Social Speech

When I was in elementary school, I read a lot. I especially read old books and “classics” that tended toward archaic and formal language. I loved the old stuff, like Greek Myths and Robin Hood stories, Little Women (I read every book in the series), plus books that were intended for older audiences like histories and biographies. This resulted in what you might think of as an odd set of linguistic tics and weird vocabulary.

It was weird enough that teachers remarked on it. Other students told me that I was acting arrogant and that I should try to talk “regular.” Eventually, in junior high, I started to work on this behavior and purposely began to copy my schoolmates, using their vocabulary and their sentence construction, which I knew was “wrong.” I could diagram a sentence without thinking twice. I enjoyed grammar rules, because, well, autism. Rules meant things stayed the same and you could learn them fairly easily—though I also know that this isn’t the way most people learn or even use language.

Maybe I even corrected other students? I don’t remember doing that because I was autistic, not dumb. I tried hard to keep my head down and at least put on a façade of normalcy as best I could.

Even into college, I remember purposely using incorrect grammar. I remember this because a professor corrected me, and I had to accept this correction. It was annoying because I knew very well what the correct grammar was, but I used incorrect grammar as camouflage.

Was it effective camouflage?

I suppose it did help me to appear less arrogant. Slightly less arrogant, anyway. I was still known as one of the smart kids, but at least no one thought I stood out worse than that. I wonder sometimes if I purposely sped through schoolwork because I didn’t want to get one hundred percent on anything. It was painful to get a lot of answers wrong, but a few wrong kept me a bit out of the eye of the bullies.

I don’t know how many other autistic kids have had this same experience, but if you did, I see you.