I want to thank Chaya Mallavaram and Mike Cornell for having me on their wonderful Spark Launch podcast, which focusses on neurodiversity. (Find it HERE, or look for it on YouTube or other places podcasts are found.) In our discussion I talk a bit about my very autistic way of preparing for my first visit with a therapist--scripting and rehearsing every word I wanted to say. I didn't do that for Spark Launch, but I'm afraid that writing my book, writing several articles, and scripting several speeches about the value of neurodiversity had me overly prepared. (My dad would have called the result "diarrhea of the mouth;" my friend Dando Gabi would have said "Trop parler c'est maladie!") I talked too much, and should have settled in for more of a conversation. But in the end, good stuff was said by all.
By the way, I only learned recently that Gabi's wonderful phrase, "Trop parler c'est maladie" (too much talk is an illness) was from a song by Benin's Polyrthmo--a song I'd probably heard ringing in the background a hundred times--or may even have danced to a few times. Music was (I'm sure is) ever present in Togo in those days.
(And speaking of Togo, I tell a good story from Togo in the podcast about when I learned the value of open doors--a nearly perfect analogy to like as an autistic person who doesn't understand the rules of the neurotypical world.)
