syndrome.
my baby told me
"i described you to my friend and she asked is he aspie?
is he what? sounds like aspergers syndrome to me.
i don't know; what's that?" but looked
it up herself on the Internet,
failing there to develop
a satisfactory sense of what
that syndrome signifies.
special-needs.
i told my baby
"when i told my mom's friend,
the special-needs educator, of my
past girlfriends all telling me
i have aspergers (in their
respective efforts to better dig
where i was coming from, no doubt),
she said they were psychologically abusive,
and i made excuses for them."
spectrum.
"so, what is it?"
i described my sense,
via the usual sources and also via mom's friend,
that it characterizes individuals toward the
well-socialized or highly-interactive end
of the spectrum of autism-related conditions,
and that it was hyperlexia in me they'd
thought denoted aspergers, "but mine's learned."