Tonight was the first time that I used UberPOOL, the random carpooling option for cheaper rides from smartphone-centric hired-car service Uber, and actually ended up paired with other riders. On my first ride, driver Jeremy took us over to Brookline to pick up Alex. I introduced myself and struck up a conversation.

  “My late friend Sean would love this.” I said. “His dream was to build a connected transportation network, help people easily get where they were going while maximizing the use of resources. Stuff like this, ride sharing... well, I can just see how he would smile. And strangers making a deal to more efficiently get where they’re going.. Well that’s the sort of thing I'm all about.”

  “What do you do?”... I have yet to understand why NTs are obsessed with this question, because as lovely as it would be, we don’t yet live in a society where one’s profession really reflects one’s personality and situations accurately. “I’m a blogger. Well, getting back into it after a while. Which for now means that I’m dependent and I spend a lot of time thinking.” “Oh, what do you write about?”

  Alex, who wasn’t originally from this country, was fascinated. He had a lot of good commentary and questions, too. It seems he’s in medicine, and he was curious about some of the differences in growing up with autism here vs. elsewhere. I acknowledged that there are a lot of accommodations and improvements here now, but mention that I missed them myself having grown up in the 1990s when we first started to understand.

  I don’t know why people say Boston is an unfriendly city. I think they just let themselves get like that and they’re too scared to say hi.

–D.R.T.Y.boi E.M.

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