as small as a world and as large as alone

11:20am May 30, 2012

autisticproblems:

Autistic Problem 73: When your thoughts move too quickly to articulate, so you end up umming and ahhing for much too long before answering.

Back when I could still talk sometimes, I was at what was basically a debate club convention. I had prepared a talk on one of the subjects and got in line to say something about it. I had it all lined up in my head. I got to the front of the line – despite them trying twice to skip me because of my appearance. I got up to speak…

…and I hadn’t remembered to put my otherwise well-planned speech into words. I hit a couple random words and phrases and just stood there with everyone in the audience yelling ridicule at me.

What made things much, much worse:

1. The subject of the debate was decriminalization of marijuana.

2. I was wearing a long tie dyed skirt.

So practically the entire room thought I was a stoned hippie, too stoned to talk coherently. I’d actually never done marijuana and was interested in the subject because I knew two people who smoked pot, one medically and one recreationally. The speech I never gave was going to compare their situations and talk about why neither one should be considered a criminal for it.

But it was never to be, and instead I had a memory that made me flinch and tic for over fifteen years every time I remembered it. >_<

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