fill me up with chemicals and other peoples words

when i’m at work, people get mad at me for not hearing them the first few times. like, openly agitated. they’ll assume that i’m stupid, or rude, or careless. sometimes they will indirectly chastise me for ‘not paying attention.’ at which point i say “i’m sorry, i’m hard of hearing. you were on my right side and i’m severely deaf in that ear,” and they go “oh my god i’m so sorry i didn’t know.”

yeah. you didn’t, did you? the only available information you had about me was… that i didn’t hear you say something. the thing you hated enough to comment on was that i couldn’t hear you. you don’t get to backpedal once you find out that i have can’t-hear-well disease. i shouldn’t need to present a diagnosis to expect decency from you

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

The two Big Rules when instructing younger students was- 1. Compliment before Critique 2. Don’t say ‘but’, say ‘now’

Praise kids on what they get right first, especially if they are struggling. Like OP said, kids don’t like to engage with people who make them feel bad. They need encouragement when learning new things.

Number two boils down to this. If you tell a kid a compliment, then say “but you need to fix this”, that ‘but’ completely negates your compliment. It’s gone. It was canceled out like adding a negative to a positive. Using “hey, that punch is looking great, now let’s focus on your stance” doesn’t verbally cancel out the progress they’ve made. It’s like they’ve checked off something on their list of stuff to work on.

Among ND people I know, the response to masks has varied. Some really like them, because they don’t need to spend a ton of energy thinking about their facial expressions. Some have basically gone “I don’t like them, but whatever. It is what it is.” And a small few have had sensory issues they can’t figure out a work around for, so they just do curbside pickup and avoid situations where a mask is needed as much as possible.

And when you think about it, it’s not very surprising. ND people, whatever our individual issues, are pretty used to having to move through a world not designed for us. Why would a pandemic be any different?

Meanwhile, we got to witness NTs having meltdowns because they couldn’t get a haircut. The pandemic had interrupted their routine, and they couldn’t handle it. For the first time, they were living in a world that wasn’t designed around their desires.