Thread by @EnswellJones

Charley, my 14-year-old son, is autistic. One of his peccadillos: He’s constantly asking people questions about themselves. Sometimes that’s fine. Sometimes that’s awkward, like when he asks a stranger, “Have you always been chubby?” or “Why are you missing your arm?”

There is zero malicious intent. He’s just curious, and he files away every answer. We have tried to curtail it, mostly because we worry about Charley asking the wrong person the wrong question. But autistic kids aren’t always open to modification. They are firm in their beliefs.

Charley loves a hot tub more than anything. There’s something about the bubbles. So one weekend when he was 10 or 11, we went to a hotel in Kingston that has a waterslide and a hot tub. It was winter and quiet and we retreated to the hot tub for a snuggle. Perfection.

After two blissful minutes—this will sound like the set up for a joke, but what follows actually happened—a man covered in tattoos, a man missing all but three of his teeth, and two little people—two people with dwarfism—came out of nowhere and dropped into the water.

Charley looked from one to the other to the others and back again. My head was on a fucking swivel, too, because clearly this was some elaborate prank. I had traveled from Heaven to a special kind of Hell in seconds. Charley cleared his throat. Oh shit, here we go.

Charley first looked at the illustrated man and said, “Why do you have so many tattoos?” And the man very kindly explained that he got his first tattoo when he was young—this one right here—and then he got another, and another, and before he knew it, he was covered in them.

Charley nodded and looked to the man with no teeth. “Why don’t you have any teeth?” he asked. And the man, also very kindly, said that he played hockey all his life, and first one tooth got knocked out and then another and another. Like the tattoos, but the opposite.

Now Charley turned to the two little people, a man and a woman. I’m like, oh please oh please oh please. And to my surprise, Charley said, “Can I ask you a question?” He never does that. So I’m thinking, Perhaps I have underestimated my son. Shame on me. “Sure,” the woman said.

And Charley said, “Are you leprechauns?”

I nearly pushed his head under the water as soon as I heard, “lep…” But it was too late. My eyes went wide and I said in a torrent, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, this is Charley, and he has autism, and sometimes he asks questions that are rude, but he doesn’t mean to be rude…”

The woman said, “It’s okay.” She looked at Charley and said, “Charley, do you know how you’re just a little different from other people?” And Charley, who is aware of his autism, said, “Yes.” And she said, “And do you know how you were born that way?” And Charley said, “Yes.”

And she said, “Well, we were born smaller than most people. But inside we’re the same, the way inside you’re the same. The way inside we’re all the same.” Charley looked at her and nodded, fully satisfied, and he put his head on my shoulder and savoured the bubbles.

I could have wept. I mouthed “Thank you” to the woman, who went on to explain that sometimes people called people like her a dwarf, or a midget, but she preferred “little person.” Charley asked me yesterday if I remembered “the little person we met in the hot tub.”

“I do,” I said, and I smiled, because I know that Charley will also remember forever that one tattoo sometimes leads to another, and one lost tooth sometimes leads to another, and one answer sometimes leads to another, and a stranger becomes an unforgettable friend.