"♫" "Next on "P [Girl cooing]" "Mama!" "MAN:" "There was a cartoon when I was young called "Jungle Book."" "I'm sure you've heard of it " " Disney." "Now, at the end," "Mowgli... goes off with the men, with the fire." "And he leaves the... the jungle." "And I remember watching it, and the lights were down real low, and I remember I cried my eyes out." "Now, I wasn't one given to cry much," "I mean, not about movies, but this one made me cry." "And I was like, "No, don't leave!" "Don't go with the men!" "Trust me, I mean it!" "I know how horrible it is." "You do not want to," you know." "I didn't know y'all as "neurotypicals" back then, but you did not want to come into society." "Trust me, it's not all it's cracked up to be." "Not because I hated society, but because I thought I knew enough to tell them, "Oh, I wouldn't have made that decision."" "You know, I had been abused and hurt so much by people trying to make me normal, that if, you know, if you went with them," "I was like, "Oh, gosh, they're going to be trying to make you normal."" "And that just would have -- for me, everybody else saw that as a good thing." "I saw it as the saddest movie I'd ever seen." "[Laughing]" "MAN:" "All right, we're going to get going, Violet, let's go." "GIRL:" "Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go!" "MAN:" "Time to go home." "GIRL:" "Come on, come on!" "Come on, come on!" "[Crying, screeching]" "Daddy, no!" "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" "Aagh!" "Ow!" "[Crying]" "MAN:" "Okay." "Okay." "GIRL:" "Daddy, no!" "Daddy!" "[Girl shrieking]" "Time to go." "Stand up." "[Girl shrieking]" "Stand up." "GIRL:" "Dad, no!" "Okay." "[Girl crying]" "It's okay, it's okay." "[Girl coughing]" "All right." "MAN:" "Everything I did between one and eight... was basic, almost direct prompting." "If you prompted me to do something, I would do it." "I was really big in mimicking." "So if you showed me how to do something, you know, if you sat there and you did this," "I'd do the exact same thing." "Now, it doesn't -- so that if you didn't do this, this part wasn't gonna get clean." "Before eight, there was no database." "So you could teach me something, but I didn't have a place to store it." "It wasn't until I failed third grade that I realized you have to store this stuff, because when they teach it to you, they expect you to be able to pull it back up." "[Cartoon sound effects]" "[Elmo talking on television]" "Oh, whoa!" "Ah, ah, ah!" "Oh, oh, oh!" "Oh, yeah!" "[Humming]" "Try again, Mr. Noodle!" "Try again." "Oh, oh!" "CHILD ON TV:" "Try again, Mr. Noodle." "ELMO:" "Try again." "WOMAN:" "Just because you can't speak the way we're speaking right now, it doesn't mean you're not thinking and that you don't have ideas and opinions." "We get so fixated, I think, on hitting that median, hitting that main number." "Most kids do "X" by this age." "And if your kid doesn't do it by that age, there's so much anxiety and so much worry." "I don't want to paint this rosy picture that just because we are very accepting of Violet and just because she has her good days and she has amazing qualities as a human being, it doesn't mean things are always perfect" "or that we always stay patient -- we try really hard." "We've all lost our cool at some point or another." "I mean, what parent doesn't, at some point, go," ""Aagh!" "Why won't you just listen?" "!"" "You know, and it's frustrating." "MAN:" "Here, wash your hands." "WOMAN:" "We didn't care if she was autistic or not, so why bother getting a diagnosis, because that's just going to put a big stamp on her -- "autistic."" "People are going to write her off, people are going to underestimate her, they're going to put her in a little pigeonhole of like, "Okay, you're autistic, so this is your capacity." "And here's the regular kid, and there's their capacity."" "MAN:" "All right, civilization!" "I came from an educated, middle-class black family." "And we knew that education was the way out of poverty, and it was the way into success." "So when I failed third grade, it was the biggest scandal I'd ever seen." "And my grandmother went down to University of Maryland Hospital, and she basically told those doctors," ""You are going to tell me why my son failed." "What is wrong with him?"" "And she knew that there was something wrong." "My grandmother, my great-grandmother -- everybody in the family said," ""There's something wrong with this kid."" "And three doctors came downstairs." "And they sat there, and they pored over my notes and everything, and they said, "Well, we think it's autism."" "And they said, "Well, you have two choices." "You can put him in a hospital, but you seem like you've got him pretty far along." "I would suggest whatever it is you're doing, continue doing it."" "And meanwhile, another doctor told me what I had." "And he said, "How