Cassandra
From Allison83@gmail.com:
Cassandra, I want you to meet up with me at Dan’s at four o’clock tomorrow. We’ll be moving onto the next step in the program.
-Allison
On the day of this meeting, I walk around downtown without any constant worries. It’s not as nice as it was last week, but you can still walk around easily enough if you have the right winter clothing. My biggest concern is crossing the roads, since there’s heavy traffic and some drivers show little patience towards pedestrians if this is the case. Luckily enough, all drivers remain polite as I make my way across, without any of the beeping horns or cussing which I’ve experienced from time to time. Dan’s, a small diner that opened this summer, happens to be three stores away from Starbucks, so I’m taking almost the same route I took during our first meeting, which is always convenient for me.
Allison is one of only four customers already there, and I immediately notice she’s not alone. Seated beside her is an Asian guy in a black T-shirt with a Fire tablet in his hands. He gives me a sly smile and says, “So, you’re the new client Allison’s working with, am I right?”
“Yes,” I answer. Then, turning to Allison, I ask, “So, this is your other client?”
“Yes, Cassandra. His name is Alan Yoshida and he has a blog of his own that I’m sure you’ll find quite interesting,” Allison says. Picking up her purse, she goes on. “For today, you two are on your own.”
“Really? Why is that?” I ask.
“As part of our program, we think it’s important for members to be in touch with other writers. And so, you two will be writing partners, giving each other feedback on your writing, going over the work of other writers to get a better grip on what you should do, and offering advice on how to move ahead in the program.
“As for your question, Cassandra, I’m leaving you two on your own because I already did my job. I explained to you how Scrollers works and helped you get started. You would probably get annoyed with me if I was always telling you what to do, so I think you’d probably enjoy your work more if you worked with a peer. Does that seem okay with you?”
“I guess so,” I say. I probably won’t mind working with Alan; he seems friendly enough so far, and probably isn’t that much older than me. As someone who’s never had a lot of friends, I could probably use the company of someone close to my age.
“For today, you should spend your time getting to know each other and looking over the blog posts you’ve written so far. Try not to stay too long here but do take your time with this meeting. It could determine how well your relationship remains during your time working together, and I always prefer to see writing partners become friends instead of rivals. Now, before I leave, do either of you have any other questions?”
“No,” I say.
“What about you, Alan?”
“Oh, I’ve got nothing, Allison,” Alan says.
“All right. Goodbye for now, and good luck.” She leaves rather quickly afterwards, looking as if there is some other task she must get done herself that she doesn’t want to let us know about.
Once she’s gone, Alan flashes that sly smile of his again. “So, it’s just the two of us now. Since I usually like taking things easy at first meetings, how about we order something here first? Money’s all on me.”
Before I answer him, I glance at the menu to notice the prices. The cheapest items are around $3.50, which were all appetizers, while burgers and sandwiches aren’t anything less than $6.00, with no deals for a meal. Once I’ve seen all the prices, I say, “Are you sure you want to pay for it all? I usually like giving people at least three dollars if a meal is too expensive.”
“It’s not a problem for me. I’m nowhere near being rich, but I do try saving for when I really need the money, so I usually have enough with me. But if you really feel you must, perhaps I will take it. Generosity from new friends is always nice.”
Taking another look at the menu, I decide to stick to my past politeness habits and hand Alan a crisp twenty -dollar bill. “I’ll have one regular cheeseburger with no onions or pickles, one order of small fries, and one small diet coke.”
“Sounds good, but what’s with all the emphasis on the one?”
“I have to make my orders as clear as possible. I’ve always had waiters demanding exactly how much you want of something and once saw someone being given two burgers when she just ordered one, so I figure everyone must know the exact amount you want of something when making an order.”
Alan laughs. “Do what’s best for you, I guess. In that case, I’m getting one bacon cheeseburger, one side of cheesy fries, and one medium Sprite. Sounds clear enough for you?”
I frown. “Do you want me to order all that for you?”
“No, silly. I just wanted to share my exact orders too. I’m still paying for almost everything.”
