Anything But Typical

Jason’s parents make the whole family sit in a row of chairs without moving for 25 minutes, causing Jeremy to become frustrated. His parents get into an argument about whether it’s fair to force Jeremy to participate in this activity.

Later, Jeremy asks Jason to read him a story. Jeremy lies in Jason’s bed and tries to convince him to read, but Jason says his brain feels like it is crawling with bugs. Jeremy correctly guesses that Jason is upset about “the bird girl” (128) and Jason tells him that he doesn’t want to meet her in person. They have their own way of communicating. Jeremy seems to understand and calm Jason like no one else can.

Jason writes that Bennu can’t imagine any other way of being. Bennu’s father tells him they will love him no matter what, and his mother cries. Bennu has three days to decide if he will have the surgery to become a normal sized person.

In the school cafeteria, Aaron Miller invites Jay-Man to join him and his friends. Jason describes how his therapist taught him to pick out individual noises and throw them away in order to manage overly loud environments. This is what he is doing when Aaron convinces him to eat lunch with them. Jason wishes he could talk to Aaron about his girl problems and get advice. Instead, he ends up telling Aaron the story of Bennu and his dilemma. Aaron likes his story and asks if it would be strange for Bennu to wake up from the surgery and not recognize himself in the mirror.   

Jason talks about the various uses of irony in storytelling. In a story he wrote last year, a man is terrified of death. He invents a special suit to keep him completely safe, but ironically, his invention malfunctions and kills him. Jason’s teacher gave him a low grade on the story for being late, which is not ironic, but simply unfair.

Jason has now spent 137 minutes sitting in a chair practicing for his upcoming flight. His father assures him there is nothing to fear, and Jason feels like he is about to cry. He wants to tell his dad about Rebecca, but he can’t because he would start crying. He knows his dad would feel compelled to fix the situation for him, “so I don’t tell him what’s wrong, because I don’t want him to feel bad” (134).

Returning to the idea of irony, Jason recalls his fourth birthday. His dad bought him a toy truck, which he hated. But even at the young age of four, he could tell that it was important to his dad that Jason love the truck, so he told him he did. He remembers preschool mostly in negative terms. When his preschool teacher recommended that Jason go for testing at a hospital called Yale-New Haven, his mother reacted angrily. Jason’s mother thought the idea was ludicrous, yelling at the teacher and refusing to listen.

Bad weather and a stomach virus make it impossible for Jason and his father to take their scheduled flight. His parents get into an argument about this, but Jason is secretly relieved at the “serendipitous” circumstances (138). He is so happy that he decides to finally write back to Rebecca. He tells her that he was supposed to go to the convention too, but can’t make it and is disappointed to miss meeting her. He decides he wants to convey his feelings, so he signs his message “Love, Jason Blake” (140). 

Just after Jason sends his love note to Rebecca, his dad enters his bedroom to announce that they have found another flight. He can go to the convention after all, only with his mother instead. His dad is ecstatic, but Jason feels like he is drowning at the bottom of the ocean. He will see Rebecca, and he’s just told her he loves her. 

Jason flashes back to his first trip to Yale-New Haven. His mother took him three years after his preschool teacher recommended it. She got lost on the way there, which made her very anxious. Being with his mother when she is lost and upset makes Jason’s symptoms worse. When they arrived, they met another autistic patient, who guessed that eight-year-old Jason was like her.

Jason and his mother arrive at the JFK airport, and they are both nervous and uncomfortable in the chaotic scene. When an airline employee asks for Jason’s ID, he realizes he will have to wear a nametag at the convention, which will tell Rebecca just who he is. He has a fantasy that he meets her and she has a large birthmark across her face like his teacher Mr. Shupack. He wonders if Rebecca may also have reason to be nervous to see him.   

In the rental car, even with GPS, Jason’s mother is lost and flustered. She has never been the same since the day they went to Yale-New Haven. He remembers how the doctors tested him with puzzles and pictures, and then he played video games while his mother spoke alone to the doctors. When his mother collected him, he saw that she had been crying very hard. He thought that she was crying because she was angry with him for not giving up his turn at the video game and for peeing in his pants.

In the rental car in Texas, Jason can tell his mother is about to cry as she tells him everything will be ok. She gets so upset trying to type into the GPS that she starts pulling on her hair, just like Jason does. He helps her put the destination into the GPS and she thanks him.

When Jason’s parents sat him down to tell him he had been diagnosed with autism, the diagnosis explained some differences between him and his peers, but he knew that things were not going to get better like his parents said.

In Dallas, Jason and his mother are briefly separated at the entrance of the conference hotel. Jason is immediately overwhelmed at being alone in a strange place and wonders how he will cope with life as an adult. Jason loves his hotel room because it is so simple and calm. His mother, however, seems anxious without her husband. Jason describes them as a complementary pair, and without him, she is incomplete.