I’ve mentioned my daughter is autistic and I’ve discovered that people with any form of disability or diagnosis seem to feel entitled to a lot of leeway from the rest of the world. I think that’s why medical science is coming up with new diseases all the time; it’s out excuse to get by with the crap that we can’t get by with if we are actually normal. My husband’s not a jerk, he actually suffers from Low T. I didn’t just cut you off in traffic, my foot slipped off the brake due to my Restless Leg Syndrome.

My child learned a long time ago that everything and anything she says is pure gold. Everyone is just so thrilled to death that she talks that she can say pretty much whatever is on her mind. If the thoughts pops in her head it’s bound to come flying out of her mouth. For example, she struggled to tell me that she would like the peanut butter flavor of her cereal bars. I praised her sentence, then told her that we could buy that kind the next time we went to the store. However, I reminded her that she would have to eat them at home since her school does not allow peanut products. She said, “Some kids are allergic.” I praised her again, both for the words and the logic. But then she said, “And they have to die.” Now I was about to correct her by telling her that the word she wanted was could, as in they could die, but since this is my child, I realized she very well have meant that if the genetic freaks who were born allergic to food would just hurry up and die, she could eat her snack.

Of course, the apple didn’t land on its head too far from the tree, since I have only recently developed my own mouth filter. Within the last five years I’ve learned to not call my boss names to his face, to stop telling people my dog has mange (it’s actually just really shaved since I despise dog hair), and to stop making fun of other people’s colleges of choice just because my college is better. At everything. My husband is also afflicted with this same diagnosis, so basically due to poor genetics our children were destined to have absolutely no ability to not say something unintentionally (or intentionally) cruel. Our ten-year-old (the supposedly normal one) got in trouble at school for telling a classmate with a new haircut that she had car-wreck bangs; she tearfully explained to the principal that the term is actually the correct hairdresser jargon for that style of short, Audrey Hepburn straight bangs and it’s not her fault that some idiot in beauty school named them that.

All in all, I can’t decide which end of the spectrum makes the world a better place: complete and total ugly-as-paint-on-a-pig honesty, or filtering every single comment through the Nice-o-Meter. Obviously I’d want to know if these pants make my butt look big, I just don’t want to hear it from you. I’m sure my child will be happy to tell me at some point.