Had A Very Fun Memory Of When I Was A Kid And Used Plastic Straws As A Chewing Stim Toy Before We Even

Had a very fun memory of when I was a kid and used plastic straws as a chewing stim toy before we even knew i was autistic, we just thought it was a good adhd focus thing since it worked.

All the teachers knew and understood why I had the straw and never yelled at me for it, and the other kids had no idea why but they just knew, “oh he needs that straw” and didn’t question it.

One day in second grade, we had a sub. She was new to the school and as she was giving us the activity while we sat on the floor (i dont remember the activity just that it was a floor activity) she saw my straw and went, “dont chew on things like that!” And scolded me in front of the class, taking my straw from me.

I of course didn’t do anything cause she was an authority figure and I couldn’t break the rule of defying authority figures so i just sat in disappointment, immediately feeling distressed cause my stim toy was taken from me.

The class was dead silent until one of them went, “miss- he needs that actually.” And then another one piped up, “yeah! He has one every day! It’s important he chews on it!”

None of them understood WHY i had it, but they respected that it was important

I got my straw back :3 and that was the best memory of accommodation from my classmates ive ever known

reminder that being against ai also means being against character.ai and not using character.ai and not interacting with character.ai

i've never talked to chatgpt i've never talked to character.ai i have no interest in talking to a chatbot even if it's fun or based on my comfort character. if we want companies to stop using ai we need to tell them we aren't going to interact with it - so don't.

don't talk to robots. full stop.

normalize my 12th grade English teacher, who admitted that his favorite TV show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and when a male student suggested that it was because Buffy/Sarah Michelle Gellar was hot, wrinkled his face like he’d bitten into something rotten and dead, and said, “At my age (he was 53), there is nothing less sexy than a teenager. You’re all disgusting messes.” It was 1999, I was 17, and I’d grown up in conservative Christian schools and churches. In my life I’d heard heard dozens of sermons from male preachers and teachers and even some older students, whining about how hard it was to be a dude and not commit the sin of thinking sexual thoughts, and how they needed women to wear long skirts and cover their bodies to not objectify them

and my bitter, misanthropic, atheist Brit Lit teacher, who hated my class because he was obsessed with teaching Tom Sawyer but got stuck with Shakespeare and Jane Austen, was the first, and this day the last man I have ever heard articulate a rebuttal from the depths of his soul to the idea that it was normal for teenage girls to be desirable to middle aged men

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

“Two years in a row my dad has been visited by a couple of ducks. They nest and lay eggs in the garden and have successfully raised ducklings each year. This is him preparing for this years brood.”

(Source)