When I was 15, I spent many days without talking. Except for maybe on Wednesdays and every other weekend, because I was still under 16 and custody rules forced to me be around my douchebag father and we’d scream at each other at the top our lungs until I ran away or jumped out of the passenger seat of his flashy, 6-CD-playing, post-divorce, self-inflicted-mid-life-crisis Corolla—with a spoiler.

I grew up in the humble, Midwestern Twin Cities in the thick of Saint Paul’s perfect private Catholic school system, where the most scandalous parts of your day was empathizing with the criminal “Desperate Housewives” characters with a glass of wine before bed. Everyone was white, believed in Jesus, hosted Boy Scouts. Fourth of July’s were spent at your cabin; you fought to get a spot on the best country club waiting list; and your husband didn’t actually bang the hot new math teacher behind your back. Try as they might’ve, the Ornberg family—complete with a verbally abusive father, broke irresponsible mother and retarded son—weren’t so good at fitting into the expected perfect-family façade.

On top of dealing with my dad’s unfaithful antics creating a stir among the neighborhood’s Sunday afternoon brunch conversations, I was exiled from my volleyball team, fell in love with a gay man, was cast as an understudy or ensemble character in a third of the plays I auditioned for—the rest I didn’t even make the cut—and sprained my ankle publicly. Twice. And this was just the beginning of my sophomore year. The rest of my time in high school I spent lurking in the background, ditching dances and football games out of angst and maybe a smidge of insecurity.

My passion for writing, music and drawing have always been more important to me than my social stature, because any Holden Caulfield character or Paramore song was more comforting and relatable than my vicious UGG-toting peers. I found great solace in the contents of my 16GB hot pink iPod mini I blackmailed my dad into buying me. I spent hours on MySpace discovering new artists that moved and inspired me, from Weezer to Wu-Tang to the Wombats. Some of this music served as simply my shower sing-alongs, while others became my safety net; specifically the angsty alternative-pop album “Move Along” by the All-American Rejects, daring, twee Brit-pop tunes of “Made of Bricks” by Kate Nash and aggressive mindfuck hip-hop album “God Loves Ugly” by Atmosphere played on repeat for months at a time, shaping my high school years moreso than the cliques that defined the lunch tables or Christian nuns who enforced the uniform codes.

Whenever I revisit some of these albums, I am instantly brought back in the mindset of the adolescent introverted Emily, reopening some of the scars left behind from my exhausting life as an eccentricly lame Catholic school girl.

Before he was Nativity of Our Lord’s public enemy No. 1, my dad was the hip father who drove a Herbie-replica BMW and hung out with Bono every now and then. He was the school’s very own big-shot record-company dude who almost got P-Diddy fired, spent a year and five of her MTV reality episodes with Ashlee Simpson (until the SNL incident). He spent 3 weeks out of every month living in various hotel rooms, but he worked for the largest major label in the country and was the first person to get Lady Gaga on Top 40 radio. He was cool, and he was proud of it.

Being his daughter, pop music was cherished in our household. Whenever he wasn’t out of town at various meet-and-greets or radio stations across the country, he often organized my tween birthday parties with an A*Teens backstage -hangout hour or front-row Maroon 5 tickets. I loved pop music. Not just the sound, all that it represented—sugary melodies, beautiful popstars and just the right amount innocence. J-14 magazine posters of my dad’s coworkers hung next to their autographs and drumsticks he collected for me during the months he spent away on tour.

When my mom decoded his altered MapQuests and hotel room reservation records and it was discovered that during most of those months away he was living a second life with his girlfriend and her kids in Memphis, Tenn., I was fucking furious. Unlike my older sister who was afraid to talk back to my dad’s family-ruining psycho abusiveness, I loved to get under his skin. I loved to tear him down from his high horse he paraded around on. I’d snoop his mail, read his texts and called him out in the middle of Target, and he’d scream back.

