We're All Neurodivergent Here

By Rory McClannahan

The word that has been floating around in my head for the past couple of weeks has been “neurodivergent.”

Up until a Teams meeting at the new job a couple of weeks ago, I had never heard the term. Now it has been turning and turning over in my mind, mostly because I can’t make up my mind how a feel about it. Neurodivergent, if you are as ignorant as I was about this, “is a non-medical term that describes people whose brains develop or work differently for some reason.” That’s from the prestigious Cleveland Clinic, which until a couple of minutes ago I didn’t know existed.

My awareness of this non-medical term came about thanks to some young woman on a Teams call. My new place of work is a giant operation and I am but just one teeny, tiny part of the concern. And while I have been assaulted by regular meetings with management telling me how important I am to the mission, I know I am nothing. I’m a small cog in the machine that is easily replaced if that decision is made. I guess that is okay with me, I’ve had stops in my career where my passion has led to me being “the guy.” That has a lot of drawbacks of its own. As I look forward to the tail end of my work life, this is a decent last stop. While not a fan of working for huge employers, I do find the work interesting and it puts skills I have learned and used to work. Therefore, I enjoy the job.

As a way to indoctrinate myself into the company culture, I’ve been attending a lot of trainings and meetings and such. While the corporate culture, in places, seems a little silly, I do understand the conscious effort to create a positive corporate culture. You know? For the kids. (Anyone who loves “The Hudsucker Proxy” like I do will get that joke.)

Seriously, though, there’s a lot of kids in the workplace these days, and I’m sure they would be rightly angry that I call them kids. I know I was at their age. When did that happen? When did I become the old guy at the office? I have had to adapt, to remember what my place is within the cogs of the universe. I honestly don’t know how these kids see me, probably just some old guy like their dad. That’s not a bad thing, but I’d rather be seen as someone’s oddball uncle.

So, most of the time with these group Teams meetings I won’t say much of anything if I can help it. The other people in these meetings use the emojis in the chat function. I have never worked in a virtual environment that large, in which the average Teams meeting can have 30 people on it.

Every now and then, though, an interesting discussion can break out, even though most of the time there are lots of awkward pauses. My colleagues are mostly writers, and I haven’t worked with that many writers since my early days at the newspapers. Just and FYI, writers are generally not known to be especially social and they all seem to be a little off center.

I can’t remember what the discussion was about – maybe how to get engineers and other brainiacs to show writers a little love and respect. I’ve heard this sort of discussion many, many times. A group of writers will eventually get to how no one understands their work and devalues the importance of being able to put a thought together and write it down. I suppose just about everyone in any vocation complains about the people who just don’t understand anything about what they do, but writers do have a legitimate beef. Just because you have Microsoft Word on your desktop doesn’t mean you are a writer.

But I’ve also felt that on any other job I’ve had. I had felt that way as a HVAC guy in my first job out of the Air Force and I felt it on every job since. However, just because I sympathize doesn’t mean I don’t hate that kind of talk. It’s self-defeating and I had pointed that out during this meeting. I couldn’t hold my tongue. My advice to these young people was that if you wanted to be treated with respect, had be especially sharp and fight for that respect. (No, you don’t always get it, but that sort of attitude builds confidence.)

I think they understood. I mean, it’s not earth-shattering advice and I certainly agree with what many of these kids think, that everyone should be treated fair and nice and respected. That’s just not the real world, though. I’ve heard older folks complain about these kids, complaining that they aren’t willing to put in their time and work shit jobs until finally they earn respect. “No one wants to work,” I hear quite often. If I’m part of the conversation I might make the argument that these kids are only putting into practice what their parents taught them. They grew up in houses where their moms and dads both worked and the kids were shuffled off to daycare. They saw their moms and dads work long hours and work their way up the corporate ladders only to be knocked off it by companies that punished loyalty and hard work with a security guard watching over them while they packed up their desks after getting laid off.

No, I don’t blame these kids for wanting more out of work than what their parents got. I agree with their ideals that everyone should be treated with respect regardless of who they are and given the same opportunities as anyone else. I was like that at their age but had no recourse, no action I could take. I had to suck it up and take whatever shit rolled downhill to me. That’s what work was about as I coming up.

With that in mind, I am still a man who is approaching 60 trips around the sun, and I suppose you could say I am a little set in my ways. I have had a very different life experience than these young people who seem to be everywhere. Please notice that I did not say better. Just different.

So, when I hear about another group of cohorts who feel they are being oppressed, I have a tendency to give an internal eye roll and think, “Oh, hell, what now?” That on a conscious level I figure more power to anyone trying to change the system, but it does seem like a lot of groups have come forward demanding changes and demanding them now. I get it, but I sometimes wonder if we as a society are too focused on our differences to realize that it is our similarities that unite us. I am still a member of my generation, which might not have invented the eye roll but we sure as hell perfected it. But I really don’t want to offend anyone, so any eye roll I give is simply metaphorical.

I try to keep my mind open and am all for whatever struggle it is you are going through, that does not mean that I keep up with the terminology. All I can say is I try, but we all have to admit that most of the culture war stuff – whether you come at it from the right or from the left – is ridiculous and sometimes more than a little scary.

So, when this young woman implied that her status as a neurodivergent gave her some sort of secret perspective to the subject at hand, my first thought was, “Oh hell, what now?” I had never heard the term and wondered if this was some new number on the autism spectrum or some new trendy psychological thing. It’s the latter, but I didn’t see what was so special about it.

“A nonmedical term that describes people whose brains develop or work differently for some reason.” My first thought upon reading that was, “So in a sense, everyone?” Actually, no. It’s a description of the weird kids you grew up with. I suppose I can see how a “normal” person would give the ol’ side eye glance to those weird kids. I know this because I was one, and still am. In short, the more I read about neurodivergence the more I realized they were kind of talking about me and a lot of my friends.

I find the oddballs and the different thinkers to be much more interesting, as well as entertaining. I like them better than the average bear, mostly because you don’t always know what will come out of their mouths. I already what “normal” people are thinking and saying because you can’t get them to shut up. Then there are the people who try and convince the world that they are part of the neurodivergent class but are really just posers adopting a persona that isn’t really their own.

I truth, I don’t know that I would consider myself neurodivergent. Nor am I really convinced it is truly a thing. I like to think that each and every one of us on this big blue marble think a little different than the person sitting next to us. I suppose that only means we all have something in common.

And if you ask me, that’s not a bad thing.