So people don’t have to click the link:

Everyone knew. Literally everyone knew, you circus clown.

2000 was the last year of the second millennium and also the first year of the 00s. 2001 was the first year of the third millennium and the second year of the 00s.

Same with autism. It wasn’t until I had my master’s degree in math and teaching high school at age 39 that it ever occurred to me that I was autistic. A colleague and I had a mutual student, and he told me that he thought she might be autistic and that he was going to refer her to the school’s diagnostician for testing.

So I found myself curious about the symptoms of autism, because Rain Man was my frame of reference. I researched the symptoms in the middle of a Geometry team meeting, and everything I read had my sitting up further and further in my seat, until I just blurted out “Oh my GAWD…?!” My colleagues asked what, and I said “Y’all…I think I might be autistic?” They looked at one another quizzically, like they were shocked at my personal revelation. One of them replied, “Wait…you didn’t know?!” I said, “…what, you DID know?!?” She was like “Yes! We all know that about you! You seriously didn’t know? 😂” HELL NO I DIDN’T KNOW!

I immediately called my mom on the phone to tell her that I thought I might be autistic. “Yyyyyeah…your dad and I always thought you might be.” HOLY FUCKING SHIT MOM WTF??? 😲😲😲WHY DIDN’T YOU EVER GET ME TESTED?!? "Well, you always made such good grades that we just didn’t think it mattered that much.

I have since been diagnosed with ASD Level 1, and I think back a lot on my life lived. I marvel at how much easier my life would have been if I hadn’t had to develop all of these coping mechanisms myself. I did well in school despite my autism. I earned two degrees despite my autism. I hold down teaching jobs despite my autism. The biggest problems I’ve had in my life, though, have been personal relationships. I can’t imagine how much richer my life might be right now had I known all along how to exist as a self-aware autist in a neurotypical world.

In the book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, the main character Sadie is a video game designer who created his game in which you play a worker creating factory parts. If you ignore what’s going on around you and just focus on winning the game by making the parts better and faster, eventually the game ends and it becomes clear that you were creating equipment for Nazis during the Holocaust and, thus, you lose the game.

Movies love to have twist endings in which something would have been obvious if you were paying better attention. I think more video games need to do this as well.