Transcript: Stim4Stim S2E1: Chaotic Child Who Does Not Know feat. Jon Rosenberg

[Theme plays]

Zack: Hello Mister and Mrs. Autism and all the ships at sea. You are listening to Stim4Stim, the relationship podcast by and for autistic people. We’re back! The fuckers did another season of Love on the Spectrum, so we have been called back to action and we’re back! I’m one of your hosts, Zack Budryk. Who else is here with me tonight?

Charlie: Hi! Charlie Stern, Paris Geller Stern, and Mister Bird [Bird tweeting in the background]

Zack: And we are very excited about our guest tonight as well. He’s the creator of the webcomic, “Goats,” and I believe the first ever winner of the National Cartoonist Society’s Webcomic Category.

Jon: Yes, online comic, yes.

Zack: So yeah…

Jon: That one was from Scenes from a Multiverse, the follow-up

Zack: Right, right!

Charlie: Yeah! Go ahead and introduce yourself

Jon: Yeah. I’m Jon Rosenberg, a cartoonist for — I don’t know, 20 years? Something like that.. I forget. And yeah, you can see me online at amultiverse.com

Zack: Welcome Jon!

Jon: Thanks!

Charlie: And why have you come to us today?

Jon: Zack invited me to come on and talk to you guys since I am a newly, self-diagnosed at 47 years of age. I never thought I was austic, for my entire life. I knew there was something up and I pursued psychological routes. I went to psychiatrists and psychologists and therapists and nobody ever suggested it once. But after doing some research, it was the only conclusion that made sense. It was like that saying about how biology only makes sense in the light of evolution. Well my particular mental issues only made sense in the light of this diagnosis. So it would be nice to have a formal diagnosis but this is going to have to do for now.

Charlie: Yeah, I actually do think that most of our listeners are going to be both adult diagnosed and also self-diagnosed.

Jon: Yeah. I did a lot of looking into the community before I came out and said that to make sure that it wasn’t a stigma about that or what the issues involved were. I read a lot about how difficult it was to get past the masking and habits that people pick up over time. That those diagnoses are usually not accurate. So it didn’t seem like it was really worth the energy or time to pursue when I have a long list of symptoms that match up to other stuff I’ve read and to just show that list to a guy to say, “yup! You’re right.” doesn’t seem like, you know — I know it. I can tell.

Charlie: And I think that’s the greatest set up for us. Starting out, in the pre-show conversations, we called this the, ‘rude one.’

[laughter]

Charlie: It’s actually — if you’re thinking about passover, you’re thinking about the four questions, you’re thinking about..you know the child who does not know, the wicked child, the child who cannot speak, etcetera, etcetera. This is maybe chaotic child who doesn’t know or neutral wicked child. Just because how blunt it is. So, I’ll read it.

“What typically motivates people to get diagnosed in adulthood. I mean if you’re already 100% sure you’re autisitic, I don’t really see the point of paying money to get diagnosed.” And then of course they say, “although maybe there are upsides to a diagnosis that I haven’t heard of.”

Zack: Maybe

Charlie: Maybe. Well, thank you so much whoever wrote this because it was honestly valuable and entertaining in how rude it was. You know, whoever wrote this, you are so autistic. You know…

[Everyone laughs]

Charlie: Like you fired this off in twenty seconds…

Jon: Confirmed

Charlie: Hit send and didn’t worry about it.

[laughter]

Charlie: And I applaud you. Yeah, no. If you’re already 100% sure you’re autistic, I don’t really see the point of paying money to get diagnosed. Ok. Whatever. [laughs] But to that, I answer from twitter user awesomebrandi

“People who realize they’re autistic do it because they’ve been searching for something. They’ve been trying to understand themselves, why they see the world the way they do and looking for community. Why is that a bad thing? Why is someone feeling at home in their skin bad?”