Because most of my basic peers didn’t really understand how to compute a fucked up family situation, I found music that had a little sharper edge to it to match my aggressive pain. I then came across the All-American Rejects album “Move Along.” Their wiry, restless rock album carried the familiar catchy pop hooks that I loved, but they were definitely daringly alternative—they proudly labeled themselves as rejects, for fucks sake. And I couldn’t be peeled away from the boisterous album; four sexy mop-head in skinny jeans harmonized in that recognizably emo, whiny yelp above ear-blasting fuzzed electric guitars and loud, obnoxious drum kicks. My friends and I instantly became stalker-fangirls of the group—before they were mainstream, of course—because their thundering electric-punk was everything our moms hated and conformist classmates were afraid of, and we played it on full volume.

My absolute favorite off the album was “I’m Waiting,” because its iconoclastic approach of painting dark emo-alternative stokes over traditional pop hooks matched my desire to purposefully fuck with everything traditional. It begins with two short, lurid power chords echoing back and forth into a full rumble of double-time ax strumming. The frontman—ex-Gap model Tyson Ritter—whimpers one plunky note at a time in a bubbly, sugar-coated pop melody, which if you turn down some of the reverb could’ve easily been an Avril Lavigne B-side. Not only was it a fun tune to sing along to, but the steel-blown power chords could really impale out of those tiny iPod earbuds, numbing my ears to the point where I was forcibly taken out of my shitty reality and into a bed of thick, dangerous music.

Although the rest of the pop-punk album is god-awfully cheesy, it served as the soundtrack to my nightly ritual of drawing or writing locked away in my room trying to shove away my emotions. “Straightjacket Feeling” was the album’s only acoustic ballad, and as the title suggests, it was almost sarcastically emo. But my dorky, misfit 15-year-old self shook every time the poignantly honest lyrics hit my ears: “Etched with marks but I can deal, you’re the problem and you can’t feel/ Try this on straightjacket feel-in’, so maybe I wont be alooone/ Take back now my life your steal-in/ Yesterday was hell, but today I’m fine, without you/ Runaway this time, without you/ and all I ever thought you’d be, that face is staring holes in me again.” Hearing the vivid, jarring chords paired with lyrics that validated my authentic pissed-off thoughts that lingered in the back of my mind was a monumental moment in my adolescence.  To use this powerful, angsty, misfit-championing punk album in place of a child counselor or unwelcome aunt helped console the anger and hurt left behind from my broken family. My anger and depression bottled up, and “Move Along” could immediately diffuse it.

As I grew older and my punk friends transferred to public school, my interests shifted to maintain my image as ‘that cool artistic chick. ‘A bad injury exiled me from returning to my volleyball team, so I started wearing converse and and began my obsession with acting, writing and learning guitar, piano and ukulele simultaneously. I was the all-around fearless second-born, but even though I waned to be different, it pained me to be alone. That was when I came across Kate Nash’s “Merry Happy.” Recorded on her Mac, 4/4 staccato piano chords serve as the punchy tapping beat behind her fluttering British accent that sings: “Watching me like you’ve never watched no one, don’t tell me that you didn’t try and check out my bum/ ‘cuz I know that you did, ‘cuz your friend told me that you liked it.”  Nash, a coy British girl who wears cute dresses, was unable to follow her dream at acting school because of a similar ankle injury, and turned to singing her beautiful bedroom-written poems about being a clumsy 20-something, fitting in and the troubles of getting over “Dickheads” instead. This album, full of Nash’s signature strength, vulnerability and cleverness and atypical songwriting snuck into my head and served as the supportive backbone to my search of my own artistic individuality and self-confidence.

I listened to “Made of Bricks” every day, savoring every clever line and juicy piano chord pretending someday, as soon as I graduated, I’d move to the U.K. where I thought my artistic ventures could only be appreciated. Through her bitter humor and symbolic short stories, Nash comes across as the girl next door with her head in the clouds, a dreamer who sees the world in an honest frame of mind. Her tales about going for the wrong guy (among other problems faced by a 20-year-old woman) are universal, even if she's singing about trainers, tarts and discos. On the thumping “Shit Song,” above a glossy ‘60s girl group ditty, she sings, “Darlin’ don’t give me shit, cuz I know that you’re full of it.” On the jaunty “Foundations,” she taunts her man with the line, “Yeah, I'd rather be with your friends mate, because they're all much fitter.” And she shows her affection to a crush on the adorable “Birds” chorus: “Birds can fly so high and they can shit on your head/ and they can almost fly into your eye and make you feel so scared/ But when you look at them, and you see that they're beautiful/ That's how I feel about you.” The way she translated her emotions through witty, daringly simple writing inspired me to express myself, not conforming to what everyone else was doing.

