Shifted Perspective

For anyone paying attention to these sorts of things, you will note that I have published this in both the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories. I have done this because I am going to be relating an event that actually happened in my daily life; however, I am going to try writing it from the perspective of someone else. Rather than make a call on my own as to where it truly belongs, I will let you decide.

After I write the experience from the alternate perspective, I will relate what happened from my perspective. I will attempt to write my perspective in the moment rather than what I have gleaned from it in hindsight and reflection. That part is in the fictionalized piece. I am doing it in this order for two reasons. The first is as an exercise in writing from different perspective, and the second is to see how well I did in painting a picture of what happened in an altered perspective. I would be curious to hear from you dear reader. You can do this in several ways. You can comment. This requires you to be logged in to google or wordpress. You can email me at thegraphitedragon@thegraphitedragon.com. I promise not to use your email for any reason other than replying to your comment. You can also go to My Facebook or Twitter.

Ok, on with the show, this is it:

A Giant has invaded my space. I can’t even tell if it knows my language or not. It’s voice is loud and deep and it seems to want me to do things, some I do not want to do. It stumbles around and is touching all my things. Yes, that is my food, why are you touching it? It doesn’t understand I do not want it touching my food. Does it even care.

It moved my work! Why won’t it let me finish what I started? It is pointing and growling. It wants me to join the others. The woman is talking. I like her voice. It is comfortable and soothing. A piece of the familiar.

I grab something idly to comfort my body, but the giant is taking it from me. It hands me a wiggling slimy thing. This is not what I want.

The giant has moved my food from storage and has my clothes. I am not done evil giant! I need to finish!

It is commanding me to get out. I cannot get out! I have work to do! The room is not right, it is not back to how I found it. I run from the giant. It saw me hide, it knows where I am.

It says it wants to understand, it says it wants me to show it. I run from cover to get what I was working on before. I cannot leave until it is put back properly. There, now I can be safe in knowing all is in the right place. I will go quietly as the giant wishes.

While not exactly a deep dive in to what may or may not be going on in the mind of an autistic child, that does sort of relate some of the discomfort with new things. I was also hoping to be more literal in descriptions. An analytical mind might describe something by its characteristics, and categorize them relative to their own.

So here’s the event from my perspective.

I was in a Kindergarten classroom with a low verbal autistic boy of three and a half. The student was working on building with little wooden blocks. At clean up time I tried to be directive but not harsh. I often wonder about how tone comes across to people without emotional regulation or typical markers for understanding the emotions of others. We think we are being flat and emotionless. Direct but not demanding. What do they think? I was also wondering how things would sound coming from a being twice my height. Would a twelve foot tall person sound relaxed to me?

Anyway, the student was part of the clean up process, though everyone just grabbed something and put it back. It was then time for a story at the carpet. The student was unable to remain at the carpet for long and began to grab at devices used for controlling the Smart Board, a kind of touch screen used in classes to present materials from a computer. I tried to replace the smart board “markers” with a fidget toy, but he was not interested.  Carpet time was about fifteen minutes of me trying to corral this student in to being somewhat quiet and not being a distraction for the whole class. At the end it was time to go outside. This was when the most interesting thing happened. This event is the reason why this interaction has stuck in my mind.

The student refused to go outside, which I was told was very unlike this student. Normally he enjoys the fresh air and exploration, as well as the lack of direct control on his behaviour. This time, he was not listening at all, and gave every indication of not wanting to go out. Because of his low verbal communication, he was not able to express what was bothering him so much.

I went through a sort of check list of the things that are normally at issue with students like this one; however, he did not respoind to any of them, and continued to escalate in his frustration. I think he finally gave up and ran and hid behind an art easel. I like to think that I am fairly calm in these situations so I slowly made my way over and tried to calm the situation.

I asked him to show me what he wanted and he immediately went over to a shelf and picked up a single wooden block. Anouther student had placed the block on there during clean up time, and this kid wanted to put it where it actually belonged. Once he did so he became compliant and did what I asked.

What I found interesting was the length of time that elapsed between the trigger and the melt down. In my experience if there is something that is making a person uncomfortable, it triggers right away, or at least begins to build. From all outward signs, this student was acting normally right up until it was outside time. My conclusion was that he was fine with the disorder of the wooden block until he had to leave the room. He could not be comfortable with leaving the room in disarray, but he could be in a room with disarray.

Of course, I could be wrong, it has been known to happen.

The point of this was to try and write an event I experienced from the perspective of the other peson in the interaction. All too often we find ourselves in situations that we think we understand, yet the outcome was not what we thought it would be.

Sure, most people develop theory of mind fairly early in the developmental process, but just because we understand the other person has their own thoughts, feelings and desires, doesn;t mean we actually understand what those are. Empathy can aid us here. What we often fail to recognize is that empathy has a flaw. Empathy is a process whereby we put ourselves in the shoes of anouther and judge the situation through that lense. How would it make ME feel. While this is incredibly important for morality and relationships, it is still limited in its scope.

We most often fail to actually see the event through the eyes of the other person. While this is completely understandable; people are complex amalgams of their genetics, experiences, and upbringing, you know, the old biopsychosocial framework deal.

In this case, I went a bit off the deep end in trying to actually put myself in the mind of an atypical person. While this is not recommended, think of how out of their minds criminal profilers must be, it can be an interesting exercise for writers. While not a practice we can employ in our daily lives, it could prove beneficial to our writing.

Can you just put yourself in someone else’s shoes, or just put someone else’s shoes on for a bit?