So they obviously didn’t write this tweet in response to this private email that we got but I think that the attitudes surrounding adult diagnosis and self diagnosis are really, really dismissive. I just want to say as someone who was an adult diagnosis and a self diagnosis, you know something’s wrong with you.

Jon: Oh yeah! Yeah.

Charlie: You’ve known all your life that something’s wrong with you.

Jon: I had no idea what it was. Didn’t have a name for it but knew there was something going on. Like why am I walking on my toes? Why do I have all these food issues? Why can I not talk to people like they are people? Just all these questions and there’s one answer for it, and I didn’t know the name of it until just recently.

Zack: And that’s what makes it so freeing too. Imagine if you were learning a new language and there was this one word that you didn’t know…

[Jon laughs]

Zack: But it was something that came up all the time. Imagine…

Charlie: Yeah! Like certain emotions or discourse

Jon: Like some people… some ancient people didn’t have a word for the color blue, for the sky.

Charlie: Yeah!

Jon: Or something like that. Something that common.

Zack: Mhm

Jon: Yeah.

Zack: I mean, I am sort of the odd one out here because I was clinically diagnosed as a teenager but I still understand just how freeing the knowledge is…

Jon: Oh yeah!

Zack: And then just always so happy see someone come to that realization with whatever path that gets them there.

Jon: I’ve felt more at peace in the last few months since the realization than in my entire life before that point.

Charlie: Yeah

Zack: Sure

Jon: It’s just to know that I am not imagining all this stuff. I am not lazy. I am not avoiding stuff on purpose. That there’s a reason. It was a mind blower. And still every day I wake up and go holy shit.

Zack: Mhm

Jon: It just changes everything. The way you look at everything and my whole history. I go back through every moment in my life and realize from this new perspective what was happening and why. It’s constant lightning bolts to the head.

Zack: Yeah. Something that was really interesting for me to hear was — a couple weeks ago for a piece that I also interviewed Jon for, I interviewed Yuh-Line Niou who is a member of the New York State Assembly and is herself autistic. She said that a lot of it just slipped under the radar for her as a child because it didn’t manifest in problematic ways. It just meant that…

Jon: she’s suffering internally and not in a way that bothered the people around her

Zack: Yeah! All the people around her saw was that wow, look how great this girl’s grades were.

Charlie: Yeah! And the issue, the reason so many of us go until adulthood to figure it out is because the diagnosis criteria for children is very limited or criteria is plural, so they are very limited.

Zack: Absolutely

Charlie: Basically the entire sort of medical community and media are focused on children who are boys, who are white, who present in rain-men esque ways.

Zack: Absolutely:

Charlie: And that really fucks over all of the rest of us, who are the majority anyway.

Jon: Media representation hasn’t helped us much in that regard.

Charlie: Yeah, no. So it’s very common actually to have grown up in either a gender minority or racial minority and having been autistic, having been in advanced classes or on the advanced track, but also wondering why you’re not able to access the special ed tracks. I specifically, definitely yearned for both. I didn’t know what was going on and all throughout my childhood I was like, I don’t know, I really am excelling at the advanced reading program but I need the special ed program. And I couldn’t verbalize that because I didn’t know why I needed the special ed program. But I didn’t seem to have these sort of intrinsic drives. I wasn’t able to meet sort of informal development goal posts. Like I didn’t know how people were adapting socially or knowing what to do in every situation. And of course my grades were super, super bad eventually. And I was unable to complete work because I was so anxious about it, I was such a perfectionist. I was in an abusive home. I had ADHD and undiagnosed physical illnesses and I was autistic. So I was just so panicked all the time because ostensibly, I had everything there. I had everything going for me. I was supposed to have all the tools in my box to solve things and to get good grades and get myself out of there. But it was so, so hard. And it was like there was something in front of my face that I could see but could not see and no one else could see. That just was over my entire life, this veil. So, I mean after going to college and being in college and being supported by my peers and all of us grouped together, all of the trans and queer people who were maybe on the spectrum. We have all since confirmed that we are autstic. I wouldn’t have been able to get there on my own. My roommate in college sometimes when I was upset, she would bring me to target. And that was her, as a child care major, soothing me as an autistic person, living in intimate quarters with her. When I told her I had the realization that I was autistic, it wasn’t quite, I thought you knew, but it was like she knew, she definitely knew. I guess she hadn’t thought to nudge me along, she was just treating — she was just responding to what I needed but we hadn’t had that conversation about why I needed these things. She knew to take me to target and let me touch things.

