As soon as I arrived home I threw my jacket on the back of a chair and sped toward my computer where I typed in 'Autism'. There were so many sites I had no idea of where to start first. Finding a guaranteed safe site I began to read.
The more I read, the more guilty I felt. I could feel the sensation crawling up my neck to my ears and into my cheeks. If it had been humanly possible for a man to catch fire that way, I would have gone up in flame.
As I read on I realized that I had known kids who had fit the description in the article. I hadn't had a word to apply to them before, other than Space Cadet, but the fact was that I may have known at least a couple of kids with autism. While I hadn't treated them badly myself, I had never stopped anyone else from doing it, and now I felt like a complete heel. If that was how my Daniel had been treated, then I could see why he was so shy. I could feel the guilt settle in my stomach.
I'd been brought up in a strict religious household and still attended church now and again, though mostly to please my parents than anything else, and I found myself offering up a quick but heartfelt prayer for forgiveness.
Memories flooded back as I listened once again as the kids called these others who just didn't seem to fit in anywhere, the quiet ones, the shy ones, the socially awkward ones terrible names, tripped them up in the hallway between classes, slapped gum in their hair or painted their chairs with ink, causing them to ruin their clothes. I'd always looked away whenever I'd seen one of these poor kids walking around with a giant ink stain on the backs of their pants or skirts, knowing that they were most likely feeling mortified but were unable to do anything about it either until their parents could come with clean clothes or the day ended and they could go home.
I could only count on one hand how many of the 'misfit' kids I'd run across in my lifetime, but I felt ashamed that I'd never done anything before to help them. To be honest, like so many of the others, I think I'd been afraid that if I'd spoken up I would have ended up being a target myself, a pretty poor reason I could see in hindsight.
I hadn't been a popular kid, nor had I been a spaz or a nerd... I felt the heat of shame flush my face again when I thought of those words... even now, using those labels came automatically. I'd just been one of the average guys. Average looks. A little taller, and a hair better built than some due to working at my uncles' welding shop but nothing like the football players or wrestlers at school. Not handsome or athletic enough to be considered one of the popular guys, slightly better than average grades, but not enough for anyone to label me a nerd... an incredibly intelligent person, I corrected myself. And I had friends. Just a handful but I'd always believed it was quality rather than quantity, and my friends were the best guys I knew.
I sat back and sighed. Had he had friends while in school? Or had people made fun of him and been cruel to him? He'd admitted that he'd had issues. I wondered what they were and if there were any way I could help him at this late date. I made a promise to myself to do everything I could for him.
The more I read, the more I thought about my Daniel. I stopped for a moment to laugh at myself, already thinking of him as mine when I barely knew anything about him or visa versa, but then the guilt was back in force. How many people, I wondered, had simply dismissed him, ignored him when he was in distress. It said right in the article that I was reading that autistic children were often easy prey for bullies who didn't know and most likely wouldn't care if they had known. I made a promise to myself that no one would ever hurt him again as long as I was around.
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