When I was a kid, (7 or 8 yrs old) I had a neighbor who, looking back, was clearly "special needs". We didn't know it then, 'cuz we were kids and 'cuz autism wasn't something people understood. We just knew we were expected to include him every time we got together to play.
He wasn't particularly tall or athletic, but he liked to play basketball. That was his favorite thing to do. So we'd indulge him from time to time.
The problem was, the way he played was to take the ball from whomever had it. He didn't dribble it, he didn't understand personal fouls, he didn't understand any of it; He just took the ball and then waddled straight for the basket to shoot. And when one of us would get the rebound, he'd grab at us and shriek until we gave it back to him so he could shoot it again.
Well, you can imagine it didn't take long for the game to lose interest to the rest of us.
Perhaps one of the funnest parts was years later when his mother thanked us for playing. It seems he invariably went home and told his mother that he had beat all of us in basketball. We didn't even really consider what we were doing to BE basketball, yet he thought he was winning, every time.
Problem though, is that it really was no fun for us, and it didn't take many years before we all quit showing-up to those "basketball games". We also found we didn't want him to come play any of the OTHER games with us either. We'd ride our bikes past his driveway and see him standing there, wondering why we wouldn't come play with him any longer. As a child, I'd feel this mild pang in my conscience; as an adult it's a larger pang. But at the time, not understanding his disability, we all thought he'd just done this to himself. He'd disabused all of the people who would allow him to indulge his fantasy that he was "winning", to the point that none would play any longer.
Those with ears to hear, let them hear.
