(no subject)
Q runs everywhere he goes. From classroom to classroom. From the car to the store entrance. From his bedroom to the bathroom. It is more a fractured canter than it is a full-fledged run. Walking is something that doesn’t occur to him. Or maybe it does and he has ruled it out as making little sense in situations of destination.
-Emily, go get your brother.
I, too, run where Q runs.
I am three years older, but we practically have the same body. Meaning, I am small. In public, we are mistaken for twins, but at school, no one seems to notice. They only notice that he’s adorable.
There goes Q running to the lunchroom! There’s Q looking directly at the sun with those beautiful eyes! Q spoke to me! He said, “What do you do for a living?” I am in the fifth grade, Q, just like your sister. Q has picked up this question as conversationally appropriate and uses it without discretion.
When it becomes obvious what is going on with Q to people at, say, the grocery store, they undoubtedly inquire about Q’s special talents. I saw a man on TV who could calculate distance between stars just by looking. Q gets from point A to point B and then to point R when we are still supposed to be at B really fast. He is excellent at looking at things. He can look for a long time and then look on at the next thing and never tire. He also touches everything.
Our class watched an excerpt from The Miracle Worker with Patty Duke. She never made eye contact with anyone and she touched everything with such intensity and delight. I know that she was blind and deaf, but I will forever think of her as autistic. I bet, just like Q, she ripped up plants to feel how they are made.
*
Q was named after the Q Continuum in Star Trek. When my parents named him, they were just being dorks, unaware of Q’s diagnosis, but even I, as an 11-year-old can see how appropriate it is. Q, or at least the Q the viewer gets to know (there is a whole continuum of them), John de Lancie, takes the form of a human, although he is still very powerful and can take any form he wants, even changing the form of the environment. He is almost like a psychological being. Anyway, he is constantly irritating humans because of this weird fascination with them. I don’t know, it’s complicated. But eventually, Q has a son, a young Q, who is stripped of his Q powers to be raised more normally on a starship -so he won’t be a total brat with all-consuming powers.
Sometimes I think of my Q in this way-that John de Lancie is his real father and one day young Q, my Q, will regain his birthright and become something he is not today, self-possessed.
When I was seven and my parents had shown me most of Rainman to introduce other people like my brother, I was convinced (and maybe my parents were too) that Q had or would have some genius not yet discovered. I spent hours trying to get him to count large quantities, summarize books he had just flipped through, or bang out recently-played music on a piano keyboard. He never once complained and our sessions would end with us cuddling on the couch paging through a science book for pictures or watching a video for the 20th time.
After the Helen Keller movie, I memorized the sign language alphabet and began to spell into Q’s hand. Q can hear and see letters just fine, can spell reasonably well for an 8-year-old, but still I thought maybe something would get through to him in a different way. As I signed, I said the letters aloud, so that he could memorize the hand shapes. He kind of got used to it and even sticks his hand out for me in anticipation. I tried asking him questions that he will not answer verbally.
W-H-A-T-A-R-E-Y-O-U-L-O-O-K-I-N-G-A-T. Q never responded to this either, but he loved it and smiled a lot. I figured I would keep it up.
My parents think it’s kind of weird, but they think it’s nice. And frankly, they’ve come to expect weird from me. Even more so than Q. People at school probably just think it is a real way to communicate with him since they think he is weird in all kinds of ways. I saw a 2nd grader making random shapes into Q’s hand at recess. Q was smiling and the 2nd grader looked confused.
T-E-L-L-M-E-Y-O-U-R-T-H-O-U-G-H-T-S
W-H-O-I-S-Y-O-U-R-F-A-T-H-E-R
B-E-T-S-Y-M-I-S-A-B-I-T-C-H
Y-O-U-C-A-N-T-E-L-L-M-E-A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G
*
In the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard and his crew are put on trial by Q for the crimes of humans. Data is actually an android, and Deanna Troi is... something else. But Q demands that the Enterprise turn back toward Earth because humans are savage and unwanted in space. Picard argues that humans have changed and that they explore with the finest intentions. The 2-part episode is a parade of the crew’s virtues, proving their civilized and humane nature.
I think of this episode when we meet new people. My Q can make humans expose their vice and virtue. Their positive and negative prejudice (I got that out of a psychology book). The extent to which they trust their television programming.
I once asked Q why he runs all the time. First I spelled it into his hand, which got his attention. Then I said his name which will often make him look at me once his attention is grabbed. Then I asked him, “Why do you run?”
Turning back to his toys, Q whispered rapidly in the way he normally does, repeating bits of television he’s seen. How he selects each routine for memory defies any pattern. Sometimes I catch a “marinara” or a “girls gone wild.” Often whole dialogue exchanges.
