Braden makes his mark

I taught Kant and analytic and synthetic judgments in one of my classes today. We were talking about the nature of justice and whether or not that is an analytic judgment, but the ways in which we mete it out or even understand is synthetic. We somehow got onto the topic of people with mental deficiencies and differences. In trying to explain the difference between the two I brought up my favorite autistic kid, Braden. I use Braden frequently in class to illustrate different points, so he's made a mark in many peoples' lives without knowing it. But today was just cool in unexpected ways.

I told my students about taking Braden to see The Spiderwick Chronicles at the Studio Movie Grill over the weekend. I told them about how he would pick the quietest point in the movie (a feat in itself) to shriek something. "BALL!" for instance. One of students then burst out, "OHMYGOD! that was YOU?!" It turns out, he had been in the movie theatre when this was happening and had been quite annoyed at that kid who was making so much noise. Funny thing, Braden wasn't being especially loud... for Braden.

The interesting part of this whole thing was that he now felt guilty for thinking, I wish that kid would just shut up. From now on, whenever he hears something similar, he will have more compassion for the child and people with the child than he would have before this incident. Braden is educating people and the concentric circles are getting wider and wider. That just rocks my world. And let's face it, it was also really funny.