Zack: Oh yeah

Jon: Two people figured it out before me.

Charlie: Yeah

Jon: My friend Rich Stevens, who is also a cartoonist. He does a comic called Diesel Sweeties. Must have mentioned to me off hand in a conversation a decade ago. And I just missed it. What are you talking about? And then my wife mentioned it to me a few years back and again, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just very depressed all the time. But that one stuck and the reinforcement of the previous message and eventually, I think that was what led me to looking into it seriously.

Zack: I was, for some reason, just thinking the other day about the first person who talked to me and I think he was trying to insult me, actually.

[Jon laughs]

Zack: He was a bigger kid in my neighborhood who kicked a paper cup of water out of my hands…

Charlie: He kicked it out of your hands??

Zack: Yeah

Charlie: Shit

Zack: Yeah

[Jon laughs]

Zack: And he said, “are you autistic and that’s how come you can’t fight?”

[Charlie laughs]

Jon: Was he doing like crane kicks or something? Was he the karate kid?

Zack: I don’t remember…

[Jon laughs]

Zack: I don’t remember any context other than the visceral sensation of water suddenly being all over me but you know what, you got me guy. I’m autistic and that’s how come I can’t fight.

[Theme Music — 14:27 to 14:33]

Zack: So next we got both an email and a DM. Thank you both. Please continue to — folks continue to get in touch with us either means. And the common thread is that both of them have long suspected that they are autistic and that they have masked effectively enough that a lot of people don’t even suspect that they are neurodivergent.

“A 21-year old non-binary person, I am wondering whether I should pursue a diagnosis. I was diagnosed with ADHD and I know there’s a lot of overlap but I have a gut feeling that there is something more or different going on. I’ve always struggled socially, I’m very outgoing but I struggle to make real connections with people because I feel like we’re not on the same page emotionally. My question is mostly for Charlie but I want others input. What made you decide to look deeper into whether or not you’re autistic? Was there a tipping point where you decided you really needed to know?”

Zack: Our second question, very similar…

“I’ve been starting to consider that I might be autistic after I finished grad school last year. I’m a 26-year old gay cis male and I’ve been struggling on the job market. A diagnosis would be huge for me but I think that discussing it might weird out my husband. He thinks that there is no utility in making it official since I don’t have many issues. I think that I mask many of my issues. While this is going on, my sister, 19, has been struggling with her mental health, flunked out of her first year at university. Last month she received an ADHD diagnosis. My mother and I believe that she is also autistic. My diagnosis would be more for peace of mind, her’s would be very important to get her proper accommodations and such. My mom is afraid of suggesting this to her out of fear that it will offend her. So my questions are, how best to bring this up to my sister, if at all? And how do I even approach getting a diagnosis for myself? I really don’t even know where to start.”

Charlie: I’ll start this off by saying that I think most of our listeners and definitely most of our submitters are of the same general demographic. So, they are not people who have been diagnosed as children and they’re overwhelmingly queer in many ways. We see this again and again and this is a huge indication that the medical complex is not serving us and anecdotally at least, we are the majority. Gender mintorities, sexual minorities, racial minorities. That’s really who we are and that’s who the show is for. So I do want to answer this person’s question because they did indicate that it was for me. “What made you look deeper into whether or not you’re autistic?” I mean, I think we all have that moment where we google it. [laughs]. It’s funny because on so many crime shows, murderers google what do I do if i just murdered someone.

