Today's Man

Tonight SMS and I had the extreme pleasure of watching a film called Today's Man.

The film is a documentary about a young man named Nicky who has Asperger's Syndrome. I managed Nicky a few jobs ago at Manhattan Theatre Club and I'm in the film for a minute or two. It was hard to separate how much I loved the film with how much I loved BEING on film but I can honestly say, hopefully objectively, that it's a great film. SMS liked it because he said it showed the world from Nicky's perspective, in that most of what Nicky says in the film sounds perfectly reasonable and all of us "normal" people appear to be the ones with the problem. Is seems if we were only able to see the world the way Nicky sees the world, we wouldn't be so exasperated with him all the time -- and in the film it becomes apparent that his way of seeing things is no better or worse than our's, it's just different.

Anyone who read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and liked it will love this movie. So will anyone who has heard my numerous humorous Nicky stories but didn't quite believe them.

Today's Man will be part of PBS' Independent Lens series and will air nationally on January 8th. I'll send out and post reminders as that date gets closer.

For now, I'll leave you with one of my favorite Nicky stories, as to me, it really sums up what it means to work with someone who has Asperger's.

Nicky and I had weekly check-in meetings. To facilitate the meetings I asked him to keep a steno notebook with him at all times so that he could keep a list of his questions and concerns for us to go over at the meetings. At each meeting the notebook looked more and more haggard, many pages were ripped or falling out. I asked Nicky to please keep the notebook in better shape and he told me it wasn't his fault, it was a bad notebook. I explained to Nicky that I had carried Steno books in my bags for years and none of them looked like that. I went to my office to get my bag and brought it into the room where we were meeting. I pulled one of my Steno books out of my bag and showed Nicky that it was in pretty good condition even though I had been carrying it in my bag for months. Nicky looked at the book and very matter of factly said "Well you book is closed!" So I asked Nicky if maybe when he put his notebook in his bag he could close it. He said that sounded like a good idea and from that point on, we didn't have a problem with the notebook.

That's the thing about Nicky. He would do just about anything I asked, as long as it made sense to him. And there were lots of things that most people would do naturally, that they would do without a second thought because it was natural to them, that would never even occur to Nicky.

While I worked with Nicky I was often frustrated but seeing him on film helped me remember how much I enjoyed it, how rewarding it was and how much I learned from him. I may be considering another career change!