Hi, I'm Not Weird, I'm Autistic. Will you be my friend?

Today has been a shitty day.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. I spent 5 hours at a car dealership last night jumping through hoops to make sure that it would be a happy little day, picking up my easily impressed group in my new Versa. (Alas, it is white. Sorry, Midget.)

I had all these little buttons to push and a whole new feel on what a functioning clutch and gas pedal are supposed to do. I got to play a CD in my new car. (Kelly Clarkson's My December.... woot.) Granted, I started the day deeply congested with Midget's long-running head cold, but it was still supposed to be an upper.

Until it was time for team sports. That's one of the classes that my guys take at the college. It's an adapted course where the girls' basketball coach adapts certain sports so that all of our guys, with their ranging physical abilities, can get exercise and learn to cooperate.

There is a guy in my co-worker's group who I have become quite fond of. He has Asperger's Autism like my sister. I'm used to the dreamy looks and the yearnings to be socially square and yet not quite possessing the right tools to carry that out. He has big, puppy dog brown eyes and a smile with dimples that you could fall into. His obsessions include environmental concerns, ranging from too many CO2 emissions from V8 trucks and SUVs to his supreme hatred of Hummer 2s. He will smile broadly while jumping high in the air coincidingly flipping the H2 drivers off.

He is concerned about his coach's smoking habits to the point of trying to dig through her purse to find her packs and throw them away. He preaches to me constantly about not eating cheeseburgers because they will make me "Obese." And dammit, he actually says "Obese" in a charming and laughable tone of voice.

Last semester at school, he got in trouble for tailing around a 40 year old woman (he's 19) because he's also obsessed with surfing and she's a surfer. He followed her around campus so much, stalking the parking lot for her car, that she complained to the campus police and we had to keep a stronger watch on him.

He is sexually innocent, making statements like, "People only have sex to make babies." He once told me that I didn't need to have a boyfriend because I already had Midget and there was no need for me to have kids anymore because I was going to go through menopause soon. Whenever he hears someone mention the word "penis," he cringes and runs away.

He's also just the sweetest thing you will ever meet. He is intense and most of the time outright obnoxious but his smile could melt the coldest heart. When I started naming cities one day, he knew exactly which state they were in and whether or not that state was a "red" or "blue" one. I once, on a lark, threw out Saskatoon. He wrinkled his face and repeated in a disbelieving tone, "Saskatoon? That's not in the US. That's in Canada." I laughed and then said, "But I bet you don't know which province." "Saskatchewan," he quickly and easily replied.

It actually made me cry. But then again, I'm a stupidly emotional girl.

He doesn't understand racial hatred, although there have been times when he's heard his share. The son of a Caucasian father and African American mother, his skin and hair lean more on the African American side. In a town of ethnic diversity, you'd be surprised the diversity of where the racism comes from. He would shrivel down and look sad when being called a nasty epithet.

He's a smart kid, smarter than 90% of the kids his age. But he's autistic. He doesn't have the physical affectations that the unknowing public associate with a person with a developmental disability. He's a handsome kid who looks "normal." Six foot tall, size 14 shoe, black kid. You can image how most burly assholes driving H2s react when getting flipped off by his grinning face. How many times he's been scolded and had to run behind his group so that the driver would see that he just looked normal.

He wants to make friends. His mom wants him to make friends. WE wanted him to make friends. Mom preferred that they were closer to his age and not prone to report him for stalking.

We tried to find a balance for that.

But he's autistic. So he doesn't understand that unwritten list of things that you do and do not do when looking to obtain friendship. You don't yell at people for eating American cheese, telling him that they're going to get fat and die of heart disease. You don't rush in and try to smell your coach's breath because you think this will help curb her smoking.

And while it is a sad, sad, fact of this affliction, you have to come to grips with beggars not being choosers.

See, he was trying to make friends with the young girl who was the teacher's aide this semester. A cute 19 year old girl that our guy saw as being a young friend to make his mom happy. He decided that she was an acceptable choice of friend to make because she was young (this is what his mother wanted) and she was thin and athletic (which represented good health, one of his obsessions).

She was not all that interested in being his friend.

Anyone without autism can read the body language when a person turns away from you when you're talking. They can understand what it means when that person walks away when they see you coming. And someone without autism understands what it means when a person rolls their eyes when you're talking to them about the same subject for the 50th time.

On Monday, we caught our guy lounging on the grass next to the aide, trying to talk to her while everyone else was walking laps. We told him that it was time to do some laps. He pretended not to hear. Later on in the day, my co-worker (his coach) tried to gently explain to him while this girl was of the right age, she was not interested in being personal friends with him.

"Because she thinks I'm flirting with her?" he asked.

"No, that's not quite it."

"Because she doesn't want to talk about the Newport Wedge?"

"No, because she turns away from you when you talk. She walks away. Her body language is showing that she isn't interested in being your buddy."

"Why not?"

"Well, this is her job. She gets paid to help assist a coach who teaches an adapted sports class. You know why the class is adapted, right?"

"Because the people taking it are special?"

"Yes, and she sees herself as being normal."

He thought about this for a long time, processing the information.

"And I'm not."

It was heartbreaking to hear. The pain in the eyes, the confusion behind their stare. We've praised our guy as much as we can, given him every last inch of rope without being left with too little to hold onto. I have made promises to not eat cheeseburgers. My co-worker cut WAY down on her smoking. Other members in our respective groups learned to eat at more nutritionally sound locations.

We did it not because we felt forced into it, like other clients have made us feel. We all agreed to make these changes willingly because all of us genuinely liked him.

He had a bad day in class today. He was repeating about the Newport Wedge again, over and over. His coach asked that he walk his laps and he impeded her pace, trying to get her to repeat "Wave!" with him. When she waved him away (she was having a bad personal day, aside from him), he came to me and repeated the notions.

I chastised him. Reminded him how smart he was and that he knows that class time means following the rules. "Everyone else is walking. Why are you the only person not walking? Why do you keep getting in front of me and trying to keep me from walking?"

He stammered and started saying that he needed to talk to his coach. "She's busy and you're being difficult. If you do your walking, she'll talk to you when you're done with that. But first follow the rules."

He tried to cut her off again. "I need to talk to you about something!" he yelled.

I offered a half-way solution. "Let's walk in opposite directions and we'll meet on the other side and you can talk to her then, but right now you're overwhelming her when she needs a moment."

He persisted.

My co-worker had had enough. "That's it. I think it's time I call your mom and let her know I'm taking you home."

Normally this threat works and he backs off. Not today.

She placed her purse on the football field's astroturf and started digging for her phone.

He then lowered his shoulder and ran at her like a linebacker, knocking her square in the center of her back and causing her to fall forward on her head and face.

I had never seen him be aggressive. Out of all the autistics that I'd met and dealt with, he was the only one I really, truly believed didn't have it in him.

He saw her on the ground and turned to me, running at me as well, knocking me in the chest with his shoulder. I was prepared for the hit and took a stumble backward but caught myself.

He then turned and started running at my co-worker again. By then she'd gotten up and was fumbling with her phone, face flushed with shock, yelling at him to stay away. The teacher and another male coach sidelined him before he could get to her and quartered him off.

I called the office, my heart deep in my chest.

I knew what an intentional physical attack meant.

I work for a program that does not cater to physical attacks. There needs to be different training, different company insurance, higher pay for the coaches. We are strictly high functioning, docile clients only.

In that moment, my heart really broke.

My mind flashed back to my sister in school, trying to be friends with other kids. The ones in the special ed classes were all too low functioning for her to relate to properly.

The "normal" kids thought that she was obnoxious. And much like our guy, she was. Hell, she still can be.

I remember her coming home crying, asking why people were so mean to her. Why people wouldn't be her friend. Why they didn't understand that she wasn't retarded, she just was different, she just was autistic.

I knew that in that moment, going to class was what set off the anxiety in our guy, knowing that he was going to a class where a girl he wanted to be friends with was, a girl who didn't know how to relate to him and he didn't know how to not obsess over her. That he was crying inside, sad. Wanting to know why he just couldn't get people to understand that he was autistic. That he he just wanted to be friends but being autistic made it hard sometimes.

I knew all of these things, as I called and reported his aggression. I knew how sad and isolated he felt, how confused and lonely and desperate he was. I knew it just as much as I knew when I got to the office to help fill in the blanks on the office's incident reports that he was going to be ejected from our program.

That weird guy trying to be your friend and make conversation? The same conversation that he tried to start with you a million times before. That guy that you eventually get sick of and walk away from?

There's a chance he's autistic. And he really thinks you're swell. And he wants to be your friend. But he's autistic. So he doesn't quite know how to do it the "right" way.

Remember to cut that guy some slack. I know he's obnoxious.

But he's also a sweet, kind, smart person desperate for human contact. Say hi back. Listen for once, even if only for a few minutes. Then politely say you need to go.

Don't be scared. He's only autistic.