[Everyone laughs]

Charlie: And then they read it in court because — please be careful about your online security if you are doing crimes, whether or not you are doing righteous sabotage work as an anarchist or communist or you are self performing abortions or you are a sex worker. Please, please, please be careful about what you are google searching because you don’t want that read out in court. But yeah, no. Like every murder show has that thrity seconds of what this murderer googled after murdering this other person or even before murdering a person. How to poison a man, age 60 to 65.

[laughter]

Charlie: How long of a sentence does murder carry? So, it’s very human to throw ourselves down at the altar of Google. Rather than asking god, we are asking google and so I think all of us have that moment where we are googling symptoms. Even still, as a person with OCD, I am still learning that certain fears I have are a certain kind of OCD. They are ever expanding definitions and five or six types that we know about now. I am still googling.

Zack: I feel like I am the farthest removed from this person’s experience so, Jon do you have any thoughts about what made you take the plunge as far as this goes?

Jon: Well I mean I’ve been looking for answers for decades but I had never considered autism because my exposure to what autism is was very poor. I had seen Rain Man and couple other bad representations on sitcoms or whatever and hadn’t thought too much about it after that. But the last few years on Twitter I have interacted with so many amazing autistic people that I had to reassess what that was and do research and find out about it. Over time as I learned more about it, I realized I saw myself more and more in the things that I was reading. After a while, it was just undeniable…

Zack: Yeah

Jon: So I think it’s really just the more you’re exposed to it, the more you learn and the more you can grasp what it is and how it manifests in your life and yeah, it’s an ongoing process for me.

Zack: Absolutely. And even though, again, was diagnosed as a teenager and by a doctor, I really wish I had even now, when I’m 32 and about one — two decades removed from my diagnosis, it has been extremely enlightening and expands my understanding by the day to be actually able to be a part of that community. So I think that I understand myself in ways that I didn’t just by getting that diagnosis because I have been able to talk to and expand my understanding with other autistic people, so I definitely think that seeking out your people is extremely valuable in terms of coming to that realization

Charlie: Yeah and it’s the people you’re spending time with are autistic, you probably flock to them for a subconscious reason and you’re probably autistic. You know I talk about my friend who is a rabbi a lot on this podcast but knowing him in college, years before realizing I was autistic, he got his adult diagnosis. And being exposed to him and also being surrounded by all these weird people, we later found out were autistic, we all flocked together and if you are listening to this and you’re unsure or maybe identifying as not autistic. There is actually a reason you’re listening to this podcast.

[laughter]

Charlie: If you do have the question, the question is probably yes. And if you are on Twitter in a lot of communities with autistic people, autistic creators, autistic dot dot dot, whether you’re in STEM or politician or journalist or whatever, if you’re surrounded by autistic people and you have an unexplainable interest in autistic things, that’s probably your answer.

Zack: Mhm. Occcam’s razor. The simplest explanation tends to be the correct one.

Charlie: Mhm. So this younger sister who is probably autistic, the proximity both genetically and socially to you as our submitter, you at 26, your younger sister is very likely autistic and she has very likely been searching. I guess I could address both of these people here cause you know, it all sort of congeals. You know what I’m saying?

Zack: Absolutely. And I think that it — we don’t know the specifics of how it runs in the family but there is definitely a lot of evidence suggesting that as well. I’ve talked with so many autistic people that think that one or both of their parents is probably flying under the radar. There have been so many things that I have been noticing about my father. I was just recently — I think I told Charlie about this — My wife and I visited him for the weekend and for some reason, he was just compulsively repeating his impression of how Wolf Blitzer says, “the corona virus.”

[Charlie laughs]

Zack: to amuse himself when he was bored.

