diversity

The Only Blog you will ever need to read about the Brain

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I recently had a revelation which will simplify our understanding of the human brain. Reading about yet another celebrity relieved to get a diagnosis of autism in their fifties, or to discover they are on a spectrum of some sort, they report that this explained why they always felt different. But aren’t we all different? Whether you are a psychiatrist or a brain surgeon, nobody understands how the brain works, how that grey jelly holds a universe of knowledge and creativity…

‘A synapse is a structure that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or to the target effector cell. Synapses are essential to the transmission of nervous impulses from one neuron to another.’ 

So where does that electricity come from, how did it get into your brain, charged up by your mother’s solar powered battery when you were in the womb?

Enough of scientific talk. The only term you need to know is neuro diverse, it covers everything. The human brain is so amazing it would be strange if it didn’t work in many diverse ways, no one is wrong, just different.

Most of us are not as clever as we think we are. We know that humans are super intelligent because we build cities and space stations and create sublime art and music. Alas, most of us could not even build a garden shed or write a knitting pattern ( the original binary system ) let alone create a computer. But we still have the capacity to find our way round a big city or experience the joys of culture.

When experts are inventing new syndromes they are more interested in our interactions with each other and our talents only come into the equation when everyone assumes autistic people must be brilliant at ‘Something’.

A person who identifies as autistic may feel unable to cope with parties or too much stimulus of noise or lights, but have a wonderfully heightened awareness of music or nature that passes others by. Of course we will never know because we don’t know what others see, hear or feel and if we are experiencing the same sensations. We don’t even know what is mind and what is brain and what is ‘mental health’. I cringe when I hear people say ‘Then I had to leave work because I had mental health.’   Noo , if you had mental health you would be fine…

 If you are in the fortunate position of understanding your own mind and everyone else’s, let us know. In the meantime the rest of us have a good standby to cover work and social life.

‘I’m Neuro Diverse.’

‘Oh, so sorry, we’ll move your office desk to a different position and give you a bigger computer screen.’

 ‘You must come to our special quiet screening of the film.’

‘Would you like someone to accompany you to your hospital appointment?’

For plenty of neuro diversity, why not read one of my books?

Sunday Short Story – Living Doll

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 22 Comments

When Ada set out to buy a birthday present for her friend’s daughter she was surprised to see a bizarre crowd outside the large toy shop. Mostly women, a handful of men, people of all shapes and sizes, some in wheelchairs or with guide dogs. Heads turned as she tried to pass through to the shop entrance, but Ada was used to her statuesque figure turning heads.

Ada had been named after Ada Lovelace, abandoned daughter of Lord Byron, who became a brilliant mathematician and the world’s first computer expert. She had lived up to her parents’ ambition, but few people noticed her for her brains and degree in molecular science, they just saw a dumb blonde.

Ada’s mother was short and cuddly, her father was short and dark. By the time Ada was twelve she was taller than her parents and her short older brother called her ‘giraffe legs’. She wondered if she was adopted, but her parents assured her she wasn’t. Ada could hardly ask her mother if she was the result of an illicit affair and her father claimed she merely took after his Scandinavian tall blonde ancestors.

As Ada squeezed past the crowd she took in the words on the banners and boards held aloft.

Ban Barbie

We Want Real Dolls

Diversity

Mattel, please portray Real Women.

Ada sighed; everyone said traditional Barbie dolls did not look like real women, but Ada looked just like a Barbie Doll, everyone at high school called her Barbie and even her mother said they would have called her Barbara if they had known how she would turn out. It was not her fault she had legs that went on forever and breasts that were not large, but looked voluptuous on her slim figure. She was just as real as any of the women in the crowd, though often she didn’t feel real. Boys and young men had always been daunted by her appearance. What she needed was a real life vey tall Ken look alike, a Ken look alike who had brains to match hers. She wondered if she should step up to defend Barbie, but all she wanted to do was get in the shop, buy a present and get home. Ada hated shopping and knew nothing about toy shops.

The shop was empty; no one else had braved the crowd and Ada assumed the staff must be hiding in the stock room.

