Labels, autism, and Refrigerator Poetry

Today's attached image is of a bunch of refrigerator magnets. You've probably seen these before -- you get hundreds of little magnets with random words on them. If you arrange them properly, you can sometimes get something resembling meaning. This is quite difficult to do, which makes them fun to play with.

There is an unusually large collection of such magnets on the fridge where I'm staying -- perhaps two or three hundred words. There were entire swarms of little nonsense phrases. I made up my mind to try and make a rhyming poem with fridge magnets. This is no small task -- even if you can think of a rhyme, it won't work unless you can find it. It took a little over an hour, and what I managed is what you see in the picture. It isn't good poetry, and it's not particularly meaningful, but it rhymes and I'm proud of it.

Today, we visited a friend of a friend's house for lunch and a conference session. This involved lasagna and coconut cream pie, so it was a happy thing. The family has three little boys, who are cute and cuddly. One of them is now two days old, and is cute in a seven-inch-long kind of way. The oldest is a four-year-old who is fascinating to play with. He's autistic, which makes it tricky to talk to him. He clearly does know quite a few words, and he understands quite a lot, but he's reluctant to use the words he knows. He's cute and likes being tickled. He can also assemble a mean puzzle -- his mom dumped out a hundred piece puzzle for him (this kid is four), which sent him into intense concentration while he assembled the first fifty pieces, making very, very few mistakes. It's fascinating to see a kid of four picking up and immediately placing pieces in a puzzle that size without breaking stride. He did get bored and give up about halfway in, but it was a pretty big puzzle.

It got me thinking a bit about the words we use to label each other and ourselves, though. We tend to pick labels for ourselves and then live up to them. People label themselves as "autistic," "ADD," "depressive," "OCD," or "deaf." These are mostly negative labels. Their good side is that they make you more likely to get or accept help; on the bad side, I think they sometimes create a self-image of being flawed or incomplete, and I think that it's wrong to believe this. I think everyone has mental and physical weaknesses of all different types and difficulties. Some are visible, and some are not. Some of them are labeled, some are not. If you've acquired a label you don't like, escape it!

On the other hand, I think people use labels positively too. Like, when somebody decides that they want to take up a career in engineering; they make the label "soon-to-be-engineer" and then they live by it. Once they believe the label, it helps them get past the problems right in front of them without giving up. Things like super-tough calculus classes or difficult certification exams are eventually conquered just because you're sure you can do it eventually -- you are, after all, a "soon-to-be-engineer." I think you can apply similar principles to religion, racism, nationalism, marketing & branding, networking, and a host of other things. We live and die by the way we label things.

That's enough of a rant for now. It's already gotten too long. Good bye for today.