It’s been a long time since a gaggle of adolescents or children blatantly made fun of my daughter with autism. The scenario was familiar. It’s par for the course, unfortunately, when a loved one has a disAbility. Children stare, elbow their friends, cup their hands to hide their snickers….

Yawn.

What surprised me yesterday with the two preteen girls walking with a woman—whom I assumed was the mother of one or both of them—was not their rude behavior, but my internal reaction.

Oh, I did react. But then I let it drop into a large pot of brewing curiosity. My focus was first on the mother who was walking the opposite direction than us. What was she clutching? At first I thought it was a coddled puppy in a blanket. The closer I got, I could only make out some odd-shaped object (a djembe drum, perhaps?) wrapped in a dark gray and white striped towel. I smiled at her and then glanced at the girls. That’s when I noticed the familiar rib poking, the covert chuckles. Grace was traversing ahead of me, I’m sure all full of focused joy and oblivious oddity; shoulders hunched and upper body  launched at a dramatic angle forward; arms swinging; gait wildly splay-footed, and perhaps emitting a high-pitched musical banter of babble to herself.

Once they passed, I turned around, stood and stared at them. Really? I asked myself. Their shoulders shook from giggling, another poke into the other’s ribs, and then they turned around only to see me stopped and looking at them. They quickly turned back around. I continued to stand a few seconds more before I yelled out to their backsides: “She has autism.” This caused the mom to turned around and look at the person standing there who’d yelled out. I turned back around and proceeded toward the parking lot.

I wasn’t mad. I didn’t really feel sad. What I felt was curiosity about my lack of rage. Even the way I yelled at them was somehow mellow. Once upon a time I would have been ENRAGED. So many times a similar scenario has happened in the 23 years since Grace’s diagnosis of autism. This blog has a half dozen posts about such episodes. Once, early in our journey, with PMS as gasoline to my anger, I told off a family who stared at us in a shoe store. Blush. So many instances….Any family that has a differently abled or different-looking/acting child knows the stares, the laughter, the pointing, the inappropriate comments or questions.

I guess…I’ve grown up. Finally. I knew. I know. that the only thing I could control about those rude little girls was my reaction. I could craft a stew of toxins inside of me or I could let it go. And, I was reminded what I used to tell other families in the years I lead Autism 101 parent orientations at Vanderbilt: We really don’t know. Maybe they were laughing amongst themselves and we just happened to catch their gaze, though I don’t think so. Maybe it was the wackadoodle combo of Grace’s flower leggings and her hippie tye-dye hoodie that I didn’t really realize was a bit “over the top” when I quickly grabbed the jacket before we left for our walk.

Why did I turn around, stop and stare at that family as the girls walked away, their their thin bodies shaking? Even though it was an all-too-familiar scenario, I was still a bit incredulous. It popped me out of my serene walk by the lakeside park. Why did I call out the way I did? My mind was racing to find words and those were the first that emerged. As if an attempt to say: “Hey, you! You’re making fun of a person with a disAbility. It’s not okay!” And, now, a day later as I return to the draft of this post and add this paragraph after a night’s sleep, I think this is the way of children, of youth. They are finding their way in the world. Different is scary. To make fun is to cop superiority and false security in themselves and their faux world bubble. They were youth, not adults. I was the adult who got to choose what I’d make of their immature and seemingly inconsiderate actions….

The world will mostly likely always have people who act meanly toward others, and worse, the most innocent amongst us. There probably will always be folks who are ruled by fear of what’s different. And then, I will always have a choice of how I choose to feel about it. Grace? She never knew. She just went on her way enjoying the beauty and fun of her walk in the park. Like always.

Note to self: Be like Grace….