Of Slang Words, Idioms, and Autism

Symphony in Slang from Lee Presson on Vimeo.

In 1951, MGM released a cartoon called a Symphony in Slang, written by Rich Hogan and directed by Tex Avery.  The story of this short video is about a young man named John Brown, who came to heaven with his life story, but to St. Peter and Noah Webster's discomfort, the way he told his story was so peppered full of idioms and slang that they imagined it as literally as they could.

I watched this as a child and found myself relating more to Peter and Webster more than I did with Brown, simply because I was so young when I first watched it on TV.  Nonetheless, this cartoon went deep in my mind and sort of stayed dormant until a few weeks ago.  I was lying in bed next to my husband and mentioned this cartoon because of the idioms that came with it.

It was during this conversation that I realized that this is probably one of the best ways to get people to understand how a person with autism processes language.