Thinking About Beauty and Zombies

One of the things I find fascinating about working with people with autism, and that some probably find maddening, is trying to understand the jumps from one topic to another with seemingly no connection between them.

For example...

My middle school charge was mentioning today that the girls of a woman he meant the other day were "beautiful" (he looked at me as he said the word, probably since I recently got him to replace the adjective "hot" with "beautiful," since I'd prefer he tell some girl his age she's beautiful instead of "you're hot!")... Them without skipping a beat or taking a breath he asked me my plans for the Zombie Apocalypse, as if it was something on our agenda. Haircut, check. Lunch, check, Park, check. Zombie apocalypse?

Before answering I asked him to help me understand that leap of topics... Was it that he went from beautiful to the least beautiful things in the world, namely zombies? Or he wondered if he'd still like those girls if they were zombies? He wasn't sure and found my questions hilarious (he's a great audience).

Then I tried to think of something interesting to say about the Zombie Apocalypse that had not already been said.

What I came up with (I'm proud of my ability to think quick, what I call my improv skills) was this:
"Well, I'm not crazy about the idea of eating other people so I'd enter the apocalypse loaded with lots of crackers and chips so I'd eat that instead of other people."

And what are your plans? He told me he'd kill as many zombies as he could. Well, then.... I thought quickly of a way to end this topic and return to something more reality-based so I said... well, before we go to lunch how about we make a deal?

What kind of deal?

I heard myself saying, "I promise I won't eat you if you don't eat me."

He agreed and we moved on to other topics.


‪#‎aglimpseofmylife‬