A Cabana Enshrined Toe Funk

Today I read An Abundance of Katherines. Actually, I reread it--the first time was in high school, well before I knew who John Green was. I expected to enjoy coming back to it, since I usually love rereading books...but I didn't. And I think I know why.

I have Asperger's, and I've worked very hard (albeit with a lot of prodding from my mom) to get to a point where you can't tell in casual conversation. And spending time with people who remind me of my junior-high (or even high-school) self makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to go back to that.

I'd forgotten how much Colin Singleton reminds me of me.

But as I kept going, half-ignoring the footnotes I remembered loving, I realized that Colin has made the same journey I have, and, at the end of the book, is about where I am now. He set out on the path toward appearing normal the day he met Hassan, who not only tolerates Colin but actively helps him, telling him when he's going off on tangents that ordinary people find uninteresting and steering him towards actually having social skills. I don't remember having a Hassan, besides my mom, so I'm not sure how I got here, either because looking back is painful, or because I don't actually remember the process.

Whatever the case, I think An Abundance of Katherines does a very good job of explaining me, both to myself and to other people. I wish it had existed during the years my mom tried to make me read boring nonfictional books about autism. When I have children who are at least nerdy, if not on the autism spectrum (because I intend to marry someone who's as nerdy as I am, if more socially savvy), and they don't understand why people at school don't like them, I will give them An Abundance of Katherines and tell them that it's about a boy named Colin, and at some level about a boy named John--but most importantly, it's about them, and it's about me.

There's a scene early in the book where Colin, at about three years old, reads the fable of the tortoise and the hare, and The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein, and doesn't understand that they're about him. Seeing that, I realized how far I've come, and how far Colin has come, and how, in a way, without knowing it, we're making the journey together.

PS The title of this post is one of a shit-ton of results I got from plugging "An Abundance of Katherines" into an anagram generator. (Given that Colin makes anagrams like I make bracelets, it seemed appropriate.) Here are some of the other funny results:

A Cabana Kneed Nosher Unfit (yeah, cabanas are like gazebos. You don't want to anger them. (Comment if you got that and I'll come up with a prize to give you.))
A Cabana Kenned Our Fishnet (that's smart of it)
A Cabana Kenned Shire Fount
A Cabana Feed Neutron Knish (I'm not sure why this thing is fixated on cabanas, but there we are.)

PPS The other bit of media I consumed today was a truly terrible movie called Fright Night. I watched it with a friend (yes, I have a female friend) and took screencaps of David Tennant.