Tactical Squawking

I was preparing dinner when I heard the noise. I would write it here, but you see, it was the sort of sound it's impossible to spell. Imagine several very ill hawks attempting to sing in a choir, with a dying car engine as accompaniment. As you can imagine, it was a very disturbing noise, both due to its awfulness (is that a word?) and its unexpectedness.

The noise continued in sporadic bursts from my brother's room, where he usually sits quietly at his computer (quietly being the key word here), working on digital art or battling his friends in Team Fortress 2.

I chopped up a bell pepper. QUAAARRWWK!* went the noise, echoing down the stairs.

"What's he doing now?" my mom sighed over the carrot she was grating.

"I don't know! He's so weird!"

KRAAAAEERK! The salad spinner vibrated from the force of the sound (or maybe I'm just being melodramatic). I sliced the radishes with more violence than strictly necessary, venting my exasperation on innocent root vegetables. AEERRRK!  A timer went off, drowning out the next few screeches. Then, just when I thought he'd stopped: ZZZWEEE! EEEEAWK! QUAAAAWH!

We looked at each other, my mom and I. And even though I'm not very good with the social stuff, I knew an unspoken question hung between us. I even knew what it was: What the heck is that ungodly racket?

KKREEEEEAH! I stalked into my brother's room.

"What are you doing?" He was playing a video game; I don't know which one. It was the kind where you run around and shoot people before they shoot you; an online one, with voice-chat.

ZWAAARK! "I'm distracting the other team!" he explained, screeching again. The other players stopped, forgetting to shoot. He smashed their heads with a frying pan.

"Aren't you also distracting your own team?"

"No, they know what I'm doing."

Completely forgetting to yell at him, or even tell him to shut up, I walked into the kitchen and metaphorically died laughing, though not before explaining the awful racket was actually a form of sonic warfare. My mother was not amused, but she didn't see it the way I did: while we were downstairs thinking what is that bozo doing? he was upstairs devising an innovative new strategy.

So the moral of this story is: The mentally different do a lot of things which make absolutely no sense to neurotypicals. When someone does something weird or annoying, before you yell at them, find out their reasoning. Also, don't use voice-chat or my brother might screech in your ear.

Epilogue: It has now been a week since the invention of Tactical Squawking. It is no longer funny. In fact, it's becoming annoying. But considering that's its purpose, I'm not going to complain (though if it keeps up, I might have to change my mind).

*Would you look at that, I managed to spell it after all.

On Personal Shoppers, Disruptive Patterning, and Bad Music at the Mall

I do not like shopping. Well, that's not entirely true. I like grocery shopping, and going to the Apple store. I do not like shopping for clothes. The mall is a terrible place, mostly because all the stores seem locked in competition for the Worst and Loudest Music Award. Almost everything is hideous, and of the stuff that isn't, almost nothing fits. (I am shaped somewhat like a short, tailless Mewtwo.) My brother likes shopping even less, to the point where we have to bribe him with food to get him to cooperate. So on our latest shopping expedition (December 27th, after the crowds are gone) I became his unofficial personal shopper. My mother shops for me sometimes, but she doesn't understand my brother, who won't care if his clothes are microfiber as long as they're soft, and hates anything plaid because it's confusing to look at.* (Mother thinks plaid is cute. I disagree.) So in the interest of avoiding second and third shopping excursions, I made it my job to feel everything for softness, discourage the purchase of ugly plaid things and choose colors (red, orange, gray and navy are good.)

I am not perfect. We're going shopping again today, to return half our purchases for being "too scratchy". But interestingly enough, the things Mother picked out are going back; the shirts with scratchy seams, the shorts with a scratchy waistband she thought would be better than the thick, soft one. I really should have pointed those out and avoided a second shopping trip. Maybe I could be a personal shopper…but only for my brother, and to avoid prolonging our shopping expeditions, because I decided long ago not to work in any industry that involves long discussions with customers.

There's a business idea in here somewhere. Specially trained personal shoppers to buy clothes for the autistic and otherwise mall-averse? Good idea, but it sounds a bit expensive. A store specializing entirely in soft and fluffy things? That might already exist. A quiet mall with soundproofing instead of speakers? Now there's a good idea. If anyone reading this is a mall manager, consider that free business advice.

*Plaid, checks, some stripes and other black-and-white patterns can range from confusing to painful to look at. I consider them disruptive patterns, like the stripes of a zebra which confuse lions trying to pick one zebra out of a herd.

