Telling People About Yourself

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I hear ya, cold winters are way underrated!

I was thinking about courage again today. I had speech class again and I briefly considered telling about being on the spectrum, because I was giving another speech about absentmindedness. I decided against it. My speech was going on a bit long anyway and I figured that would be a bizarre thing to tag on the end of a speech.

My mom says that in telling the class about my autism, there's a lot to lose and not a lot to gain. I don't think that's true for me. It may negatively affect my social life. I'm OK with that, seeing as I'm not used to having a social life anyway. And maybe if more people know about these conditions, it will be easier for people who are pushing Autism Rights or Mad Pride. What do you do if you're a part of a minority that's very cutting-edge and not very well understood?

There are a lot fewer taboos and stigmas today than there were when my grandmother was growing up. First black people got rights. Then women said, "Hey, what about us?". Before you knew it, there were AIDS patients, disabled people, Jews, deaf people, teenagers, fat people, old people, sexual minorities, poor people, short people, religious minorities, divorced people, and single parents. Not in that order; I just wrote down everyone I thought of.

Now, in our day and age, autistic people and crazy people are coming forward. I'm both autistic and crazy. What do I do? I think I'll do the courageous thing.

"Hi class. My name is Chris, and I'm insane. Let me explain..."