The other day I was standing in line at the checkout of a shop locally, watching and listening to the chappie who was serving. It was quite obvious to me he had Asperger's, and I was wondering if he was one of the Aspergians who don't have a problem with anxiety, or perhaps he was on anti-anxiety medication.
One of my sons turned to me and whispered "Aspie!" He'd noticed too.
We were served by the quirky, but very polite Aspie who talked very fast and was quite animated. People would surely be wondering WHAT was up with that guy, I'm hoping he doesn't get a hard time putting himself right in the frontline being on a checkout.
On the way home I was musing about "what if we had a secret sign that all Aspies knew - and we could let the others know that we were Aspies too?"
It would be like all "cat lovers" or "horse lovers" or "artists", "poets", "stock-car enthusiasts" etc having a sign, so they could immediately bond with someone over something without having to waste time with chit-chat and then still missing the whole joint interest/shared super-power.
The most blatent method of showing the world who we were would be a badge/button. So we were discussing what someone with Asperger's Syndrome would have on their badge.
This lead to a conversation about symbols (which we always enjoy talking about) and the capital A in a circle which is used to represent anarchy, and I told the children what I remembered about anarchists in the 1970's (punk hey-day), and one child asked how you spell "anarchist", and there was a discussion about "taking matters into your own hands" if you don't believe in giving power to the authorities ...
... and once again I was amazed how we run down so many rabbit trails and cover so much ground, just by talking to one another and the children feeling free to ask questions.
I must also say here that what is "normal" (and, yes, I laugh when I used that word as we are not a typical family) in our house with the way siblings relate to one another - of course they bicker, disagree, boss, rebel against each other etc etc - but there is a great deal of support, protection and love, well, that is normal for us, and the children are SHOCKED when they see other siblings being mean to each other, calling names and putting each other down.
The whole putting siblings down, calling names, being mean or sarcastic to each other constantly - that is HORRIBLE, and I know it's part of the culture because it's just about on EVERY TV SHOW I've ever seen that has a family in it.
So what was the point of this blog post? Actually, I'm not sure.
I was just running down some rabbit trails.
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