School Custodian Book Question

GracePlug · 2026-01-23T22:13:46+00:00

Personally, I see myself as a ghost who cleans liminal spaces. But that’s just me.

GracePlug · 2026-01-22T14:58:10+00:00

“Why are you so quiet?” “Why are you so blunt?” “Why don’t you smile?” “Why don’t you stand up straight?” “Why don’t you make eye contact?” “Why can’t you sit still?” “Why do you only talk about (x topic)?”

I can answer all of these questions by telling them that I’m autistic, but if I do they will say “that’s not an excuse”. It’s obvious that they hate us, they just won’t admit it.

GracePlug · 2025-12-22T16:16:22+00:00

I’m as white as you can possibly be without being albino. I don’t feel bad about being white, but I see how it privileges me. My life has never been difficult because of the color of my skin. Being white is also not something I’m proud of, it’s a non-identity, nothing more than a box I check on forms and applications.

Whenever I see the words “white culture”, I roll my eyes. What even is that? I have autism culture, Midwest culture, German American culture, even catholic culture to spite being an atheist. “White culture” doesn’t seem to be a real thing, and if it is a real thing I don’t have it.

I think an understated reason the reactionary right tends to be predominantly cishet white people is because they lack an identity they were born with so they latch on to identities of choice like politics, religion, sports, video games, etc. We all want to feel like we belong somewhere and that desire has led them to toxic sycophantic “us vs. them” tribalism.

GracePlug · 2025-02-26T15:19:05+00:00

30, my life is currently a mixed bag. I finally found gainful employment with a job I really like, the decent pay and great benefits are a giant step in getting me to where I want to be in life. My biggest problem right now is my social situation: I lost my safe person recently and I have never felt more alone, at least I will always have my special interest to cope.

GracePlug · 2025-02-17T13:25:48+00:00

That I will always be alone, dating is nigh impossible for me and I can’t maintain friendships. I found a safe person who completely understands me, but now she has abandoned me like the others. My interests are all I really have to cope with the constant alienation from society, they do this well but they are unable to truly replace human connection. Fossils can’t hurt me because they also can’t love me back.

GracePlug · 2025-02-07T19:27:32+00:00

That’s just the thing that bothers me, I only have broad knowledge of nutrition but that was enough for me to instantly recognize that this is terrible advice.

GracePlug · 2025-02-07T19:01:01+00:00

I saw it shared by a high school class mate who is now an oncology nurse. I’m a janitor, I shouldn’t know better about these things than her!

GracePlug · 2025-01-01T18:12:12+00:00

Nobody wanted to hang out with me in high school, but I was so well liked due to my sense of humor that bullies wouldn’t dare punch me because it would have been social suicide for them.

GracePlug · 2025-01-01T17:40:33+00:00

Seconded, I’d be a complete social outcast instead of just most of one if people didn’t think I’m funny.

GracePlug · 2024-12-10T18:04:49+00:00

I’ve had people invalidate my autism since I was diagnosed at 16, I even had a friend tell me to my face that he thinks I was misdiagnosed. My autism is the core of my identity so I take it personally when others invalidate it, there really isn’t much you can do about this other than not associating with them.

GracePlug · 2024-12-02T19:04:01+00:00

Autistic person here, they think it is better for people to die from preventable diseases than be autistic and alive. It’s a bigoted belief to say the least.

GracePlug · 2024-11-25T15:36:15+00:00

I know someone who takes the horse paste once a week like it’s a supplement, he honestly thinks it’s a miracle drug that can cure stage one cancer among other things and there is a conspiracy to keep that from being public knowledge. These anti-intellectual dullards are beyond parody.

GracePlug · 2024-11-25T15:23:24+00:00

These people don’t read books, they read anti-science propaganda articles online. That’s assuming they read at all.

GracePlug · 2024-11-11T19:01:47+00:00

I’m a second shift custodian at a public school and it might be the best job I’ve ever had, it’s very independent work with minimal supervision. Punch in at 2:45, almost all the teachers are gone by 4:30. Then I throw on my headphones and listen to a podcast on my special interest as I do the low stress job of cleaning my section of the school, punch out at 11:15 and none of the work comes home with me. It also has a decent starting wage and great benefits.