“Well, your order is going to be a bit more expensive than mine. The bacon burger’s $7.25, which is about a dollar more than the regular one, while the cheesy fries will be three dollars and…”
“Which is why I’m not making you give me more than you already did,” Alan interrupts, looking more amused than annoyed as he speaks. “Now, let me go order our stuff before we both starve.”
As he’s making the orders, I wonder what sort of impression I’m making on him so far. If Lilli were here, she’d probably say I was scaring him off by giving him money he didn’t need and letting him know how expensive his meal was turning out. However, despite some of his teasing, he didn’t seem to be too bothered by how I was acting. I wonder if perhaps Allison told him about my autism before this meeting, or if he’d read my blog post and had some background on me already. Either way, it’s still too early to know if we’ll be getting along all the time. It usually takes some time to know for sure.
Alan brings over one tray at a time, waving me off when I try going over to help. “If you want to help, just get some napkins and straws,” he demands. I do exactly as he says, and it doesn’t take long for us to be seated together once again.
“So, to start things off, are you fine with me calling you Cassandra all the time? Do you ever go by Cass or Cassie?” Alan asks just seconds after we’ve started eating. He eats very fast, getting halfway to his burger in less than a minute, whereas I eat more slowly, since I’m trying to be more watchful over both how much I eat and the way I eat in front of others. When I was a kid, I ate almost as quickly as Alan does, and I was very sloppy when doing so, getting grease or sauce all over my clothes or pieces of food onto the floor. It took a lot of scolding from Mom to get me to change my eating habits, and by the time I was eleven, I figured the best way of doing so was by eating more slowly.
“Oh, no. I don’t go by nicknames, and I don’t like it when people use them for me. If I ever hear someone calling me either Cass or Cassie, I correct them right away. Cass sounds like an incomplete word, and it doesn’t help that if you take off the C, you’re left with the word “ass”, and Cassie just sounds too sweet for me.”
“Okay, I guess that explanation’s fair enough,” Alan says. “I asked because everyone else I know named Cassandra usually went by one of those two nicknames. The only nickname anyone’s ever gotten off my name is Al, and like you, I have my own reasons for hating it. Kids in elementary school got plenty of kicks out of calling me Weird Al, and since that was back before I learned about the musical legend of that exact name, it was torture to me for so long. Also, I once met an Al who wasn’t the greatest person on Earth, who also happens to be the subject of my latest blog post.”
“You probably understand why I don’t like nicknames more than anyone else.”
“It’s not that I don’t like them so much as not liking ones that are too embarrassing. Do you seriously never like them?”
“Not when someone uses them all the time for a person. In my opinion, if you’re just going to call your kid something like Kim all the time, officially name them Kim and not Kimberly. Otherwise, their first name is just useless.”
“All right,” Alan says with a chuckle. “You have some weird ways of thinking.”
“I’ve been told that before.”
“Well, you’re in luck. I’m probably a lot more of a weirdo then you are, and the more us weird people can stick together, the better.”
I almost ask him if he’s aware of my autism but decide not to do so because I figure he must have read my blog already and since I don’t want to have to discuss my disability more than is necessary. He’s joking around a lot, but he doesn’t seem to be doing it to bother me. If anything, based on what he last said, he’s probably using his humor to bring us together and make me feel normal, which I appreciate.
Pushing his tablet in my direction, he says,” Now, how about you get started on reading my stuff?”
I look through the tablet’s screen. “‘Choosing My Own Misadventures’. That’s an interesting choice for a blog name.”
“It’s supposed to be a recollection of past sticky situations I got myself into, with very little references to the bizarre book series, just to clear things up. This post will probably give you a better of idea of why I’m so weird.
Still eating what’s left of my burger and fries, I go through Alan’s blog post:
It was the first snowy day of the season. Mom kept telling my little brother, my sister, and me that we shouldn’t even attempt setting foot outdoors, attempting to scare us off with tales of how kids still caught pneumonia if they spent too much time fooling around in the snow. “I don’t want to be spending our hard- earned money paying for medicine this winter. Those video games you’re always asking for are expensive enough, so what makes you think we should be paying extra for more unnecessary playing?” she says after my third attempt at begging her to change her mind.
