This is how my interest in autism evolved. I live in a New York City apartment and two years ago a new family moved to the apartment above me. While noise is the biggest complaint in NYC I haven't personally been bothered by it. The day they were moving in I heard noises and figured they were moving stuff. But the noise continued and was strange: I thought they had a parrot perhaps. So I went upstairs to welcome them to the building. A woman answered the door and quickly said "we're getting carpets tomorrow." HUH? Well it turned out she had a severely autistic 21 year old son. I didn't really know what that meant until she brought him from his room. He screamed with a high pitch slamming his leg into the floor. It was horrible. He couldn't feed or dress himself, had 24/7 attendant.

Now this woman was extremely wealthy (I Googled her and found she'd sold a $4.8 million apartment on Fifth Avenue). From one of the attendants I learned she had been evicted from her last apartment. She could have lived in a house and she certainly knew he created a big problem in an apartment building. After going upstairs to complain daily (if the caretaker answered he was calmed down). I went to housing court to try to get my landlord to add a false ceiling to my apartment for noise control. They didn't have to. Sometimes I was woken at 5 a.m. by his terrible screaming. Someone in the building said he could hear the kid screaming across the street. It was one of the very worse experiences of my life. I had to start taking tranquilizers. I called the police to report "screaming in the building" and after the police came, he calmed down.

Other people complained and, after seven months and four days, the family was evicted. I read an enormous amount about autistic adults and know there are few programs for them. He had a sister who smoked pot all day and his mother. No one else. My resentment and anger wasn't at the son, it was at his mother who knew he couldn't live in an apartment and, despite being wealthy, didn't buy a house or try to live on the ground floor.