The Autism Diaries?! (Part 8)

A new occasional series here at “Sounds Good”

Step on a crack, you break your mother’s back. I never step on cracks. I have to walk an odd number of steps in the sections between the breaks in the concrete on the footpath, very occasionally I might have to ‘wrong-step’ myself so that the count can continue correctly. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven, or sometimes one-two-three-four-five, one-two-three-four-five. And it can’t — really — get above nine or eleven, that’s just wild, and the flow is out. So I’ll take a wee step towards a crack so I can reset the count. One-two-three is as low as I like to go, but if the concrete has been broken up in some huge way I might step through a section as if the floor is lava in a series of ones approaching some glitch in the code. I have no idea when it started, exactly. But it was definitely after school one day. And it’s never stopped. As soon as I got a Walkman and started to walk with headphones, they’ve never really left my ears — but the count continues. And sometimes it beautifully turns into a march. Papa Was A Rolling Stone. That’s a particularly good one for synching. Or Shaft. The Hustle. A fair amount of funk and disco actually. More Than A Woman by the Bee Gees. Weird that all that four-on-the-floor stuff works so well for my odd-count stepping. I’ve been the world’s worst Fitbit — constantly resetting — since I was six or seven. Burn baby burn. Still, I never step on cracks. Just pull right up in front of them but never on them. It’s caused one or two awkward last-minute shuffles. And so that might look silly to anyone that catches me at that moment but in very good news, to date Mum’s back is fine, thank god!