Movie Quotes
During an event at Fallingwater, I got overly tired and stimmed like crazy. I dropped random lines from the last movie I watched.
To my surprise, Valerie Passafiume stormed out of the living room. She booked it past the stone fireplace like a centipede missing 98 of its legs. Everyone stared at me. Clearly, something I said royally pissed her off, but I had no idea what it could have possibly been.
Tethys Johnson shot me a judgemental glare. “Now, I know you like to think that you're the good guy in your movie, but we can’t all be heroes. Some of us have to be the villains.”
"Are you saying that I'm the bad guy in Valerie’s movie?" I asked. Of course, it's more likely that I'm the weird side character in Tethys’s movie.
Tethys shook her head. “Oh, she made it very clear that you are the bad guy in her movie!” she pointed at me.
The room fell silent. Everybody's still glared at me, even though I had no idea what I did wrong. After a few minutes, it occurred to me that it was probably nothing and Tethys only said what she said for the sake of some sort of appearance.
Valerie had cooled off enough to come in from outside, but I still doubt she was ready to talk. “Euphemia, what you said hurt,” she said, glaring at me.
“I'm so sorry about that,” I said, “I hope you saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”
Valerie disgustedly furrowed her brow. “What is that?” she snipped.
“It’s a movie about these two guys who are scam artists, and…”
Valerie waved her hands at me and shushed aggressively. I don't think she cooled off enough to talk just yet. I still don't understand how she’d take that line I quoted so personally.
The whole thing brought back memories of frequently getting in trouble at school for quoting movies.
I don't quote movies the way a “normal” person does. I script. Scripting is a stim where people recite quotes from TV, movies, etc. The person might recite the scripts solely to, and for, themselves. Some autistics can even act out entire scenes on their own.
Scripting can occur simultaneously alongside a conversation, but we don’t intend for the scripts to be part of the conversation itself. The problems happen when people outside the autistic person’s household typically don’t understand what they're doing. Especially when they repeat something inappropriate. And because of this, we have to be careful about what media comes into the house.
I was extremely lucky that many of my teachers understood the words carried no meaning, but sometimes it didn’t matter. I’d still get in trouble for it from time to time.
After getting told off, they’d tell me the consequences and make me promise not to do it again. Then, the next situation arises and I’d say something else. Because they didn’t understand it was a stim, they’d assume whatever consequence wasn’t enough, so they’d turn up the heat. It wouldn’t work, and after a time of bigger and bigger consequences, they’d accuse me of wanting to be a bad person. They would ascribe character flaws such as stubbornness and meanness. It doesn’t end well for anyone, especially me.
Once, it got bad enough that I came within a hair’s breadth of getting restrained. To this day, I am still not sure how I talked my way out of that, but I did. It’s even more impressive when you consider I was 12 at the time.
These days, I am thankfully aware enough to avoid this. I keep a mental inventory of what’s safe to incorporate versus what isn't. Today was the first time scripting something “safe” caused a problem.
Realistically, I shouldn't worry about upsetting Valerie because it probably wasn’t my fault. People can be weird.
I had to get away from everybody else. I exited the living room and went to one of the balconies overlooking the waterfall. Tethys caught up to me. “Hey Euphemia,” she said, “I just want to say you aren’t in trouble.”
I tipped my head to one side. “I’m not?” I asked. That would explain why I had so much trouble figuring out what I said that was wrong.
“No,” Tethys replied, “I went through the same find-fault-with-everything phase Valerie’s going through, right down to the thing that triggered it”
Her comment piqued my interest. “OK, then,” I asked as I leaned attentively, “What triggered it?”
Tethys told me everything. On her eleventh birthday, her dad went to pay for parking at the Lego store in Harrisburg, and he discovered his card was declined the hard way. A trip to the bank "reassured" him that the card was fine and the problem lay with the machine.
The next day, he discovered that things were not fine with the card and he needed to call the bank. He waited on hold for 4 hours before the bank closed with him waiting to speak with a representative. As it happened on a Friday, he had to call them back on Monday.
Come Monday, her father called the bank again. They told him that there was nothing they could do because he didn’t notify them right away, which he did. After an expletive-laden tirade about how they told him everything was fine and how they ignored him waiting, they asked him to see a psychiatrist and come back after being screened for mental illness.
Twelve days later, her dad got an appointment with the psychiatrist, who wrote him a prescription for Cyanex. “Are those cyanide pills?” I asked.
Tethys nodded. “He took the pills that evening and died in his sleep,” she said, sighing heavily. I could tell she still missed her father. “I don't think he knew what they were.”
“He should have recognized something was up when the prescription was for something that sounded vaguely like cyanide,” I responded. I hope what I said didn’t rub her the wrong way.
“Now, here’s where it gets interesting,” Tethys said. She put aside missing her father to explain what happened right before he died, “The night Dad got his pills, I did something that made Dad mad. He said he’d discuss my actions with me the following morning. I never found out what I did wrong because he died overnight.”
“So, your dad died and didn't tell you what you did wrong?”
“Exactly,” she said, “and it's the same thing with Valerie. She did something she wasn’t supposed to and one of her parents died without telling her what she did. all she can do is take offense to literally everything because she’s still guessing what she did wrong.”
I laughed. “I never would have guessed that you went through an offended-by-everything phase.”
“That’s because I grew out of it,” she chuckled. She nervously look back towards the house. “Valerie hasn’t, and I don't think she will.”