It’s Hard Out Here On The Spectrum

My daughter has Asperger’s Syndrome. She doesn’t like walking around a public area without someone to talk to; otherwise, she will start to panic. She also has trouble working out people’s facial expressions; she’s told me that she understands that when people smile they are happy and when they frown they are sad, but she doesn’t know what it means for her if someone does this when talking to her. As you can expect, face masks have made this even more difficult for her.

[Daughter] also has problems understanding social situations and will, if she feels scared or threatened, start to react. We both feel bad about this, but the best way I can describe this is akin to a dog biting someone that provokes them. [Daughter] usually says the first thing that comes to her mind when she is frightened.

I am driving [Daughter] back to her house when we have to stop off at the local supermarket. She goes in by herself. I completely trust her to do this, as she knows not to push people out of the way and knows to go to the employees if she is stuck.

When she gets to the till, the cashier is wearing a mask. [Daughter] makes happy small talk with her until it is time to pay.

As [Daughter] has a lot of shopping and the plastic barriers are still up, she does not know where to place the money. She extends her arm over the top of the shopping, a good foot or more, placing the money as close as she can to the counter, perhaps a couple of inches away. I do not know how far it was. As soon as she places the money down, the cashier stares at [Daughter].

[Daughter] thinks that because the cashier is looking at her, she can’t see the money, so she innocently smiles and points.

Daughter: “It’s over there.”

Cashier: “You have some attitude, you know that?”

Daughter: *Getting tense and scared* “I don’t—”

Cashier: “You throw money at me and say, ‘It’s over there!’”

[Daughter] doesn’t quite remember exactly what happened next, but she defensively replies:

Daughter: “I wasn’t, p***head!”

The cashier shouted back at [Daughter], leading to another employee continuing the transaction. [Daughter] came back to the car almost in tears because, apart from swearing, she didn’t know what she had done wrong. She admits that it was wrong to swear, but she was confused and scared by this stranger shouting at her and, as I said, it was like an animal being provoked. [Daughter] was more upset by feeling as if she had angered someone.

Because of this incident, [Daughter] now has a special badge that tells people she is disabled.