I'm reposting this because I messed up last time and forgot to use hashtags.
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I'm reposting this because I messed up last time and forgot to use hashtags. So apologies if you've already seen this. Also, my new instance has a much higher character limit so I can post it here directly instead of making you use a link to somewhere else.
This is a super short children's story I wrote inspired by the challenges of being #autistic , and possibly other forms of #neurodivergence .
Once there was a little car named Sporty the Sportscar. He grew up on a farm where it was all dirt and rocks. Sporty wasn’t like all the other vehicles at the farm. They were all trucks, tractors, jeeps, and ATVs. They had no problem getting around the farm, whereas Sporty had a very hard time. No matter how hard he tried he could only go very slowly over the rough terrain, sometimes hurting himself, sometimes getting stuck and not moving at all. His little wheels would spin and spin, but seldom was he able to get very far.
But Sporty didn’t know why he had these troubles. All the others at the farm would see his slow, clumsy movements and make fun of him for it.
“Come on!” they’d say. “Put some horsepower into it!”
“Kid must not have much horsepower after all.”
“A vehicle without horsepower can’t go very far in life.”
And this would make Sporty very sad and frustrated, wondering what was wrong with him. Maybe the others were right, maybe he didn’t have much horsepower. Maybe he was defective.
One day he heard of a place called The City, where they used these things called roads. Long, flat, smooth surfaces that made driving so much easier than on rough dirt. The other vehicles from the farm would travel out to the city and zip along the roads for fun, before returning to the farm later for their work. To Sporty it sounded like something he’d like to try. Maybe his defective body and wheels wouldn’t have such a hard time there.
But The City was far away, and Sporty couldn’t get there. He tried a few times, but after a long and painful journey, he’d get stuck, not even very far from the farm, and he had to wait for someone to tow him back home.
“I wish I could get to The City.” Sporty thought to himself sadly, but without any way to get there, he was stuck being a disappointment to everyone.
Then one day a truck named Big Rig visited the farm. Big Rig had a trailer that carried other cars. He noticed Sporty and asked him if he needed a ride. Sporty was a little shy about accepting help from Big Rig though. Normally Big Rig only carried cars that were broken and couldn’t move on their own. He was afraid that it would make the other vehicles look down at him even more than they already did.
“Come on, son! It’ll be fun.” Big Rig encouraged him. So Sporty accepted, and slowly drove up the ramp onto Big Rig’s trailer. He still couldn’t help feeling like a failure though, like he was worthless as a vehicle. Once on board, Big Rig said “All right then, let’s go!”, and the two went into The City.
Once in The City, Sporty tried driving on a road. He was nervous at first, it was so different. But once he got going, he went fast! Faster than all the trucks, tractors, and ATVs could ever go. Sporty was so happy zooming around The City, and everyone was impressed. It turns out that Sporty had plenty of horsepower after all! Sporty even met other sports cars like him and they’d race together all around The City. And Sporty was happy, he had finally found his place. -
Just a tip if you're on Mastodon...
If you edit and add the hashtags you forgot, they still work -
This is an excellent analogy!!
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@hellomiakoda @actuallyautistic
I was told that they wouldn't work when I asked.Oh well, like I said, this time I could post it directly. (Plus I might have made a few small improvements. 🤫 )
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@hellomiakoda @actuallyautistic
Thanks! My mind is always doing analogies. This time it came out as a story. -
@murdoc @actuallyautistic I found it moving, and I think you should make this a children's book, if you're up to it.
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@hellomiakoda @actuallyautistic
Boy do I take things too literally sometimes. "You found what while you were moving (from one domicile to another)? A children's book? Ooooooh, that kind of 'moving'."Well thanks again. I'm not even sure how that would be done. Do you mean commercially?
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻 last edited by
@murdoc It's unrealistic, though. Neurotypicality supremacists wouldn't be impressed by a car going unexpectedly fast; they'd invent reasons why it's a bad thing to go faster than Normal Tractors(tm).
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻 last edited by
@murdoc It doesn't work in some old implementations, but it's supposed to.
What happens is, Fediverse nodes index posts when they notice hashtags. And the simplest thing to do is to check hashtags every time that a new toot comes in. Checking hashtags — to be not only added but also potentially removed — when a new edit of an already existing toot comes in was not thought of right away by some people who wrote Fediverse nodes, and so these implementations don't reindex hashtag changes of a toot beign edited. I think most of these are several years old by now, though, so they should be uncommon.
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻 last edited by
@murdoc And this is the age-old story of why, ever since the invention of cities, lots and lots of people have been born in the countryside, felt unhappy, gone to a city, and usually not come back.
Which also meshes with why people who believe in countryside living's supremacy have been telling tall tales about the corrupting influence of cities since the Bronze Age.
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻 last edited by
@murdoc Sporty was moving from one domicile to another in the story. Notice that, having found his place, he didn't go back.