Whatever happened to "eccentricity"?

I am sure you know the sort of thing I mean. The adult who insists on only wearing a tie and socks in matching colours or only one shade of lipstick, the child who insists on counting the number of peas on the plate before eating them, the person who gets anxious if someone else sits in "their" seat on the bus and the person who checks all the locks twice - are they all "autistic"? 

There is an article in this morning's paper saying autism in this country is diagnosed at three times the global average...and that this is not necessarily a good thing. I have to agree. I would also agree that the National Disability Insurance Scheme and, once diagnosed, readily available money has been part of the problem.

Let me be quite clear about all this. Severe and profound autism is disabling. It can be severely and profoundly disabling. People with the condition need help. Their families and carers need help handling them. Some cannot dress themselves. They will only eat certain foods in a certain order and only if they are in certain positions on the plate. They will never hold a conversation with anyone.

At the other end of the scale the boy I went to school with who insisted on writing with only a pencil was not autistic. He admitted to me much later in life that he was afraid of making mistakes. You could rub a pencil mark out. You could not rub out pen marks. 

It is quite likely he would now be regarded as "autistic". There would be efforts to "encourage" him to use a pen, to do things differently. He might have ended up feeling less comfortable. In the year I knew him his teacher simply recognised an unhappy, uncertain little boy whose work with a pencil was slightly above average. He liked things to be precise. He ended up working as a draftsman but he never married and never learned to drive. He lived alone in a house where nothing was out of place and he kept his geometric garden immaculate. At his funeral his neighbours spoke of his eccentricity but also of his generosity with garden produce, the way he would mow the lawn for the elderly woman across the street and more. His immediate neighbour actually said to me, "I suppose that's what they call autistic now but really he was just what my dad would called a bit eccentric."

I know other people who are a "bit eccentric". I do not see them as "autistic". If we must label people then I will reserve it for the boy who looks perfectly normal but does not speak and will not use the lift. He will not eat some foods and only eats some foods on some occasions. He can also build complex Lego kits - the type they use for university students.  

I know "autism" is not a single issue. It is a complex range of issues and there are degrees of complexity within those issues. I just do not like the idea that some of the quirky little things which make us different and interesting and add to our interactions with each other are being labelled this way. 

Do we want everyone to be the same?