did you get this far, because you're really remarkable?"" "And I was like, "First time I ever heard this."" "And I told him, I said, "I have systems." "Systems for everything."" "And he says, "Well, keep building the systems."" "And in the room, I could hear my grandmother crying." "Up until that time, I had never heard her cry." "And I was mad." "I was gonna go in there and tear somebody's head off." "But then this great big, fat doctor " "I'll never forget him -- he was tall and he was fat." "And he walked over to my grandmother, and he said," ""Mom," 'cause he didn't know my mother's name." "He said, "Mom, I want you to continue and encourage your son in building these systems." "This is how he understands the world, so you're gonna have to encourage him."" "He says, "Now, Wolf, I want you to continue to build the systems."" "He says, "Now, Mom, when his systems go outside of society's norms, I want you to tell him so he can, you know, chop that piece off." "And keep him inside of the norms." "And, Wolf, when she tells you to take a piece apart, or take it apart, take it apart and rebuild it."" "He said, "And keep rebuilding it until you can rebuild it into something that works in this society."" "And I've been doing that ever since." "What's this?" "What's that?" "Four!" "What's that?" "GIRL:" "Seven." "What's that?" "Five." "What's that?" "Nine." "What's that?" "Six." "What's that?" "Two." "What's that?" "Three." "What's that?" "Eight!" "What's that?" "One." "High five!" "Yes!" "[Laughing]" "[Woman inhales]" "[Exhales]" "[Girl inhales]" "[Woman inhales]" "Boo!" "[Girl shrieks, giggles]" "[Playing somber tune]" "We're kind of whittling it down to the ideal for her, of like no dairy and all." "Something to help her rigidity and just being really open and not treating her like she has a disability." "WOMAN:" "The medication was a huge decision, too." "We thought about that for months." "Are we gonna put our three-year-old on antidepressants?" "It just seemed crazy." "MAN:" "There's an element of not being able to go back after that." "That's what I was always worried about, is that, okay, we're going to put her on this, and is there any turning back?" "Is there any stopping?" "WOMAN:" "Right, she might be on it for the rest of her life." "And, in fact, a lot of autistic adults take one or more medications to help them cope with their anxiety and cope with depression." "VJ was at a point of frustration when we lived in Louisa where I'd come home from work, and she would cry to me, like, every day." "And something was wrong -- and she knew it and I knew it." "So -- and I had always battled depression really badly, too, but I'd never gotten on medication for it." "So she goes to the doctor and gets a pill, and then, like, a week later, she's like, totally -- not a totally different person," "I'm not gonna say that." "But she's not -- she's happier, and, like, just more even." "You know, and I was like, "I need me some of that."" "[Laughter]" "[Laughing]" "WOLF:" "There's some people that use medication as a chemical straitjacket, and that's always wrong, especially with autism because, with autism, you have tantrums." "And I'm still pretty good at tantrums." "I don't think you ever lose it." "But when I was a kid, I was especially good." "And some people will use medication to just keep them quiet, and, you know, so that they can have a nice eight hours, you know, working with the kids." "And that's always going to be wrong." "Because my tantrums gave my parents insights to how to help me, what things were I having trouble with." "Now, medication is fine as long as the medication is only trying to help the autistic person work better and work smarter." "But if it's just meant to be a chemical straitjacket, no." "The autistic person has to be a partner in their success." "They have to be a partner in growing up to be the successful person I've become." "The cool thing about my family is that they made me a full partner." "You know, they showed me the world the way it really is and they said, "Wolf, this is the world the way it really is." "You might not like it, but you're going to have to deal with it." "And you can't have tantrums and you can't throw a chair across the room, you know, when somebody makes you mad." "Or when somebody blows one of your systems." "When somebody does something you don't expect." "You can't kick everybody in the face just because they touch you." "You know, and that's the way the real world is."" "And my parents gave me that." "And because of that, you know -- and if medicine helps me to calm down to the point to where, okay, I understand why I don't need to kick them in the face, then that's a good use of medicine." "Because medicine is helping you to keep your system calm." "But it's not calming you so much that you are involuntarily calmed and you have no