Normal people aren’t normal either

Set in the near future (30 years or so), Elizabeth Moon‘s novel The Speed of Dark is the story of Lou Arrendale, an autistic man presented with the possibility of being cured, his contemplation of what his decision – either way – would mean, and the consequences of his eventual decision. As you might imagine, Lou gave quite a bit of consideration to what it means to be normal. (Even in the future, it seems, there is a desire to make people “normal”.)

I do not think everyone else is alike in every way. She [Dr. Fornum] has told me that Everyone knows this and Everyone does that, but I am not blind, just autistic, and I know that they know and do different things. The cars in the parking lot are different colors and sizes. Thirty-seven percent of them, this morning, are blue. Nine percent are oversize: trucks or vans. There are eighteen motorcycles in three racks, which would be six apiece, except that ten of them are in the back rack, near Maintenance. Different channels carry different programs; that would not happen if everyone were alike.

And some of his thoughts based on a specific situation:

Sometimes I wonder how normal normal people are, and I wonder the most in the grocery store. In our Daily Life Skills classes, we were taught to make a list and go directly from one aisle to another, checking off items on the list. Our teacher advised us to research prices ahead of time, in the newspaper, rather than compare prices while standing in the aisle. I thought- he told us – that he was teaching us how normal people shop.

But the man who is blocking the aisle in front of me has not had that lecture. He seems normal, but he is looking at every single jar of spaghetti sauce, comparing prices, reading labels. Beyond him, a short gray-haired woman with thick glasses is trying to peer past him at the same shelves; I think she wants one of the sauces on my side, but he is in the way and she is not willing to bother him. Neither am I.

As parents we often spend a lot of time trying to help our kids to fit in, to be normal (even as we ask them, “If everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you jump too?”). Of course, this is often because our kids want to fit in. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But if you find yourself trying to get your kid – autistic or not – to fit in, to be more normal even if they don’t want to be, take a moment to ask yourself why you are doing it. And think about what it is that you are trying to get them to do. Is it something that you think Everybody is doing, when in fact Nobody really is?