Appearances

Act 6 Scene 1 - Appearances

(on the back lawn, the air is warm, with a cool, gentle breeze, as The Smoker paces)

C: What's bothering you?
TS: The realization that I have been terribly misjudging certain people for a very long time.

(a long pause)

C: You want to talk about it?
TS: (sighing) I just finished watching this special on CNN. It was a documentary about autism. It's nominated for an Oscar. (pauses) It was written by a severely autistic woman, named Sue Rubin.(pauses again) I didn't realize until about halfway through that I had actually met this girl, before.
C: What? Do you mean, like, figuratively? Like you met an autistic woman like her?
TS: No. I actually met her along with her whole class of "mentally-disabled" classmates, when I was doing my Senior Project in high school. I was doing it on the mentally-handicapped, with a focus on Down's Syndrome. I watched their activities and social interactions over the course of a week, but never bothered to ask if there was any difference between those with Down's Syndrome, and the other disabled. I assumed they were all pretty much the same.
C: So, uh, how did you misjudge her?
TS: I assumed she, as well as all of her classmates were incapable of anything approaching an adult level of rational thought.
C: So you thought she was mentally-handicapped? What's wrong with that?
TS: She's not! She is so totally not! She has an I.Q. of 130, had a better high school G.P.A. than me, has better writing skills, and a better vocabulary! She's physically disabled. And to such a degree that it seriously hampers her ability to communicate by conventional means. But she is by no means mentally-disabled!
C: Wow. That's pretty heavy. (pauses) Are all autistic people like that? Y'know, normal, healthy minds trapped inside a dysfunctional body?
TS: I don't know. But I'm gonna find out. And from now I'm never going to assume anything but the best about anyone who appears mentally-disabled.

(The Smoker tries to take a drag off of Cigarette, only to find he's reached the filter. He tosses the smoking filter into the ashtray, and exits.)