![]() ![]() ![]() They remember passwords and sequences I don’t even remember needing. They type words, sentences, stories, worlds that I didn’t know I thought. My hands know things the rest of me doesn’t. They’re beautiful in a way that makes me understand what beautiful means. My hands are one of the few places on my body that I usually recognize as my own, can feel, and can occasionally control. When we were in high school, my occasional, accidental flap gave my other autistic friend panic attacks. “They watch your hands,” my sister says, “and you might as well be flipping them off when all you’re saying is this menu feels nice.” “You’ve got one for everything,” she says, and I wish everyone could look at my hands and see I need you to slow down or this is the best thing ever or can I please touch or I am so hungry I think my brain is trying to eat itself. Terra can read my flapping better than my face. It came to the classroom fully equipped with straps to tie his hands down. Roger needs a modified chair to help him sit. Things, slowly, start to make a lot more sense. (Not being able to talk is not the same as not having anything to say.) Hands are by definition quiet, they can’t talk, and neither can half of these students… ![]() ![]() And when you’re autistic, it’s not abuse. When I was a little girl, I was autistic. The literal meaning of the words is irrelevant when you’re being abused. Thanks to applied behavioral analysis, each student learned this phrase in preschool at the latest, hands slapped down and held to a table or at their sides for a count of three until they learned to restrain themselves at the words. I’ve yet to meet a student who didn’t instinctively know to pull back and put their hands in their lap at this order. In a classroom of language-impaired kids, the most common phrase is a metaphor.Ī student pushes at a piece of paper, flaps their hands, stacks their fingers against their palm, pokes at a pencil, rubs their palms through their hair. When I was six years old, people who were much bigger than me with loud echoing voices held my hands down in textures that hurt worse than my broken wrist while I cried and begged and pleaded and screamed. Walking down a hall to a meeting, my hand flies out to feel the texture on the wall as I pass by. When I was a little girl, they held my hands down in tacky glue while I cried. Means I need to explain my history with this: ![]()
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