My Aspie good deed of the day

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Today I went to the supermarket as is my usual routine on Monday and Friday. When I got to the checkout area, I walked past one line that was backed up a long way. Then I saw that the cashier in the second line was a new guy who had been nice to me one time before but acted strangely detached and distant towards me last week (he is not distant in an Aspie way though... too outgoing to be anything but NT). So I passed that line and took a look at the next two lines. Both were of about equal length with the 4th line looking like it had fewer items lined up to be checked. Then I noticed a young guy in the 3rd line standing behind a shopping cart stimming with some heavy rocking motions. Immediately I realized that he was probably somewhere on the spectrum and probably had semi-high functioning classic autism since he could still follow his dad around the store doing their shopping. His dad looked like he was in his late 40s, but already had white hair... probably from his own stress in dealing with his son's autism. I felt the urge simply to be near another person like myself so I got in line behind him never expecting to be able to talk with him at all. I thought the cashier might later mention something about him and I considered that I might tell him that I was autistic too, but the cashier did not say anything.

Anyhow, I kept my distance from this Autie so as to not make him feel any more uncomfortable than he must already feel from all the people and other distractions in the store. Then the thought occurred to me that in getting in line behind him, I was actually helping to protect him from other people by preventing some pushy aggressive shopper from coming up behind him and unloading a whole slew of items while shoving their shopping cart into his back as some of them often do. That made me feel really good to think that even without a single word I might have been able to make this Autie's day just a little bit less stressful. Tomorrow will be yet another day though and the people will once again be making life stressful for me.

That's a nice thing to do.

Last week I was going into the grocery store and followed a kid wearing hearing protection and a shirt that said "Genius". I could tell he was on the spectrum. He was with his mom and as I walked past I pointed at my bracelet that says "I have autism". She seem very surprised that a someone with gray hair was on the spectrum, but it made her smile too.