Our raw materials become the fodder for non-autistic creators who piece together characters based on our most noticeable and most stereotyped behaviors, or on a fiction — like the one I grew up with — of what autism means.

I'm reminded of my speech impediments, and seeing "A Fish Called Wanda." And yet, comedy can be so bloody accurate. After someone else says something fluently, we can often mimic the block-word, whereas we cannot originate a block-word. That look on Michael Palin's face after he successfully repeats the phrase! Someone intimately acquainted with stuttering wrote and coached - patently obvious to a sufferer like myself.