Charlie: Oh [laughs]

[Theme music plays — 25:16–25:25]

Jon: One of the things that I’ve realized looking back over the years is that a lot of the people I clicked with and ended up spending most of my time with were other artists that do exactly the same stuff as I do. We would congregate at conventions and I am positive that half of those people are autistic…

[Zack chuckles]

Jon: It’s definitely like a community that attracts a lot of neurodiverse people

Zack: Yeah

Jon: A neurodiverse community. And I have to wonder if there is some overlap with just creativity in general there.

Zack: Yeah! I was just going to say, we have a lot of lost time to make up for as far as that goes because for years, part of the stereotype dates back to around Rain Man era or a little afterwards, was just the idea that autistic people were STEM lords. But I know a ton of creative autistic people and autistic people with otherwise liberal art backgrounds. And I think that things are far from ideal, obviously, which these questions illustrate but I also think we have a way better understanding of the extent to which autistic people contain multitudes and that keeps people from dismissing the possibility out of hand the same way they might have a decade ago.

Charlie: Yeah! There are great memes about how if you were in the closet in the high school, how your english teachers were really important to you. And I think that’s definitely true for queer people but it’s also true for autistic people. Like if you had a history teacher you kind of saw as a parental figure, something was going on.

Jon: Yeah. I fell in love with any teacher who would give me half a minute of attention

Zack: Yeah! See just for the audience’s benefit, Charlie did not know until I’m saying these words right now that I had a history teacher who was like a parental figure in high school.

Charlie: WOW!

Zack: Yeah.

Charlie: Wow.

Zack: Mhm

Charlie: No. That’s incredible. It really is true.

Zack: Mhm

Charlie: It is true for many, many demographics. I mean I don’t remember my science teachers valuing my emotional well being.

Zack: Yeah

Charlie: I think it’s an entirely different culture. STEM autistics, I don’t know, write in. Do you feel not so supported by your peers and mentors because the stereotype of STEM would lead me to believe that your mentors are not as emotionally giving. I hope that’s inaccurate but write in.

Zack: Yeah! Always write in.

[Theme Music Plays 28:47 to 28:57]

Zack: Ok so this one says,

“I’ve been reading more and more about autism over the last year after my ex, who is autistic, told me that they thought I might be too and asked if I had ever talked to anyone about it. Reading more and more, talking to my autistic friends about their experiences, I’ve come to feel pretty confident that I am autistic and my deceased father was as well. I also think I spent the vast majority of my life masking and that it’s very hard to let that down around strangers because I’m so used to needing to do it. I’d like to reach out to someone for an official diagnosis and I’m concerned after reading about it that I’ll end up talking to someone who will misread my masking and not be able to give me useful information or feedback. I’m 33 now and while I can find — it says I can, I assume it means I can find — lots of resources for children seeking diagnosis, I am coming up short on whom to speak to as an adult. Do you have any recommendations and how much is masking a barrier to diagnosis?”

Charlie: So obviously we’re not therapists and we’re not psychiatrists or psychologists and we don’t have these answers and also well, our country, if you’re writing from the United States, doesn’t have a lot of resources for you. But they do still exist. You know my temptation is actually to schedule an appointment for when you’re exhausted and stressed out. Like if you only like to do your doctors appointments in the afternoons like I do, if I was trying to take the barriers down and not be masking, I would go first thing in the morning when I am not woken up enough to get the shields up, basically. Yeah. Or if you work a nine to five, go directly to your appointment after your work because you’re probably going to be really wound up. Or you know, if you have other medical things going on, doing a marathon of one or two medical things or other errands, like honestly it might be worthwhile, whatever strategy you decide to take, to go in a little stressed out, a little impaired in some way. So you are not this confident person going in to an interview, you are a patient seeking help and clearly suffering from whatever what you are looking to solve and that’s why you’re coming to a doctor

Zack: Yeah and I think that makes a lot of sense. This was honestly — autism and anxiety are not apples to apples although they tend to be correlated -and this is why for years I resisted going to therapy for anxiety because I’m never actually in therapy when I feel the most anxious and it’s so you can’t put that exact headspace into words when someone is asking you to. So I think that’s a really good idea

Charlie: Do you feel like when you go to therapy, you are trying to give the best impression of yourself?

