Brett’s Tourette’s

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A tall, brown-haired boy named Brett entered the movie set. Brett was supposed to be a boy who had Tourette’s in this movie.

"Should be easy," Brett thought aloud, "considering I really have Tourette’s."

Now before I can tell you about what he’s doing in a movie audition, I’ll be glad to give you a brief description of Tourette syndrome: Tourette syndrome is a neurobiological disorder that causes you to have tics. Not "ticks," but tics; which are little jerks or noises caused by the syndrome.

There are motor tics (jerking your arm, leg or neck, to list a few) and verbal tics (weird noises out of your nose or mouth), but those are just a few little things that I listed — there are tons more, like hair-pulling and some other stuff. Now, dear reader, we return to the story.

As time goes by, though: "Cuuuut! Kid I thought you had this Tourette thingamajig and could really do this thingy right — since you really have it! Yer jus’ not jerkin’ your twitches enough! Kid, ya can’t possibly be the boy, nope, not you!" said the director, speaking more rapidly than Brett had ever heard before.

Brett really thought the director was a twitching idiot, so he screamed, "Fine then!" taking things as personally as anyone would ever dare; and at the same instant he ran out of the studio, then turned back and screamed again, "I quit!"

He started walking toward his house feeling extremely mad at everybody and everything. He opened the door and slammed it behind him. He sat at the end chair and started eating the casserole his mother had just served him. It was dinnertime at Brett’s house. A time of stress.

"How was your day working on the Tourette movie?" asked Brett’s mother. Brett didn’t answer. Brett’s mother inquired again. To Brett, this sounded like she was being overly nosy and he felt overcome by feelings of disappointment. Brett stopped eating, looked up to the ceiling and then gave his mother a piercing look. His sister Corretta said,

"Don’t try to get anything out of him, mama, he’ll just get mad." She said this very bossily, like most things she said.

"Urrrrgh!" grunted Brett as he kicked at the wall.

"Eeeahoo-hee-hee goo-ya," laughed Veronica, his baby sister, as she always did when Brett kicked at the wall; she liked the noise.

Brett’s mother said, "Don’t kick at the table, Brett."

"I never did! I kicked at the wall, not the table!"

Brett stopped and said nothing for at least ten minutes. The rest of the family kept quiet too, except for an occasional "Pass the butter please," and "Can I have seconds?" and Veronica with her occasional squealing noises.

Brett felt like he had the worst dinner in his life, though he knew this wasn’t true because he had had lots more bad dinners, most notably one where they went to a restaurant on his birthday, and there was a clown that insulted Brett very badly without knowing it.

The family had been at a restaurant when a clown making balloon animals came to their table to make toys for each kid. When he came to Brett, he twisted the blown-up balloon and it made a horrible screeching noise to Brett’s sensitive ears. Brett hated certain noises as they caused him a feeling of pain and intense irritation.

When the clown was done he made a joke about how Brett held his ears shut which made Brett feel humiliated. Thinking about it made him think of lots of other bad events (sometimes innocent coincidences), insults, and people who had bad-mouthed him.

Suddenly Brett got up (trying to cover his tears) and screamed, "I’m going to bed!" and ran out in the hall, then into his room.

As he lay there in bed, a strange feeling overcame him. He didn’t feel quite like he usually did: He didn’t feel as if he should have never been born. He felt — what did he feel? It wasn’t sadness, as it usually was; yet it was nowhere near happiness. What ever it was, it was something different, something as different as his Tourette’s.

And things don’t stay as they did here in the story: they changed for the better, and Brett lives a good life. He didn’t stay as he did in the story; he got better, and begins to understand himself, his friends, and everybody near him.

For the rest of his childhood; whenever something bad happened, Brett tried to remember how different he felt that night, and when things are not right, not at all, or just a tad not right, he thinks of his Tourette’s, and about how strange life is.