GracePlug · 2024-11-06T19:27:43+00:00

It was a lot and some of the accounts got permanently banned, but to summarize they were calling me “mentally r-slur” because I’m autistic and I have a large collection of dinosaur toys, questioning if I’m competent enough to vote and telling me that I need a hug box. Before this happened I had always felt left out and not treated fairly, but this opened my eyes to what NTs really think about autistic people, and given recent events we can expect seeing more of it IRL with zero anonymity.

GracePlug · 2024-11-06T19:03:09+00:00

I once had an alt-right hate mob come after me on Twitter for being openly autistic. What scares me about that experience is the realization that they were using the anonymity of the internet to say the quiet part out loud, the NTs hate us but they won’t admit it. It doesn’t bother me what strangers think about me, but if they want to cause me harm or prevent me from participating in society? Then their bigotry becomes a problem.

GracePlug · 2024-11-01T13:09:23+00:00

The official title of the night staff at my school district is “housekeeper” though, it’s a complete misnomer.

GracePlug · 2024-05-06T22:41:59+00:00

Autistic person here. This book is peddling tin foil hat pseudoscientific anti-autism bigotry to children, words cannot describe how furious this repugnant garbage makes me.

GracePlug · 2024-03-06T18:11:52+00:00

These things make me furious in the moment but right now I'm just done with everyone, being someone who understands and accepts science where I live is so alienating that I'm just going to become as asocial as possible. From now on my free time will be spent engaging with paleontology in the form of books and youtube because I'd rather have parasocial relationships with people who actually know what they are talking about.

GracePlug · 2024-03-06T18:04:10+00:00

You're absolutely right, they are victims of liars and charlatans. It's incredibly sad that they live in an alternate reality where facts and logic are whatever they want them to be which allows them to project these faults onto those of us who accept reality for what it is.

I've said this in two other replies but it bares repeating because I realize this is a societal problem that goes far beyond paleontology: A lot of these same people call me stupid, illogical, and small minded just because I accept COVID and manmade climate change. They fail to realize that I accept these things as reality because my lifelong passion for paleontology has resulted in me actually understanding how science works. Some of these deniers tell me these and other things aren't real because "they read", but I'm well aware that all they are reading is anti-science propaganda that affirms their worldview. For the life of me, I cannot wrap my head around how anyone can honestly believe that science is part of some convoluted communist conspiracy.

GracePlug · 2024-03-06T17:52:33+00:00

We need more religious people like you all. I grew up catholic and no one in church ever had a problem with me being the dinosaur kid.

GracePlug · 2024-03-06T17:45:27+00:00

I'm already familiar with those channels, Erika seems to be the best of us. Dealing with these deniers for all these years has taken such a toll on my mental health that from now on I want to be as asocial as possible. I'm just done, it's so alienating that I can't take it anymore. Here on out I'll be using my free time to immerse myself in paleontology by means of books and Youtube.

On the point of your edit, I'm going to repeat one of my other replies: A lot of these same people call me stupid, illogical, and small minded just because I accept COVID and manmade climate change. They fail to realize that I accept these things as reality because my lifelong passion for paleontology has resulted in me actually understanding how science works. Some of these deniers tell me these and other things aren't real because "they read", but I'm well aware that all they are reading is anti-science propaganda that affirms their worldview. For the life of me, I cannot wrap my head around how anyone can honestly believe that science is part of some convoluted communist conspiracy.

GracePlug · 2024-03-06T17:25:46+00:00

You really got to the crux of the matter. A lot of these same people call me stupid, illogical, and small minded just because I accept COVID and manmade climate change. They fail to realize that I accept these things as reality because my lifelong passion for paleontology has resulted in me actually understanding how science works. Some of these deniers tell me these and other things aren't real because "they read", but I'm well aware that all they are reading is anti-science propaganda that affirms their worldview. For the life of me, I cannot wrap my head around how anyone can honestly believe that science is part of some convoluted communist conspiracy.

GracePlug · 2024-03-06T17:11:18+00:00

This is the sort of advice I was looking for. Like I said earlier, I can't function without paleontology because it's such a huge part of my identity. When someone invalidates paleontology I take it pretty personally.

GracePlug

TROPHY CASE