I watched Rainman with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise way back when I was in high school, long before I was diagnosed with autism myself. Back then, autism was diagnosed far less frequently and I would probably not have been seen as autistic, but just quiet, socially awkward, or later as having “Aspergers Syndrome.” More recently, there have been a spate of TV shows and other media about autistic people, but still often with the idea of something that…
