whats neurotypical

I love humans with jewelry. Humans that like sparkly crystals and wear them on their fingers and wrists and necks and ears, in their hair and decorated on their clothes. Honestly chances are, all aliens have jewelry they value from their planets. It's a space-wide thing to cover yourself in treasures from your world.

Sure. Humans fight each other all the time, aliens would probably think we’re the worst, right?

But what if we’re not?

What if the aliens come, and the first thing they say is, “Hello! We are so glad we found you! We are so pleased to meet you!” Similar to how humans greet puppies that we really want to meet and not scare, except it’s aliens that have been following radio messages across light years to find us.

We’ve spent so long wondering about what’s out there, and we see ourselves almost as a blight on our own planet, when we’re probably just fine. We’re trying. Maybe, just maybe, we’re okay. Maybe an outsider would look at us and think, “Look at them! They’re trying to be good! They name rocks and waters and cleaning robots! I love them for it!”

We tend to think that we must be the worst, the most backward, the blandest, least interesting or intelligent creatures in the galaxy.

I wonder how aliens would actually look at us.

We play whale noises into the black. We send greetings. We send probes with videos and audio tracks out explaining who we are and what we do on earth, just in case there’s someone else out there wondering if they’re alone in the universe. We tame predators to be companions because we are compassionate and we want to be friends with anything that will have us.

Maybe we’re not so bad.

Now I know realistically it's unlikely other alien species don't have some sort of survival hormone as well, but in the chance that they don't I feel like there's a lot of untouched potential for this.

Because adrenaline has been discussed for fight-or flight situations before; mothers protecting their children, people lifting cars or buildings off other people, surviving in bullshit situations out of sheer willpower; but the way we play with it has to be a cause of conversation amongst other intergalactic species too.

Like we have rollercoasters, theme park rides, horror movies. We jumpscare each other and teach our kids little hunting games like tag, hide-and-seek, and red light green light. We play video games where we hide from a pursuer in a threatening environment and our bodies react like we're actually being stalked in real life, and we do it on purpose.

Imagine an alien species that evolved to be semi-aquatic watching humans (a species evolved to climb and run on land) jump eagerly into the water to swim with them. No safety equipment, no flotation devices, just a thin modesty suit and sheer glee.

And humans, by the alien’s standards, are terrible at swimming. Just…truly awful. They can’t hold their breath for long, their bones and muscles are dense, their lungs make them too buoyant, their hair creates drag, their gangly limbs are slow and clumsy, and they can’t open their eyes underwater because the water will hurt them.

And yet the human laughs and splashes with their alien friend and alien can’t help but marvel as the human seems to adapt in real time right in front of their eyes.

The human streamlines themself to glide through the water as best they can, trying their best to turn their grasping hands into paddles, their feet into flippers. The human watches and copies how the alien moves and mimics them, learns and copies them until they move almost gracefully.

One time when I was a kid, I had a science teacher with a snake as a class pet, and said snake was almost done shedding. There was one little bit of dried skin stuck to its face and I was like, “would it hurt him if I pulled that off?” And the teacher said, “yes it actually could, it’s probably still attached to living skin if it hasn’t come off yet” and I was like “oh, sorry,” and he said, “that’s okay, you were just wanting to do the primate thing.” And damn, that’s such an accurate descriptor.