Extraordinary

My mom has been into pronunciation Shorts lately. I was studying Korean and she suddenly said, ”I have a challenge for you.”

The challenge was to guess the country of the flag on the screen and pronounce it properly. I got them all. Panama. Qatar. Hungary. Cameroon.

Then she found another one but for guessing the capital with the flag. Ottawa. Nairobi. Stockholm.

When the creator said Stockholm exactly like I did my mom just said, “Oh my god, you’re—you’re amazing.”

Even though I’ve told her about my autistic traits, she still maintains that there’s no way I’m autistic. My guess is that it is hard for a neurotypical person to understand the traits that are considered autistic, and that changing the weaknesses is not as easy as “learning to be social,” or just “stop moving my hands, head, and whole body.”

I’ve been listening to the melody ”Overture” from the show Extraordinary Attorney Woo. With it as background, the show begins by showing many yellow rubber ducks and a blue duck between them. I’ve always felt like that blue duck. The feeling was shared between not feeling comfortable in my gender and not fitting in socially.

It was always clear to me that I was not a normal child, and everyone said that to me. I didn’t play how everyone did; I didn’t at all. I was not interested in things they liked. I have always loved learning. Always wanting to learn how to do things.

The other day we were walking the dog and my mom said that she doesn’t think I’m autistic because I have had friends. And I thought about it and here’s my reasoning:

Yes, I’ve had some friends in the past because others have noticed me struggling to talk, and have been kind enough to approach me and eventually embrace me. Without them, past years would have been like this senior year, lonely. Because I wouldn’t speak to anyone if I didn’t need to. But I was able to see that they were nice people that wanted to help. This last year, there was no way for anyone to know that I was new to the school. I was never introduced to anyone. I didn’t introduce myself to anyone. No one introduced themselves to me. No one even knew I was a senior in any of my classes; I only share one class out of twelve with seniors. I didn’t need to talk to anyone, so I just didn’t. I made my way around the school, mapped out where my classrooms were, and scored the highest grades ever; not that they were ever bad. During recesses, I learned things on my phone. Read through articles, news, played GeoGuessr, answered flag trivia, learned languages, so many things.

That is my superpower, the eagerness to learn. That enables me to know and do a wide variety of things. From learning about nuclear energy and disasters, to the North Korean regime, flags, capitals, places on the map, Japanese, Korean, anti-trans legislation, how to fix electronics, how to read a music sheet, play piano, sewing, Java, HTML, Adobe, Product Design.

It is all truly beautiful to me. Being able to do lots of things is very rewarding. It makes me very happy and proud when I learn something and I actually help others with it.

Like, I’ve brought the electricity back up from a burnt fuse, jump-started a car, fixed clothes, fixed dead computers, put furniture together when no one else in the room would know how to do it or would give up.

However, it comes with a detriment, I can do so many things somewhat averagely, but not a single one extremely well. In other words, I see how people succeed in something specific when in my case, I don’t have anything to show for my abilities. It’s weird, but I wouldn’t give it up. And I’ve taken the first step to change it. I’ve chosen my career, Product Design. It embodies many of the abilities I mentioned above. It will allow me to make a positive change in people’s lives. And hopefully land my dream job, work at Apple.

So, yes. Being autistic is extraordinary. Knowing so many things has helped me, and I’m sure it will help me a lot. It, however, comes with difficulties that I must at least ameliorate. Even though it’s hard for me to talk to people, I need to do it.

The first part of the song from the show reminds me of how sad it can be to be different and not fit in. The middle part reminds me of the discovery of your strengths. The ending is to me the amazing it all really is. Our world is different, full of amazement and discovery, and hopefully one day, someone will want to take a peek and be part of it with me.