 Her friend Wanda had said ‘Don’t get her a Barbie’. When Ada had asked what she would like, Wanda laughed and said ‘A Barbie…  but No dolls, No pink, get something creative, educational…’

 As Ada wandered down the aisles in frustration she found herself in a pink froth of Barbie shelves, but above the pink froth was a small sign Diversity Barbie. On the top shelf, way out of children’s sight and the reach of most parents, were the diversity dolls. Glamourous Barbie perched in a wheelchair, looking ready to leap out at any moment, brown Barbies, curvaceous Barbie and then she spotted her. A smiling black Barbie with an Afro hair style and best of all, a prosthetic leg. Perfect, the doll did look uncannily like the exotic Wanda. Her friend had lost her leg in a nasty car accident as a teenager; when her daughter was tiny she thought all mothers only had one leg.

Back outside the shop the crowd had grown, Ada tried to tell them about Diverse Barbie, but they thought she had been sent out by the toy shop. As they threw insults she had an idea, it would be safer to join in. After all, there were not many dolls on the diverse shelf and few that looked like this crowd. It was easy to keep their attention as she stood head and shoulders above most of them.

 ‘We want Chubby Barbie… Fat Ken… Refugee Ken… Acne Barbie… Down’s Syndrome Barbie… Disabled Army Veteran Ken.’

 The crowd cheered her on then added more suggestions, not all of them politically correct… Ada tried to think of more diverse variations, she was enjoying her first ever protest. Then she noticed a couple of police cars arriving.

 ‘Conjoined Twins Barbies’ she called out as she made a hasty retreat.

That afternoon she went round to Wanda’s house, she wanted to give the child her present and get out before the little guests started arriving for the party. The reaction wasn’t quite what she expected. Wanda frowned as the wrapping paper was torn off, then burst out laughing when her daughter ripped the box open.

‘Well Ada, now you’re not the only one who’s a Barbie!’

Alas, her little daughter burst into floods of tears.

‘But I wanted a real Barbie like Nicole’s got.’

Who Are We?

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When my younger son was little he looked up at the black and white magpies in the tree and cried PENGUINS!

When I was working at Heathrow a new young chap started; his name was something like Fabrizio and he spoke with a strong Italian accent, of course everyone referred to him as ‘the new Italian bloke’. But he was furious to be called Italian, insisting he was English and had been kidnapped from England as a child and taken to Italy. As you might guess, he was the product of an unsuccessful mixed marriage.

Whether you are bird or human, how others perceive you may not be how you perceive yourself, but do we even know ourselves who we are and does it matter? We’re all human and if we all treated each other the same what a happy place the world would be. Alas that is unlikely to happen. In a previous incarnation, when we had moved to a new place – let us call it Dullsville – I turned up at the church hall for the mother and toddlers’ group. The church happened to be marooned at the end of a lane cut off when the motorway was built; a subway connected our side to what had been the rest of the old village. Anyone who has moved to a new area will know it’s like going to a new school – will anyone talk to you? They all sat in an imposing circle, mums, one granny and a dad, but I soon perceived there were two distinct groups; each side of the motorway regarded the other with suspicion.

We are all different and it would be a dull world if we were all the same. We are more different from each other than the clumsy groupings some would like to impose. Everyone has their own unique combination of DNA, culture, religion, origin and generation so why not celebrate our differences, pick out the positives in every group.

My Ancestry DNA test showed nothing exotic in my make up and only a fraction of a percentage possibly Jewish, but one of my mother’s many sayings was that the Jews must be God’s Chosen People because they are so good at everything, while my aunt said that Jewish folk seemed to have more hours in the day than everyone else. Pick a great musician, scientist or actor or perhaps a polymath good at all of those things and they will very often be Jewish; probably you wouldn’t know that because who you see on the stage or screen, who you listen to on the radio is an individual who is your favourite performer or an interesting scientist.

Every country and race has positive characteristics we recognise, whether their people are the backbone of the caring professions, natural musicians or the brains behind every electronic device we possess. But success in the modern world is not everything and we also need to recognise those who can help save the planet. The Aborigine in Australia, who has managed to stay connected to his ancestors, will understand more about nature and his ancient land than any scientist.

And how do we perceive ourselves? We can imagine what it is like to be someone else, writers do it all the time, but we still look out from one pair of eyes, inside the body that others see. Liberal thinking white men wrestle with the angst of not knowing what it is like to be another colour or to be a woman. While white British women, the only group I can claim to belong to  ( and this is just my opinion and observation ) for generations have seen themselves as neutral, eager to embrace the more exotic by travelling or marrying for love into a family different ( and less boring!  ) than their own. They embrace new recipes, colourful clothes, perhaps a new religion and look forward to giving birth to a designer mixed race child with Mediterranean olive skin and dark eyes or lovely Afro hair or adorable oriental features. What they do not dream of is their beloved child being treated as anything less than a unique individual equal to anyone else.

