@grommet
Those are good ideas. Pointing towards your mouth and shaking your head as if saying No would be a fast way of telling people that you can't talk. Then showing the tag. People, police included, get scared of the unknown, but their behavior will change instantly if you can quickly convey that you can't talk. Maybe you could have a card in your wallet that says Mute? You quickly show it? It's not exactly true but not a lie either. At that moment, you can't talk.
Point at my throat and nod my head “No.” That is what I do. Almost everyone has been understanding. With police though I think it is dangerous, they can react so quickly and with violence. It is a very rare case but years ago a Deaf man was shot, the officer saw the situation as threatening because he thought the man was using gang signs when he was using sign language.
I think think I worry mostly unreasonably about the police situation but it is the only one that could mean so much and though not the police, it is not without precedent my not talking has caused serious situations. Without saying anything or making any facial expression or gestures, people have gotten extremely angry with me. They seem to imagine I am being disrespectful to them and they retaliate. I have written about those times. Like the Trader Joe’s employee on the ramp in the store who was blocking the way so I just stopped by them and waited. I could not do anything else. I could not speak to them so I waited. When she noticed me she got so upset and accused me of things. It was awful.
I really was just waiting for her. I had no feelings about it. It was logic to me. She was impassible, I could not contact her, I must wait until she moves. So I waited. She seemed to think I was fuming, waiting behind her back. I was not. She started accusing me of things loudly. She raised her voice across the store, pretended to ask other employees things. She said I was filled with toxic rage and she needed to purify to store from my anger with sage, did the other employee know where they had some? She said this so I would hear it and be upset.
I did what I thought was right. No violence, no confrontation, no problem. I would just quietly wait and that still got me in trouble. So I am very worried about someone doing what she did but being a police officer. They are the same as everyone else but with so much authority, they can take you away. What if one of them got mad like the woman at the store? I am so frightened thinking about it I do have all that ID to help just in case.
We get in trouble so much when we do not mean to do anything to anyone. It happens to autistic people so much all our lives that we pull away, afraid of what could happen. With the police I think it is scarier and worse when you cannot speak and answer their questions.
For years I went to an in-person autism meeting. We formed seating patterns without meaning to and I always sat next to one man. In meetings with him, next to him for years, he never spoke. One day he did. I never thought badly of him before or after. The only place I have found autistic people accepted was in meetings around each other. Everyone else seems to imagine all sorts of things about us. We are usually literal, not the things they imagine but what we actually do and say.
This belabors and digresses a bit I think but I have never forgotten a true story about a man in a book about autistic people. He liked a woman, he felt romantic about her. So be gave her an expensive sword. He got in trouble because it was a weapon and made what he did seem dangerous but he loved swords and this was a deep high compliment from him, to buy and give her such a nice one. He only meant good but it worked out so badly. I am not saying the other people were wrong to be suspicious or alarmed but I understand him and I worry about how frightened and hurt and confused he must have felt after.
I do not know what is exactly right and wrong to do to another person so I try to stay away and be very careful. I was terrified in physical therapy that I might accidentally touch my female physical therapist. I kept my hands pinned to my sides and never looked at her. I was a man in a room alone with a woman who was not my friend or girlfriend, do not touch her. I try rules like that but I see how they are not totally reasonable either.
With a police officer though they can hurt me or take me to jail if there is any misunderstanding and my whole life there have been misunderstandings so I worry a lot about it.
