The Morality Of My Childhood Autistic Literalness

And accessing reality explained by a near collision with two superheros

Superman and Batman flew past my head yesterday. But, of course, it’s not every day I have to jump out of a superhero’s flight path to save myself, or at least my face, from a collision with comic book characters. My gym is beside a Montessori school. As I strolled by, some children on the second floor decided to see if their superheroes could fly because that is what their beautiful minds are being conditioned to think in the literal processing of such a fantasy. The wonderous impressionable naivety that can be preyed upon until we have the capacity to regulate it as we age. The beauty of curiosity and not knowing and the need to investigate.

The taking of things at face value until the deceived value of them causes you to fall flat on your face. Innocent trust until society cultivates mistrust. My gut tells me that had the children been caught throwing superhero figures to figure out reality out of second-floor windows with the potential to hit a passerby in the face; they would have been told off and possibly excluded.

Children don’t like to be excluded or made to feel different from their peers in the literal processing of truth-seeking. Truth-seeking can look like asking many questions, not wanting to sit down and needing to move around, throwing a superhero figure out of a second-floor window (hopefully, lego ones next time I stroll by)

That’s the neurodiversity of the world, and it always has been. It will look different based on a child’s or adult’s needs. Intuitive innocence leads to the development of our intellect and character in processing our childhood’s literalness, which can enable us to grow into mentally happy and independent-thinking adults.

Just not when we are stranded on dismissed intuitive isolation islands because many misunderstand the kind of magic that helps us process our reality. Something my autistic child and adult know well. I was a literal child. I had to find out. If you told me something, I seldom took it at face value until I faced it. I should have been seen and heard, but I was denied that because I challenged such norms.

Back then, I didn’t have the emotional regulation to process, which I challenged with baby dolls that weren’t babies and Barbies with shaved heads because that wasn’t what women looked like when I was a child. So it continued with many gendered stereotyped toys until, eventually, my dad got me an Action Man. Of course, he still didn’t live up to the expectations Mattel set for him in my literal childhood, but there you go.

So in my story of taking things at face value while nearly getting two superheroes in the face, the morality of my past-lived self and future-insight self reflect. Kids grow into adults who can save themselves and don’t need superheroes when granted a safe space to process the blurred lines between fantasy and reality with courage emotionally, mentally, and physically.

And skill so badly needed now, more than ever.

A superpower that brings structure.