My seventh grade Language Arts teacher often commented that I crafted “interesting” story leads.
Interesting, over the years, has come to signify a catch-all word that means anything from beautiful to bile-inducing to uninteresting but so friggin strange that someone must find it interesting. I am, therefore, quite weary of interesting, and Ms. Fox’s insistence that my introductory statements possessed twinges of interestingness did little more than creep me out, quite frankly. With each piece due, I’d attempt to de-interestify my leading sentences, hoping for remarks such as creative or good, but still I’d receive interesting.
In college, professors no longer coined my essays as interesting, but rather insisted that I stop reading Flannery O’Connor and Christopher Durang. This was hard to do, especially since I enjoyed their morbid senses of humor, but I managed — that is, until I realized stop reading Flannery O’Connor and Christopher Durang in fact meant keep reading Flannery O’Connor and Christopher Durang, that it was in fact a compliment, not a command.
This blog, I think, will be a combination of many things — mostly, whatever the heck I want — but I mainly wish to explore rhetoric through my autly lens, a lens I’ve always perceived as normal until told otherwise. Perhaps interesting will still be thrown around since normal isn’t applicable. But, then again, who are these normal people? Who belongs to the all-powerful majority discourse, and do they have a postal address within the continental US?
Lately, as I’ve been coming to grips with my status as an autistic PhD student, slowly outing myself to the world at large, I’ve felt more insecure. As a rule, I rarely disclose, but the few times I have disclosed have either resulted in, 0MG! I so T0T4LLY KNEW IT!!!1ONEONE!11, or Wow! You must have outgrown it/you must be super high-functioning.
[NOTE: I’ve never been one for paraphrasing.]
Autism explains me, allows me to overanalyze my strengths and weaknesses, allows me to overanalyze every rhetorical move that emanates from my socially awkward self. My autistic tendencies have their own rhetoric; they are my commonplaces; they provide context for my actions and (mis)interpretations.
I mostly, though, enjoy the logos of it all.
Image text: 159 out of 160 children have a neurotypical spectrum disorder. According to current estimates from the CDC, neurotypicality is on the rise by 6,000 percent in the U.S. alone. Neurotypicality knows no boundaries: It occurs in all racial, ethnic, and social groups and is 17 times more likely to strike girls than boys. Neurotypicality impairs a person’s ability to remain aloof. It is also associated with groupthink, persistent eye contact, enjoyment of social activities, and the inability to memorize bus routes. YOU can help. Donate to CURE NTs NOW and save our children. Neurotypicality: Learn the Signs.