by Tom Angleberger
“What’s your major malfunction?”
This was a popular catchphrase in the early 1980s.
Not as popular as “Gag me with a spoon” or anything, but you heard it a lot.
Or at least . . . little Tommy Angleberger seemed to hear it a lot.
I associate it most with the fifth and sixth grades.
That was not long after Star Wars came out. “Major malfunction” sort of gave you this picture of a broken robot clanking in circles, spewing smoke, with gears and springs popping out.
It really seemed to sum up how the other kids saw me: a mess; a weirdo; a dweeb; a chatterbox; a blabbermouth; a dork; a jerk; a walking, talking malfunction.
It was more than just an insult. It may have been a very real question: What is wrong with this kid?
Some teachers were asking the same thing but with other words.
Let’s be honest . . . I did do some really weird stuff.
Meltdowns. Freak-outs. Sobbing. Tying a plastic Garfield to my hooded sweatshirt strings and swinging it around like a medieval battle-ax or something.
All on full display to my whole class.
Who can blame them for wondering?
Looking back, I can sort of sympathize with them. Especially with one girl, Katrina, who really seemed to hate me.
I can imagine her starting middle school and thinking that she was taking a big step toward adulthood. The silly days of elementary school were behind her, and she was growing up. Things were going to be different in middle school. She’d meet the kids who had come from the other elementary schools, and a new era in her life would begin. A more mature, more sophisticated era would begin.
And then in stumbles Tommy: a child.
A loud child.
A loud, messy, annoying child who always seemed to be in her way and on her nerves. What is this, kindergarten?
Can’t that brat just shut up?
No, I couldn’t shut up.
That’s the major malfunction (or one of them).
I wanted to shut up. I would sort of pray for silence. My own silence.
Let me just go to school and just sit there and not say anything. Let me just not . . . malfunction.
That didn’t work.
I couldn’t stop talking. I couldn’t stop having meltdowns. And I couldn’t seem to start growing up.
What was my major malfunction?
Well, what if I didn’t actually have a malfunction?
What if there was something different about me that wasn’t broken?
In fact, what if there was something different about me that really worked?
There was, but I didn’t find out about it for many years.
I was and am autistic.
It wasn’t a word you heard very often back then. Not nearly as often as you heard dweeb, dork, and major malfunction.
And even when I first started learning about it, I didn’t realize it meant me.
But finding out that I was on the autism spectrum was a wonderful thing. A whole lot of stuff started to make sense at last.
Why was I often the only person doing something? Or the only person not doing something?
Why couldn’t I just fit in?
Because I literally didn’t fit in with all those “functioning” people. The place I fit in was “on the spectrum.” And once I knew who to look for, I realized I hadn’t been the “only one.” There are lots of us.
I am really proud to belong to this amazing group of people who are also “on the spectrum.” We’re so different, yet connected.
Plus the phrase “on the spectrum” is a hell of a lot better than “major malfunction.”
What I don’t like, however, is another phrase: “autism spectrum disorder.”
Disorder sounds an awful lot like malfunction.
And it’s not a malfunction.
Sometimes, I call it a superpower.
Think about those superhero origin stories, where the hero gets the powers but doesn’t know how to use them yet. And they make a big mistake and knock over a building or laser-blast something expensive.
Well, I didn’t knock over a building, just annoyed Katrina and a few hundred others for a few years. (Sorry!)
But once I finally got it all figured out, I stopped talking and started typing and drawing.
And out came books.
And people liked (some of) the books.
Maybe because the books were about a kid with a “major malfunction” that was really a superpower.
And maybe because a lot of the readers were kids that had the same superpower.
Let’s be honest.
There are a lot of times when this “superpower” still looks an awful lot like a “major malfunction.” There are still times when I should keep my mouth shut and just type it all up later.
But so many of my dreams have come true, from writing Star Wars books to marrying another writer and illustrator, Cece Bell.
In the end, it isn’t really a malfunction or a superpower. It’s just me. I’m not a broken robot or a superhero.
Just a human.
Just a confused kid who hadn’t figured it all out yet—and is still working on it.
Katrina and those other kids (and some teachers) were right that something about me wasn’t working “normally.”
But I wasn’t broken, and I’m glad I didn’t get “fixed.”
Sure, I might have needed some help understanding and dealing with all of it, but . . . doesn’t everybody need a little help, whether it’s from a book, a song, a friend, a teacher, a therapist, a patient pet, or maybe even a paper finger puppet? (Answer: yes.)
I’m not sure what kids say today instead of “major malfunction.” But whatever they say, maybe they’ve said it to you.
I’m not going to tell you to ignore it. But I am going to tell you not to believe it.
And for goodness’ sake, don’t try to fix yourself! You might “fix” yourself so that you act more like them, and then where would we be? A world full of Katrinas yelling at each other? No thanks.
No, don’t fix it. Don’t fight it. Don’t hide it. Just have a little faith in it.
Your own combination of malfunction and superpower may have felt clunky today, but it may be exactly what you need tomorrow.
TOM ANGLEBERGER is the author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda and many other books for kids. In addition to being a weird kid, he was also a short kid. The second shortest, in fact. Which may explain why he likes Yoda so much.