But I mainly fell in love with “Made of Bricks” because “Nicest Thing” voiced the deepest pains of my teenage years. The song’s cascading strings are gorgeous, and her lyrics are simple, poignant and honest beyond belief. The plucking of an acoustic bass reverberates and haunts into a meteoric rise—the opening ten seconds was enough to haunt a genuine ache. “I wish I was your favorite girl/ I wish you thought I was the reason you are in the world/ I wish my smile was your favorite kind of smile/ I wish the way that I dressed was your favorite kind of style/ I wish you couldn't figure me out but you'd always wanna know what I was about/ Basically, I wish that you loved me/ I wish that you needed me/ I wish that you knew when I said two sugars, actually I meant three/ I wish that without me your heart would break/ Yeah, I wish that without me you'd be spending the rest of your nights awake.” As simple as they were, the words pierced my gut. Images flooded my brain as I realized that I truly had no one who thought I was the reason they were in the world. Somehow I could listen to that song three times every night and it never lost its heavy gravity.  Nash could speak the depths of my misunderstood teenage years, which validated my lonely thoughts and kept me from getting in my own path.

As I grew older, I knew I wanted to pursue my dream of writing. Words were everything to me. I loved learning about their prefixes, suffixes and Latin roots. I never felt like I was fully expressing myself until I could tirelessly type my true thoughts and emotions on a keyboard. This undying love for words is what made me fall in love with an emcee named Slug.

The kingpin of Minneapolis hip-hop, Slug set the standards for Midwestern underground rap. Like Nash, I loved how he wrote bleak honesty tinged with humor, but his lyrics were far more advanced. Although it wasn’t acceptable for a white, middle-class Midwestern girl to become a hip-hop fan, there was something about Slug that I related to. I was struck by his bouncy piano-driven track “You,” which he dedicated to his father. “A whole house full of dreams and steps/ I think you'd be impressed with the pieces I kept/ You disappeared but the history is still here/ That’s why I try not to cry over spilt beer/ I can't even get mad that you're gone, leavin' me was probably the best thing you ever taught me/ I'm sorry, it's official, I was a fist-full, I didn't keep it simple/ Chip on the shoulder, anger in my veins, had so much hatred, now it brings me shame/ Never thought about the world without you and I promise that I'll never say another bad word about you/ I thought I saw you yesterday, but I knew it wasn't you, 'cause you passed away, dad.”

Listening to Slug own up to his mistakes in his rocky relationship with his father was eye-opening, but the way he posed his regretful past in a way that not only challenged hip-hop’s standards but stood alone as beautiful prose changed the way I listened to hip-hop.

Ultimately, without constantly shoving these albums in my ear during the years that shaped me the most, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. It might’ve taken years of depression, but having that time to let myself sink deep into the sounds of Tyson Ritter, Kate Nash or Sean Daley allowed me to get to know these artists to the point of memorizing every word that came out of their mouth, every chord they played on the piano, allowing me to have someone else to look up to outside of my fucked up family and monochromatic Minnesotan community.

