The Valley of Amazement

[Excerpt]
by ty Tur (USA)

At the age of eight. I was determined to be true to My Self. Of course, that made it essential to
know what My Self consisted of. My manifesto began the day I discovered I had once possessed an extra
finger in each hand, twins to my pinkies. My grandmother had recommended that the surplus be
amputated before leaving the hospital, lest people think there was a familial tendency toward giving birth
to octopuses. Mother and Father were Freethinkers, whose opinions were based on reason, logic,
deduction, and their own opinions. Mother, who disagreed with any advice my grandmother had to give,
said: "3hould the extra fingers be removed simply to enable her to wear gloves from it dry goods store?"
They took me home with all my fingers in place. But then an old family friend of my father's, Mr. Maubert,
who was also my piano teacher, convinced them to turn my unusual hands into ordinary ones. He was a
former concert pianist, who, early in his promising career, lost his right arm during the siege of Paris by
the Prussians. There are only a few piano compositions for one hand," he said to my parents, and none
for six fingers. If you intend for her to have musical training, it would be a pity if she had to take up the
tambourine due to lack of suitable instruments." Mr. Maubert was the one who proudly informed me
when I was eight that he had influenced the decision.

Few can understand the shock of a little girl learning that part of her was considered undesirable
and thus needed to be completely removed. It made me fearful that people could change parts of me,
without knowledge and permission. And this began my quest to know which of my many attributes I
needed to protect, the whole of which I named scientifically "My Pure Self-Being."

In the beginning, the complete list comprised my preferences and dislikes, my strong feelings for
animals, my animosity toward anyone who laughed at me, my aversion to stickiness, and several more
things have now forgotten. I also collected secrets about myself, mostly what had wounded heart, and
the very fact that they needed to be kept private was proof of My Pure Self-being. I later added to my list
my intelligence, opinions or others, tears and revulsions, and certain nagging discomforts, which I later
knew as worries. A few years later, after I stained my undergarments, Mother explained to me "the biology
that led to your existence" the gist of which was my beginning as an egg slipping down a fallopian tube.
She made it sound as if I had been a mindless blob and that upon entry into the world I took on a
personality shaped through my parents' guidance.

GUIDE QUESTIONS:

1. What was Lulu's reaction when she found out about the operation? Do you think her reaction is
normal? Why or why not?

2. Do you think the parents made a mistake in operating on Lulu's fingers? Why or why not? UNITVE:
Real World issues
3. What is the narrator's fear?

4. Why did the narrator dislike the way her mother described reproduction?

5. What do you think is its effect on the narrator?

6. What does it mean, that the narrator wanted to be true to her Self?

7. Have you ever felt the same way? Why or why not?

8. Do you think the narrator is selfish? Why or why not?

9. Is the narrator expressing an inherently Asian or American valve?

10. Do childhood revelations have lasting impact on one's life?

AFTER READING:_________________________________________________________________

Read up on Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. In a small group, discuss the need for self-actualization
and what this entails. How would your group apply this to your lives? Share this with the rest of the
class.

EVALUATION:___________________________________________________________________

What does it mean to be true to oneself?

Answer this question in a short or to two-page essay, double-spaced. The essay should have insights and
examples to prove one's point.

ENRICHMENT:___________________________________________________________________

The teacher should read all the students papers an: ick the top three essays This should be read aloud to
the rest of the class.
  Typical ASD behaviors include stereotyped actions (hand flapping, body rocking), insistence on
sameness, resistance to change, and, in some cases, aggression or self-injury.
 Between 30% and 50% of people with autism have seizures.
 Autism was originally believed to be a form of schizophrenia brought on by a traumatic experience
or bad parenting. This is not the case as scientific studies have proven.

People with autism often face discrimination from members of society. In school, they are often
bullied and misunderstood. The discrimination is not limited to the school setting, and there are real-
world consequences to this discrimination. This can be seen in Sara. Cassidy's (2015) news article in The
Independent, which states, “More adults with autism have been bullied or discriminated against at work
the largest ever survey on the condition has found. Meanwhile, 43 percent said they had left or lost a job
because of their autism, the poll by the National Autistic Society (NAS) concluded."
Many people do not understand that autism cannot be treated. In a world where differences can be
a source of conflict or ridicule, there is a need to be more understanding and open to people's differences.
The story you are about to read is written from the perspective of a person with autism it is an
excerpt from a novel, and the narrator is writing a murder mystery about who killed a dog in his
neighborhood. Funny and wise, this excerpt shows a glimpse of what it is like to have autism.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

[Excerpt]
by Ma Haddon
(England)

29. I find people confusing.

This is for two main reasons.

The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words. Siobhan says that
if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean "I want to do sex with you" and
it can also mean "I think that what you said was very stupid."

Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose, it can
mean that you are relaxed, or that you are bored, or that you are angry, and it all depends on how much
air comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are
sitting and what you said just before and hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work out
in a few seconds.

The second main reason is that people often talk using metaphors. These are examples of
metaphors:
Laughed my socks off
He was the apple of her eye.
They had a skeleton in the cupboard
We had a real pig of day.
The dog was stone dead.
The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the
Greek words µƐƮa (which means from one place to another) and φέρω (which means to carry), and it is
when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word
metaphor is a metaphor.

I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in
their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head, it just confuses me because
imagining an apple in someone's eve doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes
you forget what the person was talking about.

My name is a metaphor. It means carrying Christ and it comes from the Greek words Χριστός
(which means Jesus Christ) and φέρειν and it was the name given to St. Christopher because he carried
Jesus Christ across a river

This makes you wonder what he was called before he carried Christ across the river. But he wasn't
called anything because this is an apocryphal12 story, which means that it is a lie, too.

Mother used to say that it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being
kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my
name to mean me.

GUIDE QUESTIONS:_____________________________________________________________________

1. What are your reactions to the story? How is it different from your expectations?

2. Did you find the story funny? Why?

3. How does the story change the way you look at people with autism? Why?

4. What do you think of Christopher's understanding of metaphors? Do you think he is right or wrong- is
he both? Explain your answer.

5. Would you call him intelligent? Why or why not?

6. Does he make you look at things in a different way? Why is that important?

7. Do you agree with him that people are confusing? Why or why not?

8. Could you relate with him? Why or why not?

9. He ends the story with the sentence, "I want my name to mean me." What does that mean?

10. What is the social significance of the story?