But luckily enough, she left for work five minutes later, giving her no opportunity to enforce her own orders. Kathy, our babysitter, was more interested in getting through her recorded episodes of Smallville than she was in following through with Mom’s rushed lectures, so when I asked her if I could go outside, she said, “Sure, go ahead. Just don’t stay out longer than half an hour.” So, within five minutes, I was bundled up with my new blue jacket and matching gloves, scarf, and hat, and along with my little brother, we ran out into our backyard, which was already loaded with snow on every corner. My sister stayed with Kathy, not wanting to go outside because she thought it was too cold.
Having been obsessed with snowmen for over a month, my brother insisted that making one should be our first task. “I have to make one! If I don’t, I’ll be the only person in my class that has never done it,” he begged. I, on the other hand, was less eager about building snowmen. I’d tried doing it twice last year, and they both turned out looking more like igloos than Frosty. I probably wouldn’t get any better this year even if I labored away through the morning. So, I responded, “Making a snowman is a lot of work, and Kathy just said that we could only stay outside for a while. Why don’t we do something quick and fun, like having a snowball fight?”
“No! I want to build a snowman! I want to build a snowman!” my brother complained, coming up with his own annoying snowman song eight years before Frozen showed off its own to the world.
I shook my head, but thinking better of it, I chose to move out of his way. I then picked up a handful of snow and started kneading it with both my hands. Once I was done, I turned to see what my brother was doing, and grinned when I saw him kneeling on the ground, working on the ridiculous snowman all by himself.
Seconds later, I swerved my arm in his direction and tossed the snowball into the air, where it soared through the colorless sky like a rocket.
However, instead of landing on my brother, it flew right into the face of our neighbor Al, an overweight plumber who we only ever saw outside when his creepy bulldog needed a walk. With all the snow out, I figured he was more cross than usual about this chore and that having just been hit by the rowdy kid next door wouldn’t be very flattering to him. And unfortunately, I was right about it all, because once he’d gotten over the shock of being hit with a snowball, he shot a menacing glare at me.
“What the hell is the matter with you, kid? Have your parents taught you any manners?” he yelled. “You think any unsuspecting person in this damn neighborhood would just smile and thank you if they’d been hit with one of those silly balls of yours?”
And being the dumb little kid that I was, hearing silly balls had me in a fit of giggles as soon as Al finished talking. Not even the fierce look the bulldog was giving me, or the startled expression on Al’s face upon noticing my laughter, could get me to reconsider whether this was an appropriate reaction to this scolding.
“Still think this is funny, I see,” Al said. “Well, let’s see how long you’ll be laughing once you get a taste of your own medicine.” He then picked up a handful of snow, creating his own snowball in much less time than it took for me to make my own, and whipped it towards me.
Unlike me, he was successful in hitting his target, and as I took in the icy bite of the snow as it struck me, I heard the bulldog barking fiercely, as if it was now its turn to do the mocking. “How does it feel, kid? How does it feel when you’re the one getting hit?” Al demanded.
At the time, I didn’t think other neighbors would be pissed if they’d seen what Al had just done, possibly suing him if they saw a good reason for it. I just assumed someone had enough of my actions and got back at me in the best way he could think of, and since he was an adult, he could get away with it on account of how I’d been bothering him in the first place.
And of course, I started running as fast as I could. Did I really have any other option?
By the time I’m done reading it, I’m laughing, nearly choking on my fries as I do so. Of all the other blogs I’ve read on this site, this one’s probably the funniest. Some bloggers on Scrollers try too hard to come across as serious and mature, and in the process, their work can turn out dull. Lilli has made a point of letting me know certain blogs she thinks are too pretentious, and it’s hard not to agree with her on some of them. With Alan’s, on the other hand, he told a story in a simple yet entertaining way. Some might think it’s too silly, but a casual reader could go through it and enjoy themselves, and that should be what matters the most.
“So, what do you think, Cassandra?” Alan asks. “You look like you’re amused by it.” He’s all done eating by now, with only about half of his drink being all that’s left for him.
“I like it. You tell your story in a way that gets readers interested, focusing more on the actions instead of reflecting too much. It’s very funny too, like something out of an old children’s book.”
“You just figured out my inspiration. I wanted to go with the feel you get from the Fudge, Amber Brown, or Judy Moody books that some kids read in elementary school. It’s why I borrowed off the Choose Your Own Adventure series title, if it wasn’t already obvious.”
