Understand and forgive

   Savannah and John spent a wonderful week together and they did not have quarrels at all. Except one day…

   The girl had gifted her boy something special, but John’s jaw tightened after that. He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. The reason of his strange behavior was, of course, the gift. It was a book – more like a textbook, actually – about autism and Asperger’s. Savannah wanted John read it because of his father and way they get along. “I know I am only a student, but I spent a lot of my lab hours working with children who have Asperger’s… I have seen it up close, and I have also had the chance to a meet a number of the adults my professor had interviewed. Your father is very similar to a couple of them.”

   John was shocked not because Savannah had called his father retarded. He could not understand how she could communicate with his father the ordinary way and did not show her emotions. “You were sitting there with him, pretending to be interested in his coins, but in reality you were evaluating him like some monkey in a cage.”

   That conversation was awful for the both sides. Savannah just wanted to help, nothing more. But people hear only what they want to hear.

-          Thank you.

-          For what?

-          For the book. I think understand me dad a little better now. We had a good time last night.