Ido Kedar sits at the dining room table of his West Hills home. He fidgets in his chair, slouched over an iPad, typing. He hunts down each letter. Seconds pass between the connections.
… A-u-t-i-s-m-l-a-n-d …
He coined the word, his twist on Alice's Wonderland.
"C'mon," says his mother, Tracy. "Sit up and just finish it, Ido. Let's go."
He touches a few more keys, and then, with a slight robotic twang, the iPad reads the words he cannot speak.
I think Autismland is a surreal place.
For most of his life, Ido has listened to educators and experts explain what's wrong with him. Now he wants to tell them that they had it all wrong.
Last year, at the age of 16, he published "Ido in Autismland." The book — part memoir, part protest — has made him a celebrity in the autism world, a young activist eager to defy popular assumptions about a disorder that is often associated with mental deficiency.
He hopes that the world will one day recognize the intelligence that lies behind the walls of his "silent prison," behind the impulsivity and lack of self-control.
I want people to know that I have an intact mind.
Yet Ido gets nervous easily and likes to retreat to his room or to a cooking program on television. At one point, after answering a few questions, he steps outside to pace beside the family swimming pool.
He plucks a rose and puts its petals into his mouth.
::
During summer, when temperatures in the San Fernando Valley push into triple digits, Ido's refrain is "osha, osha," and his father, Sharon, drives him over the mountains to the ocean.
Approaching Zuma Beach on a Sunday afternoon in September, Sharon repeats the rules: "Follow my instructions, and stay behind me at all times."
"Eee, num, num, num," Ido says with a laugh.
"You're happy now that we're going to the beach," Sharon says.
They drop their towels in the sand by Tower 12. Ido waves his arms and grabs Sharon's arm as they march into the waves.
Autism, Ido says, is like being on LSD, something he learned about in health class, and his experience in the world can be at times terrifying and overwhelming. Sensory minutiae that in other people are filtered and organized, collide indiscriminately in his brain. Feelings of anger, sadness, even silliness can escalate, and he can have difficulty calming down.
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