Going Off-Script: Don't let what you hear impact how you treat me.

Have you ever had a word or song stuck in your head?

It isn’t that you want to look at a new car but you can’t stop singing the Cars 4 Kids jingle. You both don’t want a new credit card and don’t intend to change banks but you can’t stop hearing, "What's in YOUR wallet?"

Chances are anyone who heard you humming or decrying the stuckness of the jingle just empathized with your frustration and continued to speak to you as usual.

This is not the case if you are autistic.

My brain and speech are stuck in a continuous loop of repeating scripts from cartoons I watched as a kid. I can’t stop my mouth. I’m scripting dumb Thomas the Tank words as I type this.

I am getting rather tired of people hearing my repeated scripts and assuming I don't really understand.

The truth is I don't care about trains but I had the bad luck of hearing these catchy shows when my brain was young and malleable.

My speech goes beyond what I think of as unreliable. To me it is reliably annoying.

Until I learned to type my thoughts, the whole world believed my capacity to think and learn was far gone. Now that I can show otherwise my life is becoming more full.

My point is that my collection of sayings and songs has probably kept people from believing I am smart.

Until someone has a way to really communicate, take their scripts in stride and speak to them like they understand everything you say.

There's an excellent chance they do.