I Founded a Company to Make "Ah, They Understood" an Everyday Experience
Turns out, I was the alien
In kindergarten, I couldn't join in the group dances. When they sent me outside, I rode a tricycle around and around the yard.
At my elementary school entrance ceremony, I chased a butterfly that flew past me, right out of the gym.
Once, wanting to know whether a magnifying glass could really start a fire, I held one over a pile of fallen leaves for the whole lunch break. It started a small fire.
In my head, all of it made sense. I wanted to do something, and I went at it the fastest way I knew. But to everyone else, I must have been a kid who might do anything.
By fourth grade, no one invited me to play anymore.
So I devoured books on behavioral psychology at the library. Where people look, how they move, when they pause. Ways to read, from the outside, the feelings people don't put into words. By sixth grade, I was even trusted to be class president.
But I was always exhausted. Reading faces, choosing words that wouldn't spoil the mood. Talking that way, conversations ended without what I really thought ever getting across.
Wasn't there a more natural way for feelings to get through? I had been asking that since I was a child.