input and no part to play in who you become." "MAN:" "Okay, stop." "Stop." "Turn around." "Turn around." "Go on." "GIRL:" "No!" "[Whining]" "Let's go this way." "[Girl shrieking]" "GIRL:" "Stand up?" "MAN:" "No, you don't have to." "I think she just wants to keep going, keep exploring forever." "Like always, like that's..." "I don't know, man, she just doesn't..." "Like she just doesn't want to go back, you know." "It just seems to us like she'd just want to keep walking until she just collapsed." "You know." "And then she'd wake up, eat some grass," "[Chuckles] and then just keep going." "We can't figure out, you know, like we just can't." "We know some things." "We know how she's going to react to some things, but like, we don't know." "She's a mystery." "That's like the whole point." "She's so mysterious, and like you said yesterday, really stoic." "No, thank you." "GIRL:" "No!" "Be a good girl, please." "GIRL:" "No!" "MAN:" "Please be a good girl." "GIRL:" "N-N-No." "MAN:" "Be a good girl." "We're going to have to go this way." "[Girl shrieks]" "GIRL:" "Stand up?" "MAN:" "You don't have to stand up." "You just can't go any further." "[Girl whines]" "Just be a good girl." "[Kiss] Yes, that's right." "I mean, it was definitely a lot easier when we got the diagnosis, but..." "Big hug?" "Okay." "Oh!" "[Girl whines]" "MAN:" "I know." "I know." "That feels good on your face, doesn't it?" "[Chuckles]" "Feels good on your face, that breeze." "[Girl coos]" "I don't like looking in people's eyes for some reason." "It really distracts me." "It's something that I actually had to be coached for a while to do." "I remember it was a big thing, actually, and I felt a little bit miffed when I got to middle school because half the time, people talked to you without looking at you." "It..." "I kind of always felt like, if people are normal, they are allowed to act however they want to some extent, socially, but if people have a syndrome, everybody feels like they need to improve them." "Let your buddy across." "Thanks, dudes." "Hey, Billy, can you grab the door?" "BOY:" "Close the thing up." "MAN:" "It's okay." "GIRL:" "Can't reach." "MAN:" "Hey, man, how'd it go?" "Good." "MAN:" "It's a predictable question, but..." "Made it through another week." "BOY:" "Yeah." "Alan Wolf came and talked to us today." "MAN:" "Oh, did he?" "Yeah." "MAN:" "Did you talk to him?" "Yeah." "MAN:" "Did he know who you are?" "No." "I just told him he did a good job." "MAN:" "Oh, jeez, man, you should have told him, uh..." "You should have told him who you were." "How?" "Why?" "MAN: 'Cause we know him." "Oh." "MAN:" "His mom helped do a poem at our wedding." "We're really good friends with them." "Crap." "MAN:" "Yeah, man." "GIRL:" "Okay, can we put a dunce cap on him now?" "MAN:" "No, he doesn't need a dunce cap." "I just wished he'd have told Alan." "My whole life, until I was maybe like 22 or so, when I was diagnosed," "I thought that the reason people made small talk -- you know, like standing in line at the grocery store, and, "oh, nice day today" " "I thought that the reason people did stuff like that was because they had nothing interesting to think about inside their heads." "So, I thought that most of the rest of the world were a bunch of idiots with no thoughts." "So, if somebody was friendly and said like, "Oh, nice day!"" "I didn't really -- sometimes I'd just be like, "Mm-hmm, yeah."" "'Cause I just didn't see the point in carrying on a conversation when, one, this person was being really rude." "They're interrupting my thought process." "I had interesting things going on up here." "You know, they want to talk to me about the weather?" "What?" "And my dad explained to me, people get little positive vibes from interacting with other people, even strangers, and even on really benign things." "He said, "It's like when you play the Sims and they get little plus signs above their head when they talk to each other."" "And I was like, "Huh."" "So that was why people did that." "I was like, I don't feel like I get little plus signs above my head when I talk to people." "And I still don't, but like I understand that other people do." "So now I engage in small talk more, because I respect other people more, because I'm understanding their behavior." "And I no longer think that people are idiots." "WOMAN:" "You're eating so quick that I thought maybe something really interesting was going on." "MAN:" "You anxious to get back to the game?" "Hmm?" "BOY:" "Yeah." "MAN:" "You got homework?" "[Boy mumbling]" "MAN:" "Okay." "WOMAN:" "Thank you." "[Chuckling]" "MAN:" "Nonverbal cues." "People take them for granted." "But trust me, when you don't pick up on them, there's nothing that's more important." "Um, how to have a conversation without... without taking it over, or without losing interest and getting bored." ""I'm sorry, what