By Charles Coursey, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX –
If my son Asher "suffers" from Asperger's Syndrome, I wonder if we all wouldn't do better to have a touch of it ourselves.
If you don't know, Asperger's Syndrome is a clinical term used for a certain type of autism - one that, in the spectrum of autistic symptomology, is relatively high functioning. Asher is exceptionally inquisitive, bright and self-disciplined. He tends to be unabashedly joyful.
Asher is also genuine. As with other Asperger's people, what you see is what you get. He seems incapable of duplicity. So refreshing. When I hear corruption stories on the news I often think, what if the executives at Enron had a touch of Asperger's? The judge could ask them, straight up: "Hey, guys - what is it with all those shell companies?" Asperger's executives would spew forth a fountain of answers in painstaking detail; case closed.
Of course, a person with Asperger's probably would never abide financial shenanigans in the first place. That's against the rules. People with Asperger's really like rules, unlike certain sly financial wizards.
I bet former Arthur Andersen personnel wish their executives had had Asperger's. Granted, they might have lost a few clients by refusing to obstruct justice. Still, that's got to be better than losing everything.
I like to imagine every bigwig involved with Social Security with Asperger's. We could all rest assured that the matter would be resolved with utmost transparency.
I also like to imagine filling the entire capitol building and white house with Asperger's people, along with every boardroom and executive suite. Lots of people with Asperger's have no internal dialogue; they offer a running commentary on their thoughts, impressions and intentions. We would always have a ready report on exactly what's going on.
Granted, we'd get so much information that we might feel challenged to sort through it all. But on the other hand, it would never seem cryptic; nothing like struggling to make sense of a statement by Alan Greenspan.
So these are the benefits we might hope to realize with Asperger's people in leadership. But, as I suggested in the beginning, my son Asher has helped me to see that Asperger's brings many qualities to living that could well enrich us all.
Imagine yourself perceiving your environment as one of endless fascination. You're enchanted by things you see and hear. You rejoice in pursuing the objects of your curiosity. In fact, your thoughts prove so engrossing that you don't notice or care if your hair is all a tousle, your shirt is buttoned wrong and there's grape jelly at the corner of your mouth. You're a slave to neither fashion nor to popular culture. You're free not to care about the escapades of Paris Hilton or Donald Trump. You're so free that you don't even think about freedom. You simply are what you are what you are.
Given my 12-year experience in parenting a child with Asperger's Syndrome, I've come to sense great irony in the fact that Asher's differences are stigmatized in the "normal" world. While I find his differences delightful, we must be prepared to deal with the fact that highly socialized "normals" tend not to share our appreciation for such transparency, innocence and unaffectedness.
Which brings me to my only real concern for Asher's welfare in our world: I'm not worried about him. I'm concerned how "normal" people will treat him. After all, it's not the Ashers of our world who calculatingly exploit and betray. That, sadly enough, is the province of us "normals." Were we each to adopt some aspects of Asperger's Syndrome, it just might improve our character.