Little Girl in RED

                 Pirate Shopping

    The Mama says,"We are going to buy you a dress."

Do not want one. Need protection on my legs for sword fights.

Got to climb trees when the other pirates

try to take over the territory. Do not need a dress.

      The Mama is looking at dresses anyway.

        Oh! Oh! Look. Over here! thinks the Little Girl in Red

to the Mama.

(In the boys section points the Little Girl in RED.)

A coat for a PIRATE CAPTAIN!

(It is a blue sailor coat with RED sergeant stripes on the sleeve.)

That is mine.  Got to put it on.

                                                         Who stole my pirate coat and put it in the this store?

Uh oh. The Mama's coming. "You want that?" asks the Mama.

It's mine. I am the captain of the pirates!

"Tell you what. I'll buy you the sailor coat, if you wear the sailor dress with it."

Sailor dress not so bad. Sailors not as good as pirates, though.

Pirates have swords. I am a pirate. A PIRATE CAPTAIN!

Let's get out of here. I have digging to do. The gold is just waiting for me.

               High Functioning Autism was rarely diagnosed when I was a child. The doctors told my mother and father I was spoiled, stubborn, rude, and lost in my own world because it was what I wanted. I would speak when I was ready. A nonverbal I.Q. test proved I had enough intelligence to make it in the world and convinced my parents to put me in school a year early. As far as my aversion to touch, that was growing pains the experts assured my ever wondering parents. "But she isn't growing very much." they pointed out. Growing pains was the pat answer in the 1960s to any pain doctors were not able to explain in children and therefore my extra sensitive skin was mis-diagnosed with (I don't even want to think of how many) other children. I learned to stay away from touchy feeley humans. I learned to stay disconnected from humans in general. I found the purr and rumble of a motor more loving to my body than my mother's arms.

     Today I am 36 and I go to a support group once a month for persons with Asperger's Syndrome at the Emory Autism Center in Atlanta, GA. I also am a part of a world wide private email list for folks who find it difficult to be a part of the neuro-typical (NT) society at large. I have been very fortunate this year. Unlike Rainman whose father left him too much money and who could make a fortune in Las Vegas, I must work to pay for my rent. This year I found a work that seems to fit me. I am a chaplain to persons with Alzheimer's. I see through my neurological difficulties into theirs and pray I bring them a little bit of comfort. I consider myself lucky for finding a work that fits me. But this does not discount my lonely childhood and my ongoing pain of trying to make it in a world I do not understand.

     This is not a technical page. It is comprised of narratives from my childhood that loop round and round my autistic brain. As a child I was drawn to the color red and insisted on wearing red cotton clothes as much as possible. Included here are a few of the adventures of that Little Girl in RED that are etched in my memory. They show me that I did not  really play as other children did. I honestly thought I was a pirate and a monkey and anything else that came into my literal brain. One thing I knew for sure, I was not like the other humans so I must be something other than human. I found myself fitting on many skins since I did not seem to fit in my own skin.

     "My Shoes" is a story about my thinking that my clothing was a part of my skin and not an item to be discarded. And like "Pirate Shopping" I didn't "play" in my shoes. I lived whole heartedly and I was trapped in my own world not by choice as persons think when they think of play. I was an explorer and a pirate and all the other things described in this next piece.

  My Shoes

I have a pair of slip-on sneakers that I don't have to tie.

The Mama says they are old and dirty and we need to throw them away.

"No" I say.

On Sunday we go to picnic in the park with the hippies.

My parents are older than the hippies but they are actors and they like the hippies.

The Mama has long beautiful hair that hangs all the way to her bottom.

The Daddy has hair down to his shoulders. They look like the hippies.

They stopped and got a bucket of chicken from the colonel.

I do not like fried chicken. I do not want to eat a bird. Birds are my friends.

I eat potato salad instead.

My boy is 11 and he likes chicken very much.

My baby is 3 and she likes chicken very much.

I am the only one who does not like chicken.

It is so hot that we take off our shoes. We run to the playground

and the grownups watch from far away.