were you saying?" "I just, you know, was in outer space."" "I had to literally analyze how did people, how did they converse?" "What you do is, first, make sure you learn their name." "A person's own name is their favorite word in the whole wide world, always remember that, so use it." "And you can actually convince them that you're listening if all you do is just repeat the last three to four words of what they're saying." "It works like magic." "They will continue talking, mesmerized by your validating what they're saying by repeating the last three words." "They're going on and on and on." ""Oh, yeah, and then he practically went off the cliff."" "Off the cliff?" ""Yeah, off the cliff." "He lost control of the car, and the next thing you know, he rolled it and he got out." "He couldn't believe he walked away from the wreck and everybody was fine, and it was just amazing!"" "And then you just follow, "Amazing."" "And they're so captivated by you." "And it's probably best not to talk, because, as somebody with Aspies, you might not pick up on the nonverbal cue as to when you're going on a little bit too long or being a little bit too revealing." "Um, not censoring properly." "But trust me, there's verbal cues that people give off, so, when in doubt, just repeat the last three words of whatever they're saying." "They'll go on for hours." "And they will talk about you as if you were the greatest thing next to the iPhone." "Oh, my God!" "[Off-screen laughter, indistinct conversation]" "I don't know." "A lot of the girls in Morganton I just can't relate to." "[Sighs]" "Some of them are just mean as hell and..." "Some..." "Some are nice, but I just can't relate to them." "We don't have much in common." "There's one girl that kind of liked me." "Her name was Sarah." "We went out once." "Uh..." "[Scoffs]" "As far as music, she was onto like Christian rock and stuff like that and..." "I like alternative rock, some metal, and... some old rap." "So..." "We didn't really have much in common." "She didn't play video games or anything." "She's on Runescape, sometimes, but that's about it." "Uh..." "And she didn't skateboard or anything." "WOMAN:" "I read Entertainment Weekly because I'm obsessed with reading movie reviews now." "I read that apparently "Grey's Anatomy" is getting this female doctor with Asperger Syndrome." "And, you know, ordinarily, you'd think that was really good, but they mention that her problems are going to be like communicating with people, and that she's going to be one of the only characters on the show" "who doesn't end up having sex." "And I felt like I wanted to barf when I heard that, because" "I don't want this doctor to just teach them a bunch of lessons about how lucky they are or something trite like that." "I want her to actually have experiences out of this, too." "So I hope that the writers allow her to make mistakes and have like relationships." "'Cause it is possible for people with autism to be romantically involved with other people, you know." "Just because Temple Grandin doesn't do it doesn't mean that it never happens." "You know, people might look at me and maybe they think I'm attractive, maybe they don't." "It really doesn't matter if you are or not because some people are going to not find you attractive and other people are just going to think, you know, that you are just a god." "But whether you are or not, it's always like really hard to flirt." "I mean..." "So I just always... develop like these rules." "Like, okay, um... she touches me on my arm, that's a green light for me to move closer in." "She touches me on my leg, she wants me to kiss her." "Um..." "If I don't know, and I want to go for -- and I'm really, really, really, really nervous, and I don't know what to do to initiate a good-night kiss or something like that," "what I'll do is I'll touch her hair and I'll compliment her hair being extraordinarily soft or something." "And if she backs away," "I know that she doesn't want me to kiss her good night, and I don't know why, but at least for me," "I don't know, it's a crutch that I use to hobble into the kiss good night." "Um, but, you know," "I really don't know what I'm doing." "I sometimes think that I'm, you know, almost incompatible because of my Aspies." "And it's funny because people might think," ""Well, gosh, you seem really normal."" "Yeah, well, you don't have to live with me." "And it's usually when people only get to really know me that all these behaviors creep out and they get frustrated and..." "The only difference now is, having been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome," "I know better than to try and change myself." "MAN:" "I don't get instructions verbally very well, and I would always just kind of look around and try to figure out what's going on in the gym." "And with tag, it's apparent that being "it" is not desirable because the person who's "it"" "tries to tag someone else so that they're "it."" "I was never tagged, and so I just assumed that I was really great at tag and I was winning." "And no one chased me." "I was just standing in the gym, winning." "[Chuckles]" "But it was really boring." "And one day I just left, I just took a walk in the corridors, and somebody went after me and herded me back to the gym and informed me that not being tagged is not actually winning at tag," "that you actually are supposed to be tagged." "And while I don't remember that she used this word specifically, essentially she said, "Well, you're just supposed to get in there and frolic, go frolic, you're a kid."" "And so then I was back in the gym, back in the tag game, still standing in the gym but I wasn't winning anymore." "So..." "And I wasn't frolicking, either." "[Laughter]" "I lack that gene." "So I gave way more thought to the game of tag for the next several years than anyone should." "And I figured out that being "it" is desirable and you pretend that it's not desirable." "But since it really is desirable, you only try to tag people that you like." "And nobody, to my knowledge, disliked me." "But very few people even really knew me, so I wasn't tagged." "So being "it" is desirable and you pretend that it's not." "And then, much later, in college," "I realized that there's only one sense, not five, and the one is touch." "That what we call touch is the least sensitive form of touch." "That when you see, you've got light hitting the backs of your eyes, and when you hear, sound is hitting your eardrums, and when you taste, you've got taste receptors that are engaging actual molecules." "So everything is a form of touch, and so I decided that tag could be way more subtle than it was ever played in grade school." "Like if I say "tag," I just hit your eardrums and you're it." "Or if I write "tag" on a piece of paper and I hold it up and you read it," "I just hit the back of your eyeballs and you're "it."" "So that made it more fun in my mind." "And then the last realization I made about tag -- and I think that finally ended the process for me -- is that you don't tag somebody to make them "it,"" "you tag somebody to remind them that they are "it."" "And everybody in a particular group of people is "it" to each other and reminding each other of that fact is kind of the game." "And you can do that in ways other than just smacking somebody." "I don't know, sometimes I think like, what if this person ruled the world?" "Would it be better or would it be worse?" "Would it be better than if..." "I was in charge of the world?" "Or something..." "I don't know, if like I were in charge of the world, then there would probably be at least a billion people who wouldn't agree with me on a bunch of stuff." "Um..." "I don't know, I just..." "I just feel like I think differently than everyone else." "Like..." "Like sometimes I take more things into consideration and..." "Um..." "I'm not sure how to explain it." "But then sometimes when people ask me a question, uh..." "I don't really get what they mean until 10 minutes later." "Then I'm like, "Oh, my God, how could I have been so stupid?"" "Ooh, look at the water swirling around." "Wow." "On June 6, 2006 -- which is 06-06-06, kind of a cool number -- but I was reading an index for a book and I saw the acronym "PDD," and I didn't know what it was," "so I looked it up online, and it said," ""Pervasive Developmental Disorder,"" "and I was getting ready to close the page, because that wasn't that interesting to me, and then I saw a link to "high-functioning autism,"" "and it was like a little voice in my brain said," ""Click on that, you're going to find out something interesting."" "So I clicked on it, I read about my whole life story." "I printed it out and I took out all the references to higher functioning or autism and I handed it to my husband and I said, "Read this, right now."" "And then I went off into the bathroom or something and he was out in the kitchen and I heard him going," ""Oh, my goodness!" "What is it?"" "[Chuckles]" "So I knew that " "And I said, "Is it kind of like me?"" "And he said, "Yeah."" "And then I said, "I want a percent." "Is it 27% like me?"" ""100%."" "i want to ask you something." "BOY:" "What?" "When you keep looking at the water, does it make you feel really happy?" "Or is that just me?" "No, that's just you." "[Woman laughs]" "It's just me." "Oh, well." "My first reaction to finding out that I was probably autistic was, I want to go tell everybody because now they'll know why" "I'm the way I am, and I was really excited about it." "But a few hours later, after I had read so many websites about, you know, it's a devastating and dark disorder," "I thought, maybe I'm not going to tell everybody." "But anyway, I posted a question and I