Aspergian Pride

When his teacher, Madonna Kenser, had a severe asthma attack during class and collapsed, nine-year-old Brendon Garman knew what to do. He immediately found her inhaler and gave it to her. If he had not done so, Ms. Kenser’s doctor told her, there was a chance she would have died.

Brendon said that he knew what to do from watching a movie. Holly Brantley, a journalist who reported on this story, wrote that “Kenser and Brendon’s mother hope others will see autistic kids, like Brendon, are full of potential and capable of incredible things like saving a life.”

Indeed, many of us share that hope!

Bev Harp, who blogs at Asperger Square 8, got involved in online autistic civil rights advocacy in March, and she already has had a great deal of impact in changing the way people think about neurological differences.

Some of Bev’s posts are written in a dialogue style, as if she were having a conversation with an acquaintance and explaining why she speaks and behaves in certain ways. Her matter-of-fact explanations, written in basic terms to which most people can relate, go a long way toward demystifying autistic traits.

In addition, she is an outstanding graphic artist, has a great sense of humor, and often illustrates her posts with wickedly funny cartoons that show the absurdity of today’s prejudices against the autistic minority population. One of her cartoons was featured in an article in Slate Magazine not long ago.

Bev did not know anything about autism until she was an adult, and she writes frankly about her past self-image as a misfit and her struggles with depression and alcoholism. She chose to identify herself as an Aspie, she says, because she wants to see “a time when I don’t need to ‘take pride’ in who I am, because there is no stigma attached to begin with.”

Discovering her Aspergian identity motivated Bev to go back to school and enroll in a social work program, which she will complete in December. She plans to go on to graduate school and to study the needs of the autistic population, promoting fair and objective thinking from an autistic viewpoint. Best wishes for your new career, Bev!

Sixteen-year-old Aaron Barden, a senior at Harrisburg High School in Oregon, has ambitions of law school and perhaps a political career. He is off to a good start after being elected student body president, serving as a youth representative on the Harrisburg Planning Commission, and becoming editor of his school newspaper. He plays three sports while also taking a rigorous schedule of honors classes.

Although Aaron did not talk until he was 4 years old, he began speaking in complete sentences and advanced so rapidly that he enrolled in kindergarten a year early, after scoring in the 90th percentile for first-graders on a language skills test. He received an Asperger diagnosis at age 10.

Aaron’s mother, who is a member of the Harrisburg City Council, has encouraged her son’s interest in politics. Aaron also gives his school credit for being aware of autistic students’ potential for success and encouraging him to pursue his interests.