Some day, my son & the boy who mocked him will be adults. What then?

As any regular readers here likely know, TH falls into the "high-functioning" category of autistic people. He can talk...a lot. He interacts with other children, likes to play games like hide-and-seek and "ghost tag," and manages to get by pretty well as long as we're with familiar people and in familiar places. But I keep learning that stepping outside of that comfort zone can lead to painful situations and, indeed, to a renewed understanding of how much reality we may have yet to face and accept about our son. Because of his capacities, we have not had to devote the worry and anxiety that many autism parents must to "what will happen when..." regarding our son's teen years and adulthood. Thanks to an experience outside the comfort zone, however, I'm suddenly devoting a great deal of consideration to it.

TH recently was enjoying himself immensely in a game room along with a few of his cousins, playing ping-pong. He was excited, so doing his usual excited moves, along with the loud voice and grimacing that mark "Excited TH." Also present was a group of about four boys, all tweeny in age. Something about TH--and I wasn't there, so I can't even say what exactly that something might have been--tipped off at least the oldest boy to the idea that here was a soft target to mock. So, he mocked my son. My brother-in-law was there, too, but the boy at the time did not understand that the two were connected in any way.

This boy did his mockery not to my son's face but behind his back. He began to clap in a way that's difficult to describe in words, but that was meant to get across the clapping of someone with intellectual disabilities. Unfortunately for the boy, TH's uncle was there, and this uncle--my brother-in-law--stepped in and handled this little dipshit in exactly the right way. Fortunately for said tween dipshit, I was not there to step in because had I been, I'm afraid there would have been more than stepping involved.

In fact, I'm still so angry about it that I'm having trouble sorting out my feelings. I stand by my son. I think he's great, but I know that he still has autism. Why does it surprise me that some little bastard of a tween would detect my son's differences and decide to mock them in that way? Had I decided, in the comfort of family and friends and familiar places, that we'd somehow all gotten past such possibilities, such teasing and mocking and purposely leading on the gullible autistic kid?

The boy in question, the tween, was not a nice child. He perpetrated some other offenses later, and at one point locked eyes with the Viking for no apparent reason and, in the Viking's words, tried to stare him down "like a felon." I know that not every child is like this, but there are more of this little twit out there, and those little twits grow up to be big twits, otherwise known as assholes.

Sure, we can live out the day-to-day existence with acceptance all around us from people who know our son. But someday, that little tweeny future felon's going to be a teen, a young adult. He's not the only one in the world, and he locked onto my son and his differences with the sensitivity of a submarine radar. My brother-in-law was there to stop it. But deluded as I've been about how my son comes across to strangers, I can be deluded no more. What happens when children like mine, the ones who often can "pass," who are not candidates for specialized living facilities, encounter the assholes of the world outside the protection of those who love them?

Why I work so hard on my son's perspective taking

[Background: A woman and a skeptic attended and participated in a conference in Dublin. When returning to her room, she found herself in an elevator with a man--at 4 in the morning--who asked her if she wanted to come to his room for coffee. She commented on the incident in a video, which then set off a blogospheric and twitterific storm of howling protests and counterprotests and various interpolations describing how Muslim women have it so much worse (via Richard Dawkins, no less), among other things.] This is cross-posted from my Biology Files blog.

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Oh, the brouhaha over a simple observation that being addressed by a total stranger in an elevator at 4 a.m. with an invitation to his room for coffee is creepy. Apparently, many, many men do this or want to do this or identify with doing this and just can't understand why invading someone's personal space verbally in an elevator at an ungodly time of night (or morning) with an invitation to *your room* might be construed as creepy. It seems beyond some folks to do a little perspective taking, as we call it in the autism community, to put themselves in the other person's shoes, and try to understand why "creeped out" might be a reasonable response. I assume, then, that were I to fail to do the same and simply pepper sprayed the next possibly well-intended person who accosts me in an elevator or anywhere else, that would be OK as I'm only being myself and disregarding how the other person felt.

As fascinating as all of this has been to watch unfold--especially when Richard Dawkins stepped in it with a shoe that presumably never belongs to another person--one thing keeps pestering the corners of my mind: Who was that guy?

I'm wondering about it because of a comment I read on one of the many blog posts covering the encounter. In spite of the swaths of the male population that seem to identify with this fellow in some way, I can think of only two examples of males I know who might offend in that way under those circumstances. I know a lot of men, but these two stand out for one reason: their autism.

The comment that I read stated that being socially awkward is not a permanent disability. Indeed, for many people, it is not. But for some, it is. It's a problem that persists through a lifetime, even as it may improve somewhat with time. It's there under all circumstances--job, school, conferences, elevators. It's the inability to grasp the nuances of a moment, to know intuitively that at 4 o' clock in the morning, one does not address a total stranger in an elevator and invite them to your room for coffee. The vast majority of men (and women) I know understand that instinctively. The vast majority would have shut up in that elevator and stayed shut up for the duration of the ride.

But not these two whom I know. I can easily envision either of them seeing this woman, who'd just presented at the conference. I can, yea verily, put myself in their shoes and imagine their excitement and enthusiasm over her talk. I can completely visualize their blowing off factors of time, space, and place and simply blurting out something along the lines of "Wow, I'd love to talk with you some more! Let's have coffee!" And you know what else? They'd stare as they did it. Probably without blinking. Much.

That's not to say that this fellow in the Dublin elevator was someone like these two people I know. I have no idea who that guy was, and it sure would be interesting if he'd speak up, speak out. What I do know is that it is just such situations that have me edgy and concerned, that keep me vigilant and always alert, that have me hammering like Thor on one of the two people I know who might behave like this in such a situation, blindly, unknowingly, out of enthusiasm and yes, a permanent disability when it comes to social interactions. I do this out of a core anxiety that he could one day be the Man in the Elevator. I do it because he is my son, and I don't want him to grow up and innocently freak women out, no matter how great that talk was.