When my wife hired a guy to pressure wash the front of our house, she warned me that he was “probably on the spectrum.” She also said that he was a magician. I instantly thought of GOB in Arrested Development and rolled my eyes.
“I’ll be at work when he gets here,” she said. “So you’ll have to be a grown-up and deal with it.”
He showed up in one of those rainbow-explosion T-shirts, his mangy facial hair failing to conceal a large, scythe-shaped scar running down one side of his face. He got friendly fast and shook my hand, then launched into an explanation of how he was going to bill me.
“You see that sign on the side of my truck?” It was a typical business decal on the passenger-side door. “In this state I can’t drive around with that sign and that license number and have a contract that’s only for two hours of work. I have to charge you hourly, because anything under two hours is handyman work.”
“Okay,” I said.
“For handyman work it’s going to be eighty an hour.”
I knew then that I should have bought a cheap pressure washer and done it myself.
“A job like this is normally not worth my time,” he said. “You’re better off hiring one of those guys on the corner.”
He was referring to the itinerant laborers who hang around the Shell station waiting for jobs.
“And I forgot the bleach,” he said. “So I’ll have to go back and get that. But don’t worry, I won’t charge you for it.”
I was considering myself fortunate and wondering whether to offer him my own bleach.
“You see, I’m mainly a house painter. I have a contractor’s license. And you have to take a test for that.”
I must have had a questioning look on my face—the look of a cop who’s trying to figure out if you’re lying, crazy, drunk or on drugs—because he grinned and said, “I’m neurodivergent.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering if that factored into his hourly rate.
“That’s autistic in baby-boomer speak,” he said. “I’m letting you know because I can come across as, you know, different?”
This guy didn’t have the averted eyes, blank face or social awkwardness of the mildly autistic people I’d encountered. He was also more expressive and responsive to social cues than people with autism generally are. To me he just seemed high.
“Thanks for telling me,” I said.
“Yeah, well, we know more about it now. It’s more accepted than it used to be. We have a community.”
He was staring at me, grinning, as if community were a cue for my line. But I didn’t have the script and just wanted to exit stage left.
“My son was diagnosed as neurodivergent,” he continued. “That’s when I realized that I had the same thing. I always thought that I was just different. But now there’s an awareness. And I think it’s good to let people know.”
“Thank you for letting me know,” I said.
“Sure, no problem, seeing as we’re in World War III.”
Another cue, this time for what I guessed was my political view. “I don’t think we’re there yet,” I said. “But I know what you mean. We could be heading there.”
“Okay, then, almost World War III.”
“Yes, almost,” I said and went into the house.
I was working at my desk and wondering whether he’d left to get the bleach. I looked out the window. He hadn’t left. A half an hour passed and I had to pick up my kid from school. On my way to the car I saw him leaning into the cab of his truck, talking loudly.
“Glad I didn’t take acid today,” I heard him say.
He saw me, stopped talking and waved me over. “I was doing a TikTok thing,” he said. “Let me show you the bleach solution.”
Apparently, he’d hadn’t forgotten the bleach. He showed me a plastic jug and gave me a run-down of the chemical contents. I thanked him and went to my car.
After picking up my kid I did some grocery shopping. It was a delay tactic, so that my child wouldn’t have to interact with a neurodivergent house painter. When we got back, I was disappointed to see that he was still setting up.
My wife had come home and I asked her if she could deal with the guy, as I’d had enough of his so-called neurodivergence.
She scolded me for being unsympathetic to autistic people. “I warned you that he was on the spectrum, so show some kindness.”
I had no answer to that. Nor did I ask her why she’d hired an autistic magician to pressure wash the house.
After he finished and left, she showed where he’d blasted the paint off the flashing and one of the fascia boards. I reassured her that I felt sorry for people with autism, but not for house painters on acid.