Can you in your feelings go to a little corner and think you will have to spend the rest of your life stuck there? That is what I thought my life was going to always be. And that is what changed forever when open communication with FC came along. My biggest fear until I could FC was that my life would be limited to those things that we already knew I could do, and that nothing new would ever be added to that very short list of accomplishments. My other fear was that something could come along at any time and destroy my routine on which I dearly depend, and it would  almost be impossible for me to stop it from ruining my entire life. My life was a fairly easy one, but it felt like I was not its only leader, like other people really ruled it completely. Very little of the power relationships have changed since I have been able to FC, but my self-confidence has changed a lot and that has made me much better at being an actively acting participant in meetings and informal conversations.

My education was very unusual, and at the same time was very typical. I went to school always in the company of the other non-autistic children, and was always invited to be part of the regular class.  Considering this was more than way long ago, I know that I was very lucky. But as well as being included in classes, I was being excluded from real names, dates, facts and real math and real science.  My education was kind of like auditing but not taking classes for real credit. My feeling at the time was both frustrated and grateful. Frustrated by how boring it was, and grateful that they let me be there at all. My feeling now is much more one of wishing I could start over again. With the ability to let people know that I was paying attention even when it looked like I wasn't, and that I was understanding most things and needing help with other things, and that I was smarter than anyone imagined, my education would have brought me into a very different life than the one I have now.

I wish I could go back to Ed Smith Elementary School and have my sixth grade and fifth grades over again. My interests in girls was starting then, and all I could do was make them laugh at me or make them nervous. What would have life been like if all through my school years I had been a writer of poems and love notes, and not just a funny-sounding boy standing and rocking in the back of the room? That is a almost too painful thing to think about. And yet my experience has taught me some things I think my so called normal friends don't get to find out. For example, I have learned that when somebody asks to be my friend and then seems unable to continue, all that means is that the circumstances for friendship are not right, not that either one of us has done anything stupidly. I started out blaming myself and sometimes also blaming the other person whenever a friendship fell apart. FC allowed me to talk about hard things with friends, and to share my feelings and get comforted when things got hard.  And the more that I could tell people what I wanted and the more people acted on those requests, the more it became the norm that I was considered friendly and reliable by other people.

Now I would like to think with you about what still needs to be accomplished in places where people like me live and work and play and eat and pray and exercise and shop and heal and just hang out.  Because I am very aware that there are many ways in which my life and the lives of others like me fall short of the normal for our society. My wish is for three things to take place in all of those kinds of places. First, my wish is to set a rhythm that combines my own stop and start rhythm with the easy flow of some peaceful people I know and the comforting tick tick tick of a big clock. In other words, to harmonize these things rather than following just one all the time. Work and air travel have strict schedules, and I have become very time-compulsive in response to that. My natural way is to get very stuck for seconds or minutes and then start up again when something reminds me what I was doing. But that is not too much different from what most people do. Really, the bitter truth is that my different
ways of doing things are not the problem for me or for the people like me. my sense is that a tolerance for my rhythms would make my world a much easier place to live in.

The second big wish I have is for a understanding of the difference between my normal and the worlds normal. In other words, the recognition that my normal involves repetition of certain activities that are not repeated as often by most other people but are sacred to me.  Giving that word the meaning I do is not a joke about religion, but is a way of saying how important it feels to me. My watch gazing annoys other people, but so do long Jewish prayers annoy people who don't understand that practice. Not respecting my watch gazing seems less hateful than hating my Jewish prayers, but both feel bad to me. So how do I get respect for my personal customs? I would be interested in your suggestions on that topic.

My third wish is for the ability to be as useful to my friends as they are to me. This means that I wish I could buy them things, call them up and invite them out, be a support to them when they are sad or terrified, make dinner for them, and let them know how wonderful they are. Unfortunately, if I do these things, my friends must help me get even my gratitude for them organized. Maybe that is a little thing, but it feels big to me some times.

I want to talk about how we can become powerful advocates, but this is fantasy for the time being. First, we need to have a place to think together and plan a way to combine our words and ideas. We may need help from people really who see us as powerful but inexperienced advocates. And we may have to find somebody who will help publish the things we write. Give us those things and we will be able to change the mind of the professional world about who we really are.

Some of the things we should be sharing with the rest of the world after this begins are our ideas about what we do and what we are learning to do; and our ideas about whether or not people really need the kinds of support that are sometimes given to them whether they want them or not.

 We need to be allies as well as the people who allies help. At the same time that it seems I am a disadvantaged disabled man, I am also an American citizen and so we need to make sure our government is taking care of old people and poor children and aliens and other groups who need similar supports and are similarly not looked on as normal or important. My expertise is in disability, but I have a lot to learn from, and a lot to teach to, people from some common but other very different experiences. No. how will we unite, those other marginal people and us? That is my question for you here today. I would love to hear your ideas on that subject. Thank you.