Look behind you!

Look behind you!
Did you look? Probably not. But I did. I'm always looking behind, around, up, down; everywhere! You never know what could be sneaking up behind you. Probably nothing. But maybe…something.
I'm not paranoid, and I've never been attacked from behind. But it could happen. Of course, a piano could fall from an airplane and smash you as you walk down the street. I know it's very unlikely that a malevolent being could be sneaking up behind me…but I just checked anyway. You never know.

The world is a dangerous place; one where people can pop out and greet you unexpectedly, cars honk in your face for no apparent reason, and everything merits watching. It's unpredictable. Anything could happen. Unknown danger lurks in corners, in other people, and, yes, behind. This is the same world you neurotypicals live in, but seen from the perspective of one who is mentally different. Would I trade my perspective for yours? Maybe.

And yet, this dangerous world is usually tolerable, and, sometimes, wonderful. Places I am very familiar with are much safer (our house, the Co-op grocery store, the park where the homeschoolers' park day is)… Other places we visit less frequently are considered more hazardous, and completely unknown, new places are outright dangerous. Except for one exception: Outdoor places are always relatively safe. Yes, I know, there are wild animals and rattlesnakes, but there's something everywhere.  And even in safe places, I'm still watching. Caution is important, and being aware of my surroundings helps me notice things other people don't. My mother never notices signs that say 'Don't touch!', or 'This is not an exit' or 'Restrooms that way', but I do. Maybe I wouldn't trade after all.

Correcting Grammatical Errors (and other weird things I do)

Before I begin my post, I would like to apologize for not posting in a while: Sorry! We've been unimaginably busy with schoolwork, a camping trip, and various other departures from our normal routine. It's been Chaos Week for the last month, and I'm prefectly aware of the incongruity in that sentence.

I like saying absurd things –"They're identical except for the differences"– and writing odd things. I also tend to mispronounce words; usually by accident, but sometimes on purpose. For example, I am determined to say queue as "kweh-weh", because that's how it's spelled. If the dictionary writers wanted it pronounced "cue", they shouldn't have put in all those extra letters! And the word wrong – it's spelled wrong. I used to pronounce it wrong (incorrectly enunciating the 'w') – until I became distracted with other, more egregious violations of common sense in spelling. Like cello, which, when written, has always reminded me of an abbreviation for cellophane.

And refrigerator, which does not have a 'd' in it. For some reason, fridge does. Who thought that one up? You don't pronounce a 'd' in either word. All it does is contribute to poor spelling! Poor spelling is the bane of my existence! (Isn't that a dramatic sentence?)

And on the topic of poor spelling, that's another 'thing' I do – correct everything. If I'm walking through Trader Joe's and I see a misspelled sign, I stop, stare at it dramatically, and run off to notify the closest employee, usually an innocent guy stocking the shelves. I know he probably didn't do it, but he might know who did. And if it's especially catastrophic – say, a banner posted right above the door with an unneeded apostrophe, I might walk straight up to the manager and announce: "Did you know your sign is wrong?"

I have done this several times at a nearby Gelsons' supermarket, where a large, expensive and permanent sign about the farms their lettuce grows on has the word mountainous spelled mountaineous. Don't professional sign makers use spellcheck?

The only places exempt from these corrections are stores such as the Japanese market we often go to. Their signs probably make sense in Japanese, but when they get run through Google Translate, weird things start popping up. "Expired foods sale!" (I think that means "day-old bakery items".) "Sale: Leafy pie!" (Is that some sort of cookie? For some reason, sandwich cookies are referred to as 'pie' by Japanese stores.)

Everywhere else, though – if I've caught a misspelling or a grammatical error, they're going to know. Isn't it better to be corrected than appear stupid in front of thousands of customers?

But what does this have to do with being mentally different? (Do you like that euphemism? It's better than "special needs"…)

Well, when was the last time you saw a poorly written sign? Did you go point it out to the store's employees? Maybe you did; more likely you just went on with your day. I don't do that. The first time I see it I point it out, and if it's not fixed when we're back next week, I point it out again! "Excuse me, but that sign says "Pre-Christmas Sale" and it's January…" "Quintessence is spelled with an 'i' and you have it with an 'e'!" "Excuse me Mr. Store Manager Guy, but did you know your employees are abusing innocent apostrophes?"

If I was that store manager, I would want to know!