I grabbed his hand and spelled W-O-U-L-D-Y-O-U-C-H-A-N-G-E-I-F-Y-O-U-C-O-U-L-D.
He whispered, “I am guardian of the universe.”
-Emily, go get your brother.
I, too, run where Q runs.
I am three years older, but we practically have the same body. Meaning, I am small. In public, we are mistaken for twins, but at school, no one seems to notice. They only notice that he’s adorable.
There goes Q running to the lunchroom! There’s Q looking directly at the sun with those beautiful eyes! Q spoke to me! He said, “What do you do for a living?” I am in the fifth grade, Q, just like your sister. Q has picked up this question as conversationally appropriate and uses it without discretion.
When it becomes obvious what is going on with Q to people at, say, the grocery store, they undoubtedly inquire about Q’s special talents. I saw a man on TV who could calculate distance between stars just by looking. Q gets from point A to point B and then to point R when we are still supposed to be at B really fast. He is excellent at looking at things. He can look for a long time and then look on at the next thing and never tire. He also touches everything.
Our class watched an excerpt from The Miracle Worker with Patty Duke. She never made eye contact with anyone and she touched everything with such intensity and delight. I know that she was blind and deaf, but I will forever think of her as autistic. I bet, just like Q, she ripped up plants to feel how they are made.
*
Q was named after the Q Continuum in Star Trek. When my parents named him, they were just being dorks, unaware of Q’s diagnosis, but even I, as an 11-year-old can see how appropriate it is. Q, or at least the Q the viewer gets to know (there is a whole continuum of them), John de Lancie, takes the form of a human, although he is still very powerful and can take any form he wants, even changing the form of the environment. He is almost like a psychological being. Anyway, he is constantly irritating humans because of this weird fascination with them. I don’t know, it’s complicated. But eventually, Q has a son, a young Q, who is stripped of his Q powers to be raised more normally on a starship -so he won’t be a total brat with all-consuming powers.
Sometimes I think of my Q in this way-that John de Lancie is his real father and one day young Q, my Q, will regain his birthright and become something he is not today, self-possessed.
When I was seven and my parents had shown me most of Rainman to introduce other people like my brother, I was convinced (and maybe my parents were too) that Q had or would have some genius not yet discovered. I spent hours trying to get him to count large quantities, summarize books he had just flipped through, or bang out recently-played music on a piano keyboard. He never once complained and our sessions would end with us cuddling on the couch paging through a science book for pictures or watching a video for the 20th time.
After the Helen Keller movie, I memorized the sign language alphabet and began to spell into Q’s hand. Q can hear and see letters just fine, can spell reasonably well for an 8-year-old, but still I thought maybe something would get through to him in a different way. As I signed, I said the letters aloud, so that he could memorize the hand shapes. He kind of got used to it and even sticks his hand out for me in anticipation. I tried asking him questions that he will not answer verbally.
W-H-A-T-A-R-E-Y-O-U-L-O-O-K-I-N-G-A-T. Q never responded to this either, but he loved it and smiled a lot. I figured I would keep it up.
My parents think it’s kind of weird, but they think it’s nice. And frankly, they’ve come to expect weird from me. Even more so than Q. People at school probably just think it is a real way to communicate with him since they think he is weird in all kinds of ways. I saw a 2nd grader making random shapes into Q’s hand at recess. Q was smiling and the 2nd grader looked confused.
T-E-L-L-M-E-Y-O-U-R-T-H-O-U-G-H-T-S
W-H-O-I-S-Y-O-U-R-F-A-T-H-E-R
B-E-T-S-Y-M-I-S-A-B-I-T-C-H
Y-O-U-C-A-N-T-E-L-L-M-E-A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G
*
In the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard and his crew are put on trial by Q for the crimes of humans. Data is actually an android, and Deanna Troi is... something else. But Q demands that the Enterprise turn back toward Earth because humans are savage and unwanted in space. Picard argues that humans have changed and that they explore with the finest intentions. The 2-part episode is a parade of the crew’s virtues, proving their civilized and humane nature.
I think of this episode when we meet new people. My Q can make humans expose their vice and virtue. Their positive and negative prejudice (I got that out of a psychology book). The extent to which they trust their television programming.
I once asked Q why he runs all the time. First I spelled it into his hand, which got his attention. Then I said his name which will often make him look at me once his attention is grabbed. Then I asked him, “Why do you run?”
Turning back to his toys, Q whispered rapidly in the way he normally does, repeating bits of television he’s seen. How he selects each routine for memory defies any pattern. Sometimes I catch a “marinara” or a “girls gone wild.” Often whole dialogue exchanges.
I grabbed his hand and spelled W-O-U-L-D-Y-O-U-C-H-A-N-G-E-I-F-Y-O-U-C-O-U-L-D.
He whispered, “I am guardian of the universe.”