Mar 16, 2007

My Favorite Line from Mozart and the Whale

In the Mozart and the Whale movie, the Donald Mortan character had driven a cab for years even though he scored quite high in college. Isobel had worked it out to get him a job interview in the IT department of a local university hospital (or something).

He did the whole interview looking at the wall, but the hiring manager knew that he was autistic so it was no big deal. The man hired Donald, and asked him why he had been driving a cab since he had such skills and intelligence. Donald's said, I interviewed at IBM and when they asked what my plans where I told them I would probably go to McDonald's and then do some laundry.

I wanted to stand up and shout, "Exactly! No one understand that we never understood the question!" I just wanted to scream at employers who misunderstood my intentions or who couldn't figure out how to explain to me. Why did it take so long to find Pfizer (formerly Pharmacia) which values my work, because of how I think. Now that I know I'm Aspie, I don't hide it. It's progressive enough here that I'm not penalised for revealing who I am. They value the me that I am, and not the me that they expect everyone to be.

Adam

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