I swing and I slide. There is a slide that has a tunnel on it.  

For a long time you can disappear

from the grownups.  

I am an army soldier fighting in a war. I parachute down the slide to save my country.

I shimmy up one of the tall poles on the swingset. I am an explorer.

I am the first girl to climb to the North Pole. I can see the whole world from up here.

The grownups say it is time to go.

We climb in the old station wagon. Me, my baby, and my boy climb in the back seat.

I feel so free and happy from discovering the North Pole and from saving my country from enemies.

We are leaving the park and I look at my feet. "MY SHOES!" I shriek. "MY SHOES, MY SHOES."

"Should we go back?" The Daddy asks the Mama.

"NO!" says the Mama. "We will not go back and get those horrible shoes.

Mary Margaret it is time to get a new pair of shoes."

It is no use. They are from another planet. They do not understand.

I jump in the "way back" of the station wagon and look desperately out the back window.

I can still see the picnic table where my shoes are still sitting nicely where I put them.

They are waiting for me to come back and get them.

"Someone will steal my shoes." I yell to the people in the front of the car.

The mama says, "Your shoes will be placed in the garbage where they belong."

I can't see the picnic table anymore.

I curl up in a ball so far away from the grownups. No one can get me now.

I cry, "My shoes, my shoes, my magic shoes."

I think, How will I be able to leap tall buildings?

How will I be able to defend my country from the enemy?

How will I fight dragons and monsters and sharks?

How will I get to the North Pole?

Oh my shoes. The little girl in red needs her shoes.

Rock the little girl in red. Keep her in a ball.

Don't let them touch you.

People hurt.

People hurt.

Oh god I want my shoes.

I need my shoes. They are mine.

They are magic.

Doesn't anyone understand? I want my shoes.

Those shoes have

killed millions of dragons, climbed millions of mountains,

gone back in time to a million places.

Those shoes have outrun polar bears and cobras and tigers.

Those shoes are a part of me.

Don't you see?

That is me on that table in the park.

That is me!

That is me!

Wild Kittens

My grandma has wild kittens

in the old shack next to her house.

I watch her put the left over lunch

into the chipped porcelain pan.

She mixes

in dry cat food, dry milk and rusty water.

My grandma doesn't talk

for this is an important job that takes

a lot of concentration.

My grandma always does

important things like

feeding wild kittens and burning the trash.

 She carries the cat feast out the back screen door.

            The door squeaks at her. I follow my grandma

                                               but she waves at me to stay back.

Wild kittens don't like little girls, not even little girls in red. Wild kittens only like my grandma.

I sit on the cold concrete steps.

My grandma crosses the yard and she disappears into the shack that the grown-ups call The Old Kitchen.

I see big cats race across the yard as my grandma talks in cat talk.

Cat talk sounds like this: Here kitty, kitty.

In cat talk, here kitty kitty means I love you.

I don't see any wild kittens but I know they are there.

My boy told me so and my boy doesn't lie about important things like kittens.

I am tired of sitting on the steps, so I hide under the house and sit in the cool black dirt.

I am a wild kitten.

My grandma can't see me, but she knows that I am here.

And may all the wild kittens out there find this page a source of comfort. This is my first try at this. I hope to expand some day. But on this 21st of June in 1998 I am glad for technology and my limited knowledge of such technology.

From Left to Right:

1st Picture - Me at my Th.M. (in Hebrew Bible) graduation last year.

2nd picture - My daughter Jane, Mary Crist graduating with a Th.D. in Pastoral Counseling two years ago, My son Ward, Me.

3rd picture - Ward, My brother Phillip, Me graduating with M.Div. 6 years ago, my daughter Jane having her own autistic fit, my mother, my father

Coaching Pictures: Ward and Jane are players 5 and 10. I am trying to decide who goes in the next quarter. Needless to say when given the choice for a team color I picked red.

Press here to respond if you wish to write to Mary Margaret a.k.a. M.M.  Redrock35@aol.com .