Autism through the ages

When my baby brother was 3 years old, he couldn’t start getting ready for preschool each morning until Sesame Street announced what the letter and number of the day was. It became his gospel, a ritual that defined his day. As soon as Cookie Monster unveiled the daily selection, William would grab the corresponding characters from the plastic magnets from the fridge to carry in his pocket and hold them up an inch away from his eyeball, whispering their name in appreciation. While his three older sisters were fighting over the hair-crimping iron, William would flip the pages of his alphabet books to the day’s sacred letter, ask for his peanut butter sandwiches and waffles to be cut in their shapes and incorporated the choice characters in every single one of his daily doodles, Christmas cards and Mother’s Day posters. And even though he was 3 years younger, he’d piss of his big sister when he’d interrupt her study sessions to spell all the worlds on her upcoming spelling quiz.
His obsession with numbers and letters lasted for another year until roller coasters became his new religion. He’d ask for Hot Wheels tracks for his birthday and take over the living room with his customized interstate highways while his boxes of number and alphabet paraphernalia collected dust. A year later, his Hot Wheels sat in storage as he created a massive Pokémon collection, memorizing every detail of every character ever introduced.
Although William showed unworldly intelligence in some areas, there were some concerning developmental disconnects. He was uncomfortable making eye contact and didn’t usually enjoy engaging in conversation. And although he could recognize and spell most words, he didn’t know how to put them together in any functional way.
William was diagnosed with hyperlexia, a type of high-functioning autism. Like him, children with hyperlexia have a constellation of symptoms, including precocious reading skills—far above expected at their age—paired with significant problems in language learning and social skills, often harnessing the socially uncomfortable Asperger’s syndrome.
At first, his diagnosis came as a shock for my parents who were scared that they weren’t able to parent a child with special needs. Growing up, my parents saw that kids who were different were retarded, and therefore picked on. However, after the first months of William’s social skills courses, teachers were able to also instruct my parents that William is still William, a vibrant and quirky young boy, and autism doesn’t define him.
Just like the growing acceptance of gays in pop culture was paralleled with a deeper understanding and looser prejudice for the minority group in society, films and television have a hand in introducing how autism is seen in the current generation’s conjecture of what is normal. In his review for the 1988 Academy-Award winning film “Rain Man,” Roger Ebert points to something that has seemed to cast a dark shadow on how people were able to swallow the film’s unknown qualities: “Is it possible to have a relationship with an autistic person? Is it possible to have a relationship with a cat? I do not intend the comparison to be demeaning to the autistic; I am simply trying to get at something. I have useful relationships with both of my cats, and they are important to me. But I never know what the cats are thinking."
In 1988, autism was portrayed as most people knew about it at the time; when we recall Dustin Hoffman’s autistic character in “Rain Man,” we often recall the scene when he freaks out in the airport, demanding to watch certain TV shows or his inability to “love” in any recognizable fashion. Because of “Rain Man,” some people’s ideas of autism are skewed, assuming an autistic life is an endless cycle of arbitrary yelling, confusing arguments and the occasional spurt of extraterrestrial mathematical intelligence.
However, as autism diagnoses have risen since 1988—today, one in 88 American children has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And although television is usually painstakingly slow to adapt to such shifts in demographics, some of the challenges faced by the autistic population have captured the imagination of TV writers, who are increasingly penning eccentric characters whose quirks would seem to align with typical characteristics of ASD. Representations of the autistic in film and television have gotten more sensitive, depicting autistic characters as relatable, and even humanistic, such as Sheldon’s seemingly hyperlexic character in “The Big Bang Theory,” or Max in “Parenthood.” In visual art, Jill Mullin’s art compilation Drawing
 Autism rounds up remarkable samples of work by people from all across the autism spectrum, showing how people with different mental processes display their emotions through art. On the other
 hand, the word “retarded” is commonly used in hip-hop as a slur, as seen in J. Cole’s verse in Drake’s “Jodeci Freestyle”: “I'm artistic, you niggas is autistic, retarded.”
There’s been more nuance to the depiction of “nerds” in movies and on television in recent years, but it is still a complicated issue, as comedy writers try to reference what’s familiar. The Big Bang Theory is one of the most popular shows on television, but it is also the most divisive because of it’s attention to detail. The show centers on a quartet of nerd friends that each have unique quirks. In the episode “The Bakersfield Expedition,” the characters’ girlfriends visited a comic book store, which showcased the series in a telling light. The most obnoxiously stereotypical and arbitrary moment of the episode was when the store owner had to tell the customers to stop gaping at the girlfriends since these were just women and thus, “nothing you haven’t seen in movies or in drawings.” However, the when the proprietor suggested to the women that they might enjoy the comic book Fables, it was a specific and perfect recommendation. The Big Bang Theory has often been criticized as a nerd satire by some, but its writers do know their subject and attempt to flesh out the stereotypes, even if they still lean on the stereotypes too heavily.
