Her bony hands rested her ill-smelling yogurt cup on her desk, and picked up a broken piece of white chalk. “Alright kiddos,” she exhaled, filling the room with her yogurt breath, “this is a foreground.” She began to label the painting, abrading the chalk against the board with such force it left a puddle of white dust on the floor. 

At that moment Theo gently tapped me on the shoulder to show me how neatly he had folded a scrap of paper. I smiled, and mouthed, “good job”. He then crawled back into his usual crouched position on the rug and began absentmindedly picking his nose, as he often did.

Ms. Sgirbo stopped what she was doing and straightened her posture. This was the moment that she had been waiting for all day. “Theo, that is absolutely disgusting,” she screamed. As she grew he shrunk further into his crouch, rocking back and forth. “You’re not even gonna look at me? Look at me. That is disgusting. This is not an animal barn.”  

An ‘animal barn,’ she called it. Those words stuck to me like the white chalk residue on the floor. My attention then turned to the rest of the room, filled with silent gasps and half-hearted eyerolls. Five seconds of their lives had been dedicated to discussing how cruel this behavior was towards someone with autism, before they dropped it and continued drawing their foregrounds. I, however, could not move on. 

The light of pride in Theo’s eyes that existed not ten seconds before was gone. In a single moment, she had stolen that from him, and there I was doing nothing to give it back. Desmond Tutu once wrote, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” My ten year old self did not know who Desmond Tutu was, but I knew what I had to do.

I stood up, walked through the sea of chalk dust and out the door and towards the principal’s office.