said," ""Do you tell people or do you need to hide it?" "Would you just tell your family, your friends?" "What do you do?"" "And the first person who wrote back said, he did not hide what his neurology was and that he wasn't ashamed of it, and that he let his actions speak for themselves." "And I just took that and I thought -- because I don't usually go around hiding who I am." "I probably would tend more going up to people on the street going, "Hi, I'm Paula." "I'm autistic." "How are you today?"" "Not really, 'cause I'm too shy to do that, but it would be more my nature to do something like that." "It finally made sense to a lot of the stuff that I couldn't understand." "So I'm going, okay, now we can... put a name on it or whatever." "Just help figure it out a little bit." "And that was about two years ago, and actually I think things have... kind of taken a turn for the worse in some respects at that point in our lives." "It's, okay, you know something about yourself now, you know." "But where's the accountability for it?" "It's like I'm putting up with somebody who just can do and be anything they want, and I have to just deal with it." "It's like me being an alcoholic drinking." "If I was just out getting drunk every night, coming back, you just deal with it, you know, and I don't think that's fair for some reason." "It's becoming to a point in our lives where it's a big confrontation about how we even deal with each other." "MAN:" "Everyone has differences." "And it's when they get to be these thresholds that we -- and are syndromes that we've identified and put a label on it." "And for the Asperger's, they're channeling everything through this rational processor versus the emotional one." "Maybe you all know, what do they call the other side of the spectrum?" "'Cause it's a bell curve." "And if we're over here, who's over here?" "And we all know the hysterical people." "They can't seem to just process this information rationally." "That would be me." "Yes, I know!" "[Chuckles]" "And your mother." "Good God!" "It's like, "God, can't you just look at this rationally?"" "And so you can imagine this relationship, your opposites attract?" "Yes, here we are, the Asperger going after whatever this hysterical, emotional group is called." "And, I don't know, does DSM-IV have a name for that?" "You know what, it's not "hysterical-emotional."" "I said, I'm looking for a nicer name." "Whenever you talk women, you're talking touching." "And I don't want to be touched." "And intimate touching more than anything -- no." "No, no, no." "I..." "That's..." "No, no." "I mean, the most I ever want to do when it comes to touching is hug, that's it." "It's just enough touching for me to imprint the event, truly imprints on my brain." "And if it's a good, if it's a person I really love, the pain of the touching is over... you know, is overshadowed by the fact that I want to have that memory for as long as I can." "Because, you know, it's actually something beautiful to look back on." "That's the only thing that I want, and as for romance, oh, gosh!" "Think about it." "Romance is filled with innuendo and hints." ""Oh, Wolf, I really think that those ice-cream cones look delicious!"" "You know, and, I mean, now I know because I've got a more sophisticated scripting system." "If you want ice-cream from me, you have to say," ""Wolf, I'd like to have some ice cream."" "And that's the other thing." "When I come home, I have to create this " "I call it a pseudotypical." "That is "fake typical."" "See, it's not a neurotypical, because trying to be exactly like you, can't do it." "So I create a pseudotypical." "A person who I know, going in, is fake." "So it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be my best effort." "So the thing is, I generate this pseudotypical all day." "I go to work and I pretend -- I come as close as I can to being Joe Normal." "And working with people and not biting their heads off when they do the stupid things." "So, now I come home." "Now, when I come home, I can drop the pseudotypical act." "And I can let the werewolf out." "That's why I wore this shirt." "I can let him out, and I can be as wild and as crazy and there's nobody in here to offend but me." "But if I had to come home to a wife, you have to still keep that pseudotypical thing up." "And at that point, the only time I would get rest is when I go to sleep, and I couldn't live like that." "Okay, YouTube, are we doing..." "BOY:" "Tornado animations." "Tornado animations?" "BOY:" "Yeah, we're going to do some animation demo videos." "BOY:" "Bleh!" "Now it's like a whole building burned down." "Looks like a big building." "Having a diagnosis was like a really good, positive thing." "And I've made a lot of friends who are kind of more like me and they're kind of like, we're working on our friendships in our own kind of