Zack: [sighs] sometimes, yeah. And that’s honestly — I feel like a weird got to be strong — my therapist is a man and I feel like sometimes there are — he’s great at his job but also there’s this weird, got to be strong for my dad, when I talk to him as a result of that.

Jon: That’s why it’s so hard to find a good therapist. When someone who you feel is really on your side, who has your best interests at heart is not trying to put you in the holes he’s learned about in his education. Yeah, it’s very difficult. I personally don’t know what to do. Anything you guys suggest?

Charlie: You have to make the therapist interview for a spot with you, basically. You have to shop around and if you don’t vibe with someone after the first session, or even if in the middle of the first session, they’re not the one and you find the next.

Zack: Absolutely

Charlie: So listeners, I’ve got the toy box next to me so Mister Bird and Paris are in the toy box.

[laughter]

Charlie: Mister Bird plucks himself, so he doesn’t really have long tail feathers. But Paris has long tail feathers, so he’s playing right now. He has his head down and his butt up, so what I’m doing is fucking with his tail feathers.

[everyone laughs]

Charlie: Just because it’s bothering him and it’s funny, to piss him off because he’s really serious about play time. He is very Paris Geller-esque where if he is focused on a task, god help you if you get in the way. He’s very jewish.

[everyone laughs]

Charlie: So he’s in this corner right now, playing with like some pinata esque thing. Actually, a lot of these toys in the toy box were given to him by our late friend, Carly Caldwell. She was an autistic person working on staff at a North Carolina center for autism outreach, basically. She got diagnosed at work. She always had the suspicion and then working in that environment helped her to come to terms with herself and get a diagnosis. She knew everything about birds and rabbits. She rescued many rabbits down on their luck and so she was thinking of starting to get birds, so she would give Paris very lavish gifts — candy bars and pinatas, little pear shaped vitamins. I mean carry on this podcast because of those we’ve lost and that’s a huge theme. But right now, as we speak, Paris is tearing into this pinata that Carly gave him…

Zack: hell yeah

Charlie: and that feels nice

Zack: Absolutely — she is actually out camping with Raychel in the Gettysburg area this week but this is the first time we’ve recorded since we got our Chihuahua, Ziggy. So, given how difficult it is to get her to understand that anything at all can’t be done while playing with her, she may make a cameo in a future episode

Charlie: Oh yeah! Yeah. I had to, like, prepping for this — setting up my very old laptop and trying to get it online, I had to keep sort of like floofing Paris from…

[laughter]

Charlie: I’m doing a demonstration for everybody in the video chat but basically he was putting his feet and tail where the camera hole is and also trying to chew on it, get inside. So I floofed him from the top of the laptop to my head and then he’d fly back and I’d have to do it again. It was a whole process and it took taking a hot shower to calm both of us down to get ready for this podcast.

Zack: It happens sometimes. Sometimes you need a Paris shower.

[Theme music playing 38:01 to 38:09]

Charlie: Let’s go to our decompression question

Zack: So obviously, fall is in the air. I don’t think any of us is in exactly the same area but it’s my understanding that it was fairly brisk in a lot of places today, especially compared to earlier this week. So since autistic people are very much about the familiar sounds, vibes, and smells. Fall has all of those, we are asking what is your go to seasonal drink. So I am not really an elaborate starbucks drink person because I feel like I have an old man’s palate that can’t really tolerate drinking sugar but there is, this is such a boojee thing to say, even more than saying what your favorite starbucks drink is — They got pumpkin coffee at Trader Joe’s that I’ll just pound black, no cream or sugar in it, during September and October. It works really well for me. I am just feeling again that nip in the air and taking a big sniff of it like a sicko…

[Charlie laughs]

Zack: that just works out really well for me

Charlie: Is it ground coffee with spices in it?