How do you see your identity?

Friday Flash Fiction 900 – Excluded

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At 9.30a.m. John sat with his pen poised; it was his turn to attend the compulsory one day workshop entitled ‘Celebrating Diversity in the Workplace’. On the whiteboard were written words and phrases and they were required to jot down their initial thoughts about each. EXCLUDED; John had certainly never been excluded, because he had never been or done anything interesting enough to warrant exclusion. SENT TO COVENTRY; well if he had been sent there he probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He still hadn’t put pen to paper but he was thinking. The classroom situation brought back memories of sixth form. All through lower sixth he had secretly adored Annabel; on the first day of upper sixth he was thrilled she was in his form again, this year he would try and approach her. Whose form were you in last year? she had asked innocently. Yours he had muttered bleakly, the crushing awareness of his invisibility blighting further conversation.
Teenagers usually imagine two things; everyone else is having a better time than they are and their parents are boring; in John’s case both were true. As a teenager he had vowed never to live in a suburb, have a mortgage or endlessly discuss double glazing and patio doors; but these things had all come to pass.

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Still nothing written and now everyone was gathering in their discussion groups. No one noticed John had nothing to offer; they were all eager to relate their own unfair treatment in life and work; smokers, pregnant women, drivers, people passed over for promotion… he was glad when the ten minutes was up.
The next question was How have your origins affected your life? For a moment he was stumped; then it dawned on him what was missing from his life; he had nowhere to go back to. He really envied people who could return to their roots; the Welsh had their valleys, the Scots their islands and highlands and the Irish were always getting on ferries to go back home for holidays. But one could hardly say dramatically ‘I need to get back to Middlesex or Middlesex will always be in my blood’. He had never left Middlesex, but it had left him; swallowed up by Greater London, ironic since Middlesex used to surround London.
He realised the group were talking again; proudly relating how their parents’ struggles had inspired them to succeed or how keeping in touch with their roots had given them strong values. John thought of his dreary family, John Smith, they hadn’t even the imagination to give him a middle name. Granddad had been too young for the Great War and his father just too young for the Second World War; they hadn’t needed to go anywhere so they didn’t, he could hardly blame them, where had he been?
That woman was talking again, what did she call herself? Not teacher, oh yes, just call me Jilly everyone. She was asking them to write down what languages they spoke, easy, one. John was filled with admiration for folk who could slip easily from one tongue to another. He was convinced he would have been a more interesting person if he had grown up bilingual, what another dimension to life. You could be 100% British but fly away, step off the plane and stride confidently into another way of life.
Last question before coffee;

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Which aspect of your life or work makes you feel most excluded?
At last John spoke up ‘Well I feel excluded because I haven’t got any diversity.’ They all looked at him blankly, ‘I haven’t even got any issues.’
‘What do you mean by issues?’ asked Call me Jilly.
‘You know, ISSUES, when they say at the end of a programme If you have been affected by any of the issues raised by this programme, please call our helpline, well they should have a helpline for people who can’t find any issues.’ The others laughed, he was getting into his stride. ‘I can’t even find a community to belong to, not the cycling, the deaf or the travelling… and I can’t help the police.’
The discussion was turning into the liveliest of the day.
‘You look like a law abiding chap’ replied one man.
‘Precisely, the police never stop me and when they put out a plea for information from members of the such-and-such community, that is never me’ explained John.
Call me Jilly was getting exasperated now, the workshop was not going the way she intended…
‘I know just what you mean’ piped up a woman’s voice.
John looked over to see an ordinary looking woman he hadn’t noticed before.
‘You go to the art gallery to see a photographic exhibition but it never says on the wall We went to work among members of the Boring Community, giving them cameras to take pictures of their dreary lives and asking them to describe the images in their own dull words. No one ever wants my picture or my opinion.’
She looked around as the others cheered, hardly believing she had spoken up. Everyone was enjoying themselves now, the workshop was much more interesting than expected; with one accord they surged out for their coffee break.
Call me Jilly tried in vain to hold the group back. ‘Everyone, everyone another five minutes till coffee break, we haven’t summed up yet.’ but no one heard her.

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