“I read some old copies of those books around the third and fourth grade back when everyone else was trying to get through the Harry Potter series. It’s good to see there’s someone else who likes them.”
“That’s the benefit of your parents making you read for half an hour each night, I guess. Now, is there anything you think I can improve on?”
I think about it for a while, scanning over the blog again to see what I can suggest. Finally, I say, “You seem to not tell us much about what your brother did when he saw what your neighbor had done to you. Did you do that on purpose, or did you forget about it?”
Alan appears to give this some thought, folding his finger around his chin. He later says, “Now that you mention it, I didn’t give much thought to that when I wrote it. I wanted to focus more on what I was thinking then and how my neighbor reacted, to the point where I couldn’t think too much about what my brother was doing at the time.”
“I understand that feeling all too well. Sometimes, when something major happens to me, I tend to block out everything else around me and focus only on how I’m feeling. If I do take into consideration how others around me are feeling, I usually make the wrong assumptions and do things that don’t help them very much. My sister thinks it’s one of the worst aspects of my autism.”
“I think everyone has that issue sometimes, not just autistic people.”
“Maybe you’re right, but it’s happened to me more times than I can count. If you saw how I act when I go through it, you’d probably think twice about wanting to be my friend.”
Alan, who’s always been looking cheerful so far, suddenly looks a bit shocked. “Do you really think I’d do that, Cassandra? You think I wouldn’t want to be friends with you once I see how hard things can get with you?”
“It’s been that way with almost every friend I’ve tried making before,” I explain. “Once they realize how strange my behavior gets sometimes, it’s hard for them to get closer to me. They might still talk to me or spend some time with me, but I rarely get invited to their homes or parties or get calls on a regular basis. Because of that, I can’t say I’ve had many close friends before.
Alan shakes his head. “Cassandra, trust me when I say you’re not the first person I’ve met who goes through struggles that other people think are strange. When I was in elementary school, the boy I played with the most during recess was someone who had to take ADHD medication every night. The one time he had several friends over for a sleepover in fifth grade, someone saw him going into the bathroom with his meds and went on to tell the others about it. I tried to stop them from talking about it in school, but they did it anyway, and nearly every kid in our class made fun of him over it. He never had another sleepover again, and even though I remained his friend, things weren’t the same with us. His behavior in school got worse, resulting in his parents deciding to have him transferred to another school district for middle school.”
“That must have been awful,” I say. Some of my classmates gave me a hard time in fifth grade too, especially after an incident where I accidently tripped a girl over as I was trying to get through the hallways- resulting in some not-so-accidental tripping from other girls in return for a few days-but it didn’t get so bad that I had to switch school districts. I don’t know what I would have done if the bullying had gotten that bad.
“And in high school, there was a girl who was a young mom and always living with friends because she was kicked out of the house as soon as her family found out she was pregnant. I went over to her place a couple times during the weekends to help her with studying. One time, she told me I was one of the only guys who bothered spending any time with her at all, since many others didn’t want to be hanging around with a girl who was already a mom.”
I can’t even respond to this. Being rejected by your family and almost every guy you knew is something that would leave many people devastated, and having already faced rejection from my own mom, I don’t want to think too much about this.
”So yes, I’ve stuck around with many people who were outcasts in one way or another. If I could stick by them, why would I be scared off by an autistic person?”
Hearing this leaves me feeling happy. Doing my best to look directly at him, I say, “Thanks a lot, Alan. Not just for accepting me, but also for interacting with me like you would with anyone else. I met someone once who was nice to me but thought I would be offended by any attempt at a joke. I didn’t remain very close to that person, and I’m glad that you don’t act that way around me.
“My pleasure,” Alan says, giving me a friendly smile. “I was a little worried over whether I was going too far with some of the stuff I’ve been saying, and it’s great to know that you’re fine with it. But if you ever do feel bothered by what I say or do, just let me know about it. Is that fine with you.”
“Of course, but I don’t think it will be much of an issue,” I say.
“Great. Now, how about we talk about your own blog?”
“Sure,” I say, being sure to give him my full attention.