Friday we went to Heather's house and stayed the night ahead of the CMU game on Saturday. I would be writing about the game, but is was cold and we lost. The company was good and that is the beginning and end of what needs to be said about that. Heather just got the house and is living with her very autistic brother Bob. I haven't seen Bob in a long time, 15 years. It is good to see the small progress he has made in that time. For instance, he seemed pleased to have company and to the extent it was possible for him to do so, he interacted with us and kept up with the conversation.
It was hard for me to watch t.v. with Bob keeping my normal running commentary on mute. Bob keeps the volume down very low since like many autistic people, he has super human hearing. It was a stretch for me to just sit and watch. Many autistic people cannot process large amounts of information coming at them. It is like noise or constant distraction. As such, it is important with Bob to measure your tones, make eye contact as long as it feels comfortable and keep it short.
I don't know enough about the disease of autism to say for sure, but I would bet the lack of ability to process the world and it everyday inputs comes not from an incapability of processing power, but rather a lack of power to filter and dismiss unimportant things. Think of walking through a shopping mall at Christmas, or through Times Square. The amount of stimuli available are just too much to handle. We filter or dismiss much of this and can usually focus on the important item to us. Bob can't.
What Bob has as a result is a steel trap memory and a concentration level that inspires awe within me. I bet Bob could remember every single word I ever said to him.
We are a lot alike, too. We both love cars and planes. We will wile away as many hours as possible watching televised auto auctions and be pleased as punch to do it. Bob likes jokes. He can't tell them, but he loves to laugh at them. In fact laughing is the one thing Bob does like a normally functioning person. He laughs easily and honestly. It is an astoundingly good feeling to hear Bob laugh at a joke because you know he is there, he's in tune, he's happy. It is heartbreaking to know he probably has something funny to say right back, but cannot. Will not. Never will be able to.
Heather says if you give Bob a couple of beers, you will be rewarded with a couple of sentences. Whole complete sentences that must sound like heaven. Of course, with his medication, drinking a couple beers is mostly out of the question and ask anyone who turns to alcohol as regular therapy whether that's a good idea or not.
Mostly you get shrugs of shoulders and single word utterances like "yeah" or "no" which sound so much the same coming out at such small volume. You really have to listen because you dread asking him to repeat. The amount of energy it takes to say "yeah" or "no" to a stranger is incalculable.
Bob does the laundry and puts the dishes away. He and Heather eat dinner together most nights. She works so hard to draw him out. I am sure he displays more personality when in the comfort of her company than he does among outsiders but I am sure it is a lot of work for Heather to conduct the strained conversation each night. He does show genuine concern and compassion for all his siblings out of character with his generally flat affect.
They say Autism is a broad spectrum disease with numerous manifestations and faces. As time goes on, it seems that the spectrum will have to be broken up, defined and the patients in each part dealt with appropriately to their needs. One thing is for sure, with 1 in 150 births resulting in autism and a general population rate higher by 10 times the rate of diagnosis in the 1980's something needs to be done.
Austism has been likened to a complicated puzzle. One where you have all the pieces, but can't make them fit together. I think of autism as a cage where you have the key but the lock moves all the time. Something that hits home today misses the mark completely tomorrow. It is a demon, playing keep-away with the minds of otherwise able people.
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