I am sitting in a café, and I can listen to everything happening around me. Every whisper, every chair sliding on the floor, and every coffee bean being roasted. The lighting is also very harsh and I can feel its intense gaze upon me. This is so uncomfortable. And now I have to order coffee and make eye contact with the barista! I want to get out of here right now. But the doors are closed, the people are now speaking louder and louder. They are coming closer and yelling, and laughing and sipping their coffee. Please stop this!
And then suddenly it’s over. I take off my headset and I look around.
“So, how was it?”, my instructor asks me
I just shake my head. I am still trying to find the right words.
10 minutes earlier I wore a Virtual Reality headset and experienced an immersive experience of an autistic person sitting in a coffee shop.
Till one week earlier, I had never heard of Virtual Reality, or “immersive experiences”. But yet my grandson Charlie experiences this every time we take him to “normal” places life a coffee shop. I never understood why does he cringe and quiver and “embarrass us” whenever we go out .
Charlie has autism, and I had never understood what that meant and why he wears his headphones everywhere he goes. It drove me nuts! Why can’t my grandson be like my friends’ grandkids? Why me, God??
What do I know? I am 65, and retired or unemployed, however you call it. I have lost my last few jobs to “workplace automation” which is just short for “We gave your jobs to the machines because you are old as fu%k”. I hate tech, and I hate people who love tech even more. So, when my tech loving daughter asked me to come with her and checkout the “cool VR shop in town”, I resisted and resisted and then gave up when she said “You can live on Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons) for a full hour, Dad!”
Maybe she remembered the nights I used to show her the planets and moons with my old faithful telescope when the world was a kinder place.
But today, in the few minutes I spent living, truly living my grandson’s daily life, I felt I had been living on a different planet all these years, farther away from Charlie than Europa from Earth.
I will be back here next week with Charlie and we will spend some time together in Europa and in each other’s life.
