One of Us

 

I cut all the tags out of my clothing.

A lot of Autistic people and ADHD people cut the tags out of their clothing, though I wasn’t aware of that when I first started doing it at the age of ten or so.

The strains and bruises I got in my teens from nights of slamdancing didn’t bother me a bit, a three-hour stretch of hard martial arts practice in a hot humid gym is my idea of a good time, and no amount of damage has ever put me out of a fight, but the random tickling of a shirt tag against the back of my neck bothers me so much I can’t focus on anything else until I get rid of it.

Back in 2001 I was working as a reading tutor in a private tutoring center. We had a contract with the local school district, under which some of the kids in their Special Ed programs were bussed over to our center for one-on-one tutoring in basic reading skills. Most of the kids that were sent to us hadn’t learned to read because they’d been so emotionally damaged by abuse that they just couldn’t focus on anything else besides repeatedly playing out the self-perpetuating cycles of their hurt and fear and anger. Some of these kids were also members of neurological minority groups (e.g., Autistics, dyslexics, people with ADHD) with learning styles that the school system (and the world) had failed to properly accommodate. Societal prejudice against neurodiversity had of course greatly increased the amount of abuse these kids had been subjected to – they were trapped in the universal drama of the “problem child,” the vicious circle in which manifestations of minority neurological styles are treated as “behavior problems” and punished, which leads to emotional damage, which leads to actual behavior problems.

Fletcher was twelve years old when he was sent to me for tutoring. His ADHD was extreme enough that it would have been very difficult for him to learn to read in a conventional public school environment even if he’d been willing to try. But he wasn’t willing to try anymore anyway, not in school and not with me or any other teacher anywhere else. He’d been hurt too many times early on by adults who had made him feel like he was a bad kid for not being able to learn in the way that they’d decided a kid “should” learn.

I’d been through all that myself, and I told Fletcher some of my own stories, but I could see he wasn’t buying it. Adults were liars. I knew that (I still know that), and so did he. In my mind I went over everything I could possibly say to him to earn his trust, and I knew that when I was his age I wouldn’t have believed a word of it from any adult. I knew how I looked and sounded to him: I was one of them.

One morning I came to work at the tutoring center wearing a t-shirt with a flannel shirt over it. As the day wore on, it got hot, and I slid my arms out of the sleeves of the flannel shirt and left it hanging over the backrest of my chair.

And I also drank a lot of water, so about 15 minutes into Fletcher’s tutoring session that day (15 minutes of Fletcher slouching in his chair with his arms folded, scowling and complaining about having to be there, and refusing as usual to attempt any work), I found myself in dire need of a trip to the bathroom. This was a risky proposition, because all the other adults in the building had their hands full with high-maintenance students of their own at the time, and Fletcher, left unattended, was prone to such activities as setting books on fire or stacking furniture in an unsteady pile and trying to climb up it to grab hold of the ceiling fan.

But when I got back from the bathroom on this particular day, he hadn’t destroyed anything. He hadn’t even left his seat. He was staring intently at my flannel shirt on the chair beside him.

“You cut the tags off?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re one of us,” he said.

And after that he let me teach him how to read.