Ultimately, The Big Bang Theory has pushed us leaps and bounds through understanding austists in pop culture because of the character Sheldon Cooper, the Asperger’s-esque astrophysicist played by Jim Parsons. His lovable quirks and Einstein knowledge toward outer space and science are familiar to the way William operates. Like my brother, Sheldon avoids physical contact, sticks religiously to routine that he won't let anyone sit in his spot on the couch, is pointed and determined to correct any logical mishap to the point of exhaustion and treats social convention like one complex puzzle he can never quite solve. Sheldon summed up these issues in a recent monologue toward the end of an episode. "You may not realize it, but I have difficulty navigating certain aspects of daily life," he said to his friends. "You know, understanding sarcasm, feigning interest in others, not talking about trains as much as I want to. It's exhausting."
Interestingly, Parsons and the show’s writers very carefully avoided labeling Sheldon as having anASD, because they’ve said they don’t want to be limited by what an autistic person would or wouldn’t do. But by not defining Sheldon, they’ve indirectly captured an important aspect of autism—the disorder has common tendencies, but flexible boundaries. Sheldon is an exaggerated version of a person with Asperger’s, but his fussiness is very familiar to those of us with family members on the spectrum. However, if his character was labeled with having Asperger’s, it would help viewers identify with an example of the humanistic qualities that autists have.
A more recent example of autists on television is 2010 sitcom Parenthood, in which creator Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights) created the character Max Braverman—an intelligent, inscrutable, insect-obsessed youngster with Asperger's—inspired by his own son, Sawyer, who was similarly diagnosed. The character is lovable and pointedly true to the Asperger’s tendencies, which Katims was able to accomplish through sharing his personal anecdotes with the writers. The show also employs behavioural psychologist Wayne Tashjian to work with the show's cast and crew to ensure accuracy.
However, like most times I’m faced with depictions of autism, I viewed Parenthood with a defensive mind frame because the struggles and relationships connected with autistic characters can set a
precedent for viewers. And although Max’s character is adorably accurate in some regards, the show is ultimately frustrating, a quirky parent comedy-drama unviewable for anyone under 30. Its clichés are evident through its dealings with druggie 18-year-old daughters, single mother life and just about any other drama whiteys struggle with in suburban, middle class families.
If nothing else, Parenthood introduces Max into the conjecture of normalcy in the same way Glee did for it’s gay character Kurt—it’s painfully cheesy and stereotypical to watch, but at least the show attempts to thrust a new taboo on the train, which will set a precedent for viewers’ experiences with autistic characters. You can never show too many examples of autistic characters as actual human beings; most people unfamiliar with autism are instantly uncomfortable with an autist’s unique presence, so giving viewers a tangible example of someone they can reference and care about, be it a character on a dopey parent sitcom, will help their understanding of how to interact with them in the real world.
The show focuses on a large, tight-knit extended family, almost exactly like mine. The first episode shows Max’s grandpa, unaware of Max’s autism, frustrated about how Max couldn’t care less about his baseball league and putting pressure on Max’s dad to be more assertive with his son. When they try to get him ready for the game, Max screams in frustration and expresses that he won’t go because he knows he’s the worst player on the team. He escapes to his room and buries himself in his pirate toys, where his dad secretly wages him two scoops of ice cream in exchange for his attendance at the game.
The episode results in Max striking out and feeling ashamed, blaming his family for forcing him to play. After the parents get Max diagnosed, they start helping the rest of his family through the process of how to interact with Max: his counselor says "get into his world and connect with him there." His dad begins to play pirates with him, and helps his own dad try to understand the developmental difference Max has, and he extra sensitivity and patience he needs.
This episode reminded me of how my hardass father tried to convince my brother to eat spaghetti. When presented with the meal, William had a hysterical fit, gagging at the sight of the googly noodles and mushy red sauce. He saw the dish as one would see a dice rat on a plate; he couldn't even breathe at the thought of eating it. My dad, raised by a strict veteran on a farm, pushed my brother to tears every meal. "He will get over it," my dad would garble, "if he wants to become a man, that is."
After my parents got William diagnosed, my dad took a few years to understand how to introduce new things to him. His lack of patience contrasted with William's tenderness and sensitivity.
Parenthood did a good job in displaying the frustration that sometimes comes with the difficult miscommunication with an autistic child, however, the show often takes care of the issues in the same episode they're introduced. Max's grandpa understood how to support Max's pirates instead of forcing him to continue his baseball legacy; it took my father much longer to be understanding of how a hyperlexic functions.