Trump Supporters Almost Assaulted My 12-year-Old Autistic Son Because He Was Wearing a Mask

[Celerity]

This is Trump's America.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/trump-supporters-almost-assaulted



My wife regularly gets annoyed with me because I do two things that get on her nerves on a fairly consistent basis: 1. I know what she’s thinking way more often than she’s comfortable with, and 2. Things I tell her are going to happen do, more frequently than not. You would think the first thing would be awesome. After all, a common complaint among women is that their significant other doesn’t understand them. But after 23 years together, I’m way better at reading her than she is at reading me and it vexes her to no end. Also, when I’m really on the ball, she feels like I’m reading her mind and the feeling of exposure is aggravating. The second is a little more complicated. Once I started paying very close attention to politics, it became very easy to predict certain things that would affect us. Recurring government shutdowns? Yeah, we knew that was coming and we prepared for them as best we could, learning with each shutdown. Remember, Debbie is the primary breadwinner and a government worker. We never know if a particular shutdown is going to affect her but we always prepare like it will. Even so, the long one at the beginning of 2019 was difficult.

I can’t even imagine what people who were blindsided went through. Another example of my not-so-amazing divination skills was back in 2016. I told Debbie that antisemitism was going to, you’ll forgive the expression, spread like a plague when Trump was elected. Within a year, Nazis marched in Charlottesville, a woman was murdered, and a notorious neo-Nazi had moved into our small city to be closer to the centers of power in Washington DC. I also told her that Covid-19 was going to be the kind of disease you see in the movies and that we needed to stock up before people panicked and stripped the stores bare. Each time, I was met with skepticism and then mounting irritation as my prediction came to pass. You would think she would be more trusting by now but I think she simply doesn’t want to acknowledge how fucking awful people can be. Which is why she didn’t really believe me when I told her a few weeks ago that Trump humpers were going to start harassing people for wearing masks.

“I Hate When You Are Right”

Most days, Debbie takes the kids down to the creek behind our apartment for 20 minutes or so. It gets them outside for fresh air and gives me a few minutes of much-needed solitude. While I’m adjusting well to being a full-time stay-at-home parent again, I’m struggling a bit with being around people 24/7. After several years of spending most of the day alone, this has been an abrupt change and a few minutes of peace and quiet are very welcome. On this particular day, though, I was out food shopping with Claudia while Debbie took Jordan, Anastasia, and Dominic (the kid across the hall whom we’ve been watching while his parents work) down for some exercise. I was on my way home when I received a text from Debbie: “I hate when you are right.” I get those texts from time to time and I knew she would explain it to me when I got back. These conversations are usually funny as I fake try not to be fake smug. But this was not one of those conversations. Turns out that when she and the kids were down on the trail next to the creek, two teens and an adult were coming down the path at the same time.

The two teens decided to take offense at Jordan wearing a mask and walked right up to him, demanding to know why he had one on. Now, autism comes in a lot of different flavors. For some, it’s super obvious at a glance that they’re on the spectrum. But for most, you have to spend some time with them to notice that they’re not neurotypical. Even moderately impacted kids like Jordan don’t immediately present as autistic, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for. One of the ways Jordan’s autism manifests itself is that he does not respond to people unless they call him by name. And by “respond,” I mean he does not acknowledge your existence. Not in a mean, dismissive way (that would require Jordan to have a single mean bone in his body, which he does not), but in an almost literal sense. If he does not know you, you’re more or less invisible to him unless you say his name. That’s when he “sees” you and you enter into his world. So these two little shits were in his face trying to bully him and Jordan didn’t acknowledge them in any way whatsoever. One of them was insulted by this and said, “Do you speak English?!” Jordan continued to not respond and the two teens realized that Jordan was not exactly ignoring them so much as not responding at all. Presumably, it occurred to them that it wouldn’t be any fun if they couldn’t provoke a reaction and they left.

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