Barb

I went to the first of Barb's presentations and even though it has been nearly two months since I saw her, what was said there that night has stayed with me. When I look back there are several things that have stuck with me.

The first among them is Barb's sense of humor, which relies heavily upon sarcasm. I loved it! To me humor is one of most normalizing elements of our existence. When she laughed, or more often made us laugh, she did not have autism. We often think that people with autism, or any other neurological disorder are incapable of adjusting to what is "normal". This proved that wrong. For it is "normal" people who have the problem.

The second thing that was really interesting was the fluency that she exhibited in her writing. Before the audience was a woman who is learning to talk, and yet when you read her work there is a level of intellect and emotion that is absent from a lot of work by "normal" individuals. Even when she was answering questions during the Q&A portion of the presentation, with little time to edit and refine her language, she was still remarkably concise in her language.

The last thing that really shocked me was the sheer force of her will. Although she said that she enjoyed giving presentations, it was clear that she was definitely out of her comfort zone. And yet, there she was proving everyone in attendance that she could it. I think even she was admit that she would have rather been doing something else, but there was a point to be made, and minds that needed changing. She was very aware that many of us in attendance were going to be future teacher and I think she changed everyone's perception of the person with "autism". She sure changed mine.