as I look out at the unusually green Western US landscape.
I won’t be home for at least a week (what are we doing? We don’t know. We might be looking for a home, except for a reluctance to leave younger kid and DIL behind. But we miss Colorado terribly, and the Colorado we miss is no longer there, and sometimes we go poking around. Consider that — despite knowing the story behind it, yes — this is our song.) This has certain problems.
Mostly because when I’m traveling wars break out. Which is weird, but not as weird as the fact that this is inherited. My mom had the same problem.
I’m sorry. No. You can’t lock me in my house.
Anyway…. so, you know. Things will be interesting for AT LEAST a week.
Next as an exhibit of how weird this time is: When did “thank you for your attention to this matter” turn into another term for “FAFO?”
I was joking that this was like datarepublican’s ‘Hi, I’m datarepublican” when you’re talking sh*t on twitter (Everybody gangsta until they get the Hi, I’m Datarepublican) and it occurred to me…..
The problem — if it is a problem, not a bonus — is that this digital world of ours, this strange new world that is still being aborn and as all births seems to come with a lot of sh*t and blood, seems to be the ideal stomping grounds for our people.
Our people? Well, yes. People have taken to referring to it as autists and the way we operate as “the tisms.” I do it myself on occasion because I find it funny. Attending a graduation almost two weeks ago, in a field prejudiced FOR our people, I told the new graduate “it was a tisms parade, and you masked best of all.”
But it’s not. Or at least I don’t think it is, unless you widen it to the ridiculous point. I know most of our people — geeks, obsessives, ADD-compulsives — have bits that get called “on the spectrum.”
As my being an introvert was totally unknown to me until someone told me the real difference was that being out in public exhausted you, I never thought of myself as being “on the spectrum” or ADD. The ADD thing took effort, okay, because I’m so ADD that if I have to wait at a register more than five minutes, and I’m alone, I’ll forget I have a cart and wander off. (If I’m with Dan it just drives him nuts.)
Anyway, I realized maybe I wasn’t quite standard after dealing with quirks from my sons. Things like sensitivity to loud sounds/certain lights which affect younger son suddenly made me wonder if that’s why I spent all of fourth grade UNDER the desk, writing on the seat.
Other things, like the fact I can’t stand gravy or sauce. Any sauce. Mustard in small amounts is tolerated, but even salad dressing has to be on the side and the salad gets dipped in it, or I can’t stand it.
And yes, I eat anything not surrounded by bread (I’m okay with sandwiches) with fork and knife, because touching cooked meat is an unbearable sensation.
Anyway, I have issues calling it “autism” because the “on the spectrum” is so broad that the fringes don’t much resemble the other end.
There will eventually be another name for us: the people who understand text better than interactions, who are as likely to write long letters to people they share a house with as to talk to them; the people who learn how other people function like a rigorous discipline; and who manage, despite all the best efforts of our teachers and parents, and no matter how successful we are to do things in a way that normal people tilt their heads at and wonder where and how we got so weird.
Because of that, I call us Odds. We are ODD. We stick out Oddly. We come up with solutions that would never occur to anyone else.
We are Odd other ways, too. We acquire strange, often temporary obsessions and fall down rabbit holes no “normal” person would think of. Some of us are foremost experts in tiddlywinks. Others know every possible detail of imaginary spaceships in an imaginary world, better than the man who wrote them. And others turn these obsessions into professions.
But even those of us who pass — and like with being an extreme introvert, I “mask” passably well — do things sometimes that are so strange they either get us killed or become memes.
…. like finishing presidential announcements with “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
For various reasons, including technology, we’re in an age that is perfect for us. Let’s face it, most of the time in the past our kind didn’t even marry. Or if they did, they married perfectly normal people who, to be fair, probably knocked some of their sharp edges off. Now — looks at best beloved who is driving and making gestures as he listens to the first half of No Man’s Land read by AI. (And cackling when the AI for reasons inexplicable refers to Skip as Sheep. I checked. I never spelled it that way.) Now, we can marry our own kind. (This is either good or bad, people, we might speciate.)
And now, thanks to the net, and the ability to interact directly online our strange quirks can become memes instead of reviled.
Datarepublican, of course, has other issues which she overcomes with magnificent grace, and I’m so glad no one tried to eugenically cull her before birth or institutionalize her after, because she is needed and she was born for this time. She is magnificent and I’m in awe of her.
I’m only a little Odd. An Oddling. But an egg. But how can I cower when the president can close his presidential statements like a business letter? And when Datarepublican can collar liars with “Hi, this is datarepublican?”
I shall carry my Odd flag into this brave new world, and plant it where I think it needs to go.
In the future perhaps tyrants will cower and “Have a nice day” and armies will disband at “Anyone want some chocolate?” And perhaps “pull up your socks” will be the most motivational phrase ever.
Oddlings advance. Who’s with me?
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
According To Hoyt 