My Autism on Full Display (Long Before I Knew I Have It)

All of my friends in my seventh-grade class did it
Even though none of us were even close to
Being old enough to drink beer.
Beer can collecting was a passing fad in 1978
Even among underaged boys.

I watched the roadside for cans I didn’t have
From the backseat of our 1967 Pontiac Catalina
And begged my mother to stop when I spotted
A can I didn’t have in my collection.
I collected flat tops, pull tabs, and cone tops
Dating from the 1930’s to the 1970’s.

I dodged traffic and crawled through ditches
On Fegenbush Lane and Poplar Level Road
To scour for discarded beer cans.
Worse, I went to the flea market at
The Kentucky State Fairgrounds and paid money
For empty cans, which bewildered and annoyed
My cheapskate mother, who was born during the Great Depression.

On the first Saturday of June after we
Got out of school for the year, I lined them
All up on our basement floor and took inventory.
I carefully placed all the cans in alphabetical order
All 468 of them.
None of them were out of order
Not even Falls City and Fallstaff,
Or Schlitz and Schmidt’s.
I then took a spiral notebook
And listed them in alphabetical order
All 468 of them.
None of them were out of order.

Granny was in town from Michigan
And came to the basement to check on me.
She was not impressed with my work,
Or at least didn’t show it.
“Normal boys would be outside playing,
On a pretty day like today,” she snorted.
I went outside
To look for more beer cans.

*

Keith W. Norris is an insurance professional by day and a poet by night, but he is no Wallace Stevens. He is a graduate of Western Kentucky University and a graduate school dropout. He is on the autism spectrum and has ADHD and his poems often reflect traits of those disorders. He lives in Moraine, Ohio with his family.