way that aren't like a typical friendship," "which I never could figure out and I was not " "I mean, I've had friends across the years, but mostly I haven't." "And now I probably have more people that I'm kind of close to than I ever have had before." "But I don't know that it helped me in my relationship with you." "I think it actually has gotten worse." "You want me to say why that is?" "'Cause Larry spends a whole lot of money and he went into a lot of debt and he talked me into refinancing the house and the debt is like, it won't even get paid off until I'm 67, and that's if I work full-time until I'm 67," "and so I'm like stressed out and either depressed or anxious or both like I've been for every day since April 2006." "It's $120,000." "That's not huge." "For me and the fact that it won't be paid off till I'm 67, it's huge." "And I don't take vacations, I don't eat." "LARRY:" "Well, join the real world." "It's only the real world for people who screw up on their finances and get talked into believing that..." "LARRY:" "And you're not going to let go of that resentment the rest of your life." "It's both a resentment and it's also a reality." "It's a blessing in disguise for you because I think you found a really, really big part of your life that you just needed to find, you know, and that's cool that you found out." "I guess I'm not figuring how I fit in the whole thing." "You know, and that's what I told you, you know." "But, you know, if that doesn't work, then I don't want any more of this, you know." "Well, that's mostly why I just try and go off and have my own life." "LARRY:" "Let's do that, then." "But I'm just living here, so..." "LARRY:" "So am I." "We can't figure it out by ourselves, I can tell you that." "So at least we had a..." "Do a pinkie thing about trying to make it work." "I don't know, I don't like to be touched." "LARRY:" "All right, here it is." "Starting right here, we're going to try to get something resolved." "Don't twerk my pinkie." "All right." "Okay, that's good." "MAN:" "I believe that, uh... oddness results in cultural content." "That when you can channel surf and you hit the Olympics and watch some guy do several flips and twists and turns off of the high-dive and hit the water, and you can go, "Ooh, that was amazing"" "and then move on to another channel." "And you cannot really be conscious of the fact that that person's life for years has been nothing but diving." "And..." "That's pretty odd, you know, to have your life be absolutely nothing but diving." "But that's how you get that good at diving." "And that, that kind of obsession, compulsion, oddness, intensity, that results in cultural content." "WOLF:" "I look at neurotypical life, and I'm sorry, I don't really want to be one of you." "I mean, no disrespect, but I don't want to be neurotypical because I'm not " "I mean, I'm not particularly... impressed that it is a better way of life." "It's a different way of life, and I celebrate the difference and I embrace the difference, the same way I embrace people that are white or I embrace people that are Chinese or that I embrace people that are in any way different." "But I don't want to be neurotypical." "I'm happy being what I am." "And I think a person who's going to come out and try and "cure" me because I make them uncomfortable," "I think they need to deal with themselves." "'Cause I'm not uncomfortable." "[Dog whimpering]" "GIRL:" "Yaaay!" "Yay!" "What's that song you know?" "I'll sing it 'cause you started clapping your hands." "Oh!" "♫If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands♫" "♫If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands♫" "♫If you're happy and you know it♫" "♫And you really wanna show it♫" "♫If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands♫" "♫If you're happy and you know it, say hooray♫" "Hooray!" "♫If you're happy and you know it, say hooray♫" "Hooray!" "♫If you're happy and you know it♫" "♫And you really wanna show it♫" "♫If you're happy and you know it, say hooray♫" "GIRL:" "Hooray!" "WOMAN:" "Yay!" "I know you have another one." "[Girl singing softly]" "WOMAN:♫If you're happy and you know it...♫" "Ha ha!" "GIRL:♫Happy and you know it, then show it...♫" "WOMAN:" "Yay!" "Arms go like this." "Wait, now more." "Lower " " No, that's too much." "We've got to get one of those cattle squishing things." "PAULA:" "This is easier and it doesn't take up space." "[Laughs]" "BOY:" "Well, I'm just coming out here to say bye." "[Laughter]" "LARRY:" "Squish?" "PAULA:" "Yeah, squish." "You know how, like when you take a deep breath..." "BOY:" "Pick me up!" "PAULA: ...'cause you're like really relaxed?" "Yeah!" "I'm feeling really relaxed right now." "It works faster than prescription drugs for me." "LARRY:" "What were you watching?" "BOY:" "Um, how to build stuff." "PAULA, CHUCKLING:" "Oh, I'm so calm."