A recurring theme depicts autism as a missing jigsaw puzzle piece.
I’ve been lucky enough in my lifetime to witness sweeping cultural changes with respect to race and gender equality. Part of this was the changing larger cultural context of the times in which I grew up and part of it was because the regional headquarters of the Klan was a few miles from my childhood house. Moving away provided an opportunity to experience some of these changes instantly rather than so gradually as to be difficult to discern. I’m not suggesting we’ve solved all these problems. Far from it, unfortunately. But I am suggesting that we’ve made sufficient progress that we are now in a position to look back and learn from our successes and our failures, and to apply these lessons to inequality in other contexts. For me, one of those lessons has been how we hack culture through language.
Here there’s no puzzle just a negative space in the shape of a piece, cut from an otherwise intact blue field.
Sorry to dredge up something from last year, but dissecting this cadaver in the name of science will do much to advance our understanding of mental illness and how it relates to autism. The Today Show ran a segment of Everyone Has a Story describing how a popular high school star athlete (Zach) befriended an Aspie freshman kid (Graham) sitting at an otherwise empty table in a crowded school cafeteria. Eventually Graham’s mom told Zach’s mom that the friendship was a life-changing event for Graham. Zach’s mom wrote this story up and submitted it to the Today Show as a candidate for Everyone Has a Story. Thanks to Landon at ThAutcast 
