Practice

The little boy down the street has a new bicycle.

How do I know?

Because, he painstakingly pulled it up the stoop and parked it on our front porch so we couldn’t miss it. Then, he banged on the door non-stop until I opened it.

“I have a new bike,” he beams, grinning from ear to ear. “I got it early for my birthday.”

“I’m going to the Smithsonian,” Sam blurts a little too quickly, no grin really.

Jill, hands on hips, shakes her head, grabs her bicycle helmet, and heads out the door after our neighbor. “It’s a really cool bike,” she offers. But it’s too late, the moment’s gone and he’s just not that excited anymore.

Left alone standing in the foyer, Sam turns to me and asks, “What’d I do?”

I get a lot of “What’d I do?”s at my house. And honestly, Sam didn’t do anything “wrong.” He may have come across like a braggart, a little insensitive; but he didn’t mean to be mean. I know it. Jill knows it. The little boy down the street probably knows it. The only one left in the dark is Sam.

One of the best explanations I’ve ever heard for Asperger’s was a few years ago on NPR. The mother of an aspie called it “the absence of social genes.” Basically, aspies don’t have the natural God-given talent to socially interact.

It’s like with music. A musical virtuoso has that special skill, that ability to sit down at the piano and play it effortlessly, beautifully.

I’m no musical virtuouso. I can practice for years, play for lifetimes, take lessons every afternoon; but odds are the one with the God-given talent, that special ear for music, will still outshine me if we’re ever even allowed to play on the same stage. I can learn to play and play well with time and effort; but my tone-deaf self will never have that extra umph to make me a Mozart.

Sam works everyday to learn how to interact with others. He asks questions – “What’d I do?” – because he really wants to know the answer. He wants to know what he could have done differently in that situation. He wants to know how to fit in.

I explain. “The little boy down the street is excited about his new bike; and he wants us to be excited about it, too.”

“But why would I be excited that he got a new bike? It doesn’t matter to me.”

Good point actually. Still. “When good things happen to people around us, we should try to be happy for them.”

Sam thinks about it. “Okay.”

“So, why did you tell him you were going to the Smithsonian?”

Sam smiles. “He told me something neat that happened to him. I told him something neat that was going to happen to me.”

It actually makes sense. Maybe even more sense than the way us neurotypicals respond.

Sam grabs his bicycle helmet, hops on his bike and makes his way over to where the kids are riding.

“It’s a really cool bike,” Sam says, mimicking Jill word for word from earlier.

“You really think so?”

“Yes, It's a good thing. I’m very happy for you.”

Well, at least we’re getting there.