Five weird things about me:

1. I used to climb fences and “defend our territory” against neighbor cats by using cat postures, staring them down, and, if necessary, hissing or growling. I also used to “mark my territory” the same way cats do (indoors and out), and it always got blamed on the cats.

2. I love country music (weird for my geographic region and political persuasion anyway).

3. I can climb things easily and perch precariously without falling, but if you try to get me to walk on flat ground I get confused and may bump into things or fall unless it’s totally familiar.

4. I’m on Second Life with as close to an exact replica of my offline body as possible (this is quite definitely weird for there). (Might post more about SL sometime.)

5. I can wiggle my scalp.

(I wasn’t tagged, never have been, for anything, for whatever reason.  But this has been going around the Autism Hub for awhile now, so I’m joining in, tagged or not.)

I turned 26 yesterday.  I am grateful that I was born in a time before anyone could pressure my parents in myriad ways not to have me because of my genes.  By calling them irresponsible, by accusing them of bringing more suffering into the world, by telling them not to perpetuate their defective genes, by telling them horror stories, by threatening to make insurance more difficult, by overt hostility and scorn, by telling them that only the weirdo activist auties actually prefer to exist but that “real” auties live lives of constant unmitigated suffering that is surely worse than never having existed, or anything else like that.  If I have kids, I will be subjected to that pressure merely because of being autistic (in fact I’ve had people tell me I should be sterilized starting when I was a teenager, and the only doctor I dared to talk to about possible pregnancy in the future showed me a display of sheer bigotry), and if a prenatal test is developed, even non-autistic people will be subjected to that pressure.  Here’s to those who fight eugenics in all its guises.