Zack: Yeah!

Charlie: Okay.

Zack: Yeah, the holiday one that I really fuck with as well but I think it’s too early for them to have that out.

Charlie: Jon?

Jon: I’m not much of a coffee drinker or.. I don’t drink any coffee. The taste of it, I can’t. Maybe it’s a sensory thing, but ever since I was young I have tried it many times but I have never taken to it. I do on the other hand, I do enjoy sugary stuff. I’m a bit of a sweet tooth, sugar addict. If you give me a red bull, I’m a happy boy. For the season, my go to would have to be hot cocoa.

Zack: Love hot cocoa!

Jon: Classic! If you add some marshmallows.. [sigh]

Charlie: Yeah. All of mine are coffee too. Right now I’m thinking of bulk buying the Califia Farms pumpkin spice almond creamer because I’ve had that for a couple weeks and it is incredible. I know I am going to have one of those autistic sads about it if I run out…

Zack: Sure

Charlie: when pumpkin spice season is over, so I think what I’m going to do is bulk buy and freeze and thaw if I need because yeah, the ritual of coffee is so important to me.

Zack: Absolutely

Charlie: I just bought a nice french press and I can’t wait for that. I have been doing a Keurig which isn’t bad. People give it a lot of shit but it isn’t bad if you do the refillable cups and put in your own premium coffee. But yeah, I think I’m going to bulk buy the Califia Farms and that’s what i’m going to do until next summer whirls around and i’m forced to drink lemonade or whatever

[Jon laughs]

Zack: Yeah and I’m glad you mentioned because I think it’s enough of a thing that we need to do a bonus episode or something about the phenomena of autistic running out of something sads…

Charlie: Yeah!

Zack: autistic choosiness of that kind thing too because I had this specific kind instant peach tea that I can only find at the grocery store where parking is impossible so everytime I say I’m walking out to buy more, Rachel says let me give you a ride to the other grocery store, I say no, you can’t give me a ride to that other grocery store because they don’t have it there. I’m walking. Sometimes I feel like it probably doesn’t taste any different, I just reverse engineered the choosiness in some perverse way but I don’t know.

Charlie: I am so attached to the Nate Berkus Project 63 sheets. You know, bedding. I got a queen set in 2019 and then for a while I had to adapt to a twin bed because the place I was subletting had a daybed, so I bought the same sheets I already owned, but in a twin, from ebay and then I started sleeping full frame and full mattress and I bought two different sets of those same sheets in the same color from ebay and if I — I can’t change my mattress size anymore. I have to keep this mattress or stay with full because if I didn’t have these sheets, of course I would die. I would literally die. What would I do? I would die. So yeah, Target needs to bring them back or I have to guard these sheets I already own with my life.

Zack: Oh yeah. Yeah. Bedding and sleep related stuff in particular, like that’s when you’re at your most vulnerable so…

Charlie: Yeah

Zack: The idea of something not being just so right

Charlie: Yeah and I think we had requests for skin care. For us to talk about skin care, so I think you guys, next episode, let’s get our submissions in. We’re going to talk about skin care, bedding, cooking, laundry. We’re going to talk about developing skills as autistic people, a lot of our listeners are younger than us. So yeah, what we’re going to talk about next time is just trappings of the home and oneself

Zack:: Hell yeah

Charlie: So just write in at stim4stim@gmail.com or just DM us on twitter, because all of you I think found us through twitter

Zack: We’re back!

Charlie: We’re back! Season two.

Zack: Hell yeah! And Jon, where can people find you online?

Jon: My website is at amultiverse.com or you can find me on twitter at jonrosenberg

Zack: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on

Jon: No problem. Thanks for having me. This was great

Zack: Yeah. And we will see the rest of ya’s next time

[Theme music plays — 45:47–45:55]