*Send In The Idiots*

Absolutely spellbinding. I seriously could not put this book down. Written by a man with high functioning Autism, as he gathers stories from a few of his former classmates ... it caught my attention from the introduction. Since I am also using this as a journal I'm going to write down lines I enjoyed from the book, for future reference, by me. I really hope the author doesn't mind.
"Coherentizing Behaviours" include ... walking on toes ... grinding teeth
Autism arrives by a fairly short route, from the Greek autos, meaning "self"
Craig's echolalia focused on the phrase "Send in the idiots".
Gridlock continues between the White House and Congress...
Send in the idiots (hu-stinking-larious!)
Why leave people to guess whether I am Autistic or not? It's hardly a game."
We're doing fine, we could do worse. If we tried, we could to worse.
A face couldn't outright change. A spoken sentence, though could change and still be the same sentence.
A conversation is a performance.
Conversation requires insincerity.
Striking up conversations with strangers is an Autistic person's version of extreme sports.
Conversation flourishes when we entertain each other.
Conversation sometimes requires us to ask questions, the answer to which we are not interest in ourselves, but which we feel the other person might enjoy or appreciate the opportunity to provide.
What did that feel like, to have created a life that was to fundamentally different form their own?
The challenge for Autistic individuals is that they are overwhelmed even by their own minds.
AS managing our own minds was such a challenge, it was unsurprising that we weren't curious about one another. We had enough going on.
They prefer to play on their own because they don't understand that it may be possible to play with another child.
This was as good as it got. Their son was loved.
"mind-blindness"
Autistic children simply don't understand that there are minds other than their own, which might have thoughts different from their own. this is why they display so little interest in others.

Over all the impression I got from this author is that he hopes that parents of Autistic children don't hope too high, too low, blame too much, look too little. Not every autistic child is going to become some sort of brain, or social outcast, or wildly fabulous at something. They are all going to be individuals, just as any other child would be. Possibly with more limitations.
He believes that Autism isn't to be blamed on anything more than genetics. It's easier for parents to look outward, it must be the immunizations, the increase in this that or the other. But to look inward and simply accept that they may have a little of it in them and passed it on in an amplified manner ... unacceptable.
When you read it coming from someone with Autism, somehow it's easier to feel ... not "okay" but more at peace with the fact that my son has individual problems, with deal with scenarios differently ... but he's still mine.