6:31am December 5, 2014

Autistic headcanons: Radar from MASH (the TV show)

* Always shown as more socially awkward than the other main characters, and having more trouble understanding social situations, often needing to be coached through them, which often ended badly due to him taking things too literally or something along those lines.

* Hypersensitive hearing that allowed him to tell when a chopper was coming in before anyone else could.

* Ability to memorize the completely meaningless and arbitrary Army regulations. (Not a skill I have, but I’ve read studies where they showed autistic people just as good at memorizing nonsense sentences as memorizing sentences that made sense.)

* Ability, in fact, to memorize such things, and the habits of his CO, so well, that people started thinking he was psychic or something because he could anticipate what they needed, even finish their sentences for them, and generally stay one step ahead of them because of his ability to memorize and anticipate what was needed at any given time.

* Having grown up on a farm (IIRC) and knowing something about animal care, he created an entire “zoo” full of animals, both wild and domestic, who needed medical care or other kinds of help.

* He developed a very close bond with those animals, more so than he had with most humans at the 4077th.

I’m sure if it wasn’t so early in the morning I’d be able to think up more. But he frequently struck me as autistic. Whenever I’ve brought it up, though, people have said “No he’s supposed to just be a naive farm boy.” Since when are “naive farm boy” and “autistic” mutually exclusive? My dad was autistic and grew up on a farm. Autistic people aren’t all white middle-to-upper-class boys born to the suburbs, you know. FFS.

My dad used to call me Radar, or sometimes Sonar (a character in a movie whose nickname was clearly derived from M*A*S*H*, but who worked on a submarine and was quite eccentric in addition to having extremely hypersensitive hearing), whenever I’d hear something nobody else could hear and turned out to be right.

Anyway, I don’t normally do the autistic headcanon thing, but I hadn’t heard anyone mention Radar, so I thought I would. (And for anyone who doesn’t know me on the MASH tags, I’m a 34-year-old autistic person, diagnosed 20 years ago holy crap has it been that long, who grew up watching MASH. I’m not a hard-core fan but I love the show, and seeing Radar this way is not a put-down from my perspective, because being disabled is just a part of human variation from my perspective, even if it sucks sometimes.)

Notes: