The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy With Autism

house, they lived happily ever after.

Q42 W HY DO YOU MEMORIZE TRAIN TIMETABLES AND CALENDARS?
    Because it’s fun! We get a real kick out of numbers, us people with autism. Numbers are fixed, unchanging things. The number 1, for example, is only ever, ever the number 1. That simplicity, that clearness, it’s so comforting to us.
    Whoever reads any given timetable or calendar, it’s always, always the same. You can easily understand all of them by following the same set of rules. And when it comes to our favourite things, we can memorize these as easily as if they were jumping straight into our heads. Invisible things like human relationships and ambiguous expressions, however, these are difficult for us people with autism to get our heads around.
    Perhaps you’re thinking that it’s no major effort for me to write these sentences, but that wouldn’t be true at all. Always lurking at the back of my mind is an anxiety about whether or not I’m perceiving things in the same way that people without autism do. So, via TV, books and just tuning in to the people around me, I’m constantly learning about how ordinary people are supposed to feel in given situations. And whenever I learn something new, I write a short story dealing with the situation in question. This way, with luck, it won’t slip my mind.

Q43 D O YOU DISLIKE READING AND UNPICKING LONG SENTENCES?
    No, I don’t dislike longer sentences. Whatever else is going on, I’m always hungry to learn about lots of different things. It really gets me down that people just don’t understand how hungry for knowledge people with autism actually are. The problem isn’t that I dislike longer sentences. The problem is that my patience wears out so quickly. I get tired so soon and lose all track of what the sentence was about. I can read simple picture books without much trouble, so when I’m alone, I tend to choose one of these. They are easy to follow and stimulate my imagination, and I never get bored with them.
    I want to grow up learning a million things! There must be countless other people with autism who have the same desire, the same attitude. But our problem is, we aren’t capable of studying all by ourselves. To be able to study like other people, we need more time and different strategies and approaches. And those people who help us study, they actually need more patience than we do. They need to understand our eagerness to learn, even though from the outside we may not appear to be keen students. But we are. We, too, want to grow.

Q44 W HAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT RUNNING RACES?
    I don’t hate races, but the instant I’m conscious of the need to run fast, I find that I can’t. If I’m just running for fun with my friends, I find I can run as long as I want to – it’s as if I’m making friends with the wind. Sometimes people say that I’m very good at running away, but really it’s just that, when someone’s chasing me, I find it both funny and frightening when the chaser is catching me up. This prompts me to put on a spurt of speed, and I’m off.
    The reason I can’t run well once I’m aware of needing to isn’t to do with nerves. My problem is that as soon as I try to run fast, I start thinking about how I ought to be moving my arms and legs, and then my whole body freezes up. And another reason I don’t do well in races is that I don’t really get any pleasure out of beating other people. I agree that it’s right and proper to do the best you can in a race, but this desire to beat everyone else is another matter altogether. So on competitive occasions like school sports days, the pleasure I get just by being there takes over, and I’ll end up running the race with all the urgency of someone skipping his way across a meadow.

Q45 W HY DO YOU ENJOY GOING OUT FOR WALKS SO MUCH?
    My guess is that lots of people with autism like walking, and I wonder if you can work out why. ‘Because walking makes you feel good?’ ‘Because it’s great being out in the open air?’ Both these replies are true, of course, but for me the number one reason is that us people with autism love the greenness of nature. Now you might be thinking, ‘Oh, is that all?’ However, our fondness for nature is, I think, a little bit different to everyone else’s. I’m guessing that what touches you in nature is the beauty of the trees and the flowers and things. But to us people with special needs, nature is as important as our own lives. The reason is that