When people hear my son is autistic, an image comes into their mind. Before my son, my picture of autism and autistic people was completely based on the film Rain Man, and I think that's true of most people who haven't encountered the condition in real life. "Wapner at four" is one of those lines that everybody remembers, and I've seen people ape Dustin Hoffman's mannerisms in the movie when they say it millions of times. Like a request for "fava beans and a nice chianti", or "you can't handle the truth!" "Wapner at Four" is one of those movie moments that is etched into the zeitgeist. To most of us, autism means scenes like this one:
In a sense, they're not wrong. Up to now, my son's tantrums and toddler's megalomania have looked like they would in the case of the average kid. Autism means that the furlough most parents look forward to when they're in the midst of a supermarket tantrum or an airplane fit has been indefinitely postponed. The autism diagnosis means that sooner or later, I'm going to run into the same infuriating autistic intransigence that Charlie Babbit faces in that scene.
