Chapter Text
I felt a tinge of pain in my wrist as I walked out of the freight elevator with my coworker.
“Did you hurt it?” one of my managers asked as I was walking by.
“Nah, I just ticked myself to death.” The look on his face was comical.
“What?” he asked.
“I ticked myself to death.” He just looked confused. He clearly missed the Tourette’s memo. My coworker just started laughing.
“What did you just say?” she asked.
“I ticked myself to death.”
She kept laughing
“I love that you can just joke about it.”
“Gotta find the good right?”
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*Pah*
“What? You got a cough or something?” my classmate asked me. It could have been innocent, if she hadn’t been looking at me and laughing a little as she said it. I sighed.
“It’s just a tic,” I mumbled.
“My aunt has something like that, deteriorating nerve damage. I joke about it all the time, she’s super embarrassed about it.” I bristled.
“Yeah, it sucks.”
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“Okay, so you need to have big smiles, really get into it, move around a lot!” my band director was explaining, waving his hand around in exaggerated motions. “Woah, maybe not that active. What’s going on with him? He has Tourette’s! Oh!” His hand immediately flew over his mouth. The whole class was laughing. Even my best friend. I talked to him after class. Made sure he knew about me. He did. He apologized.
“Yeah, okay. Just making sure.”
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“I don’t understand early education math classes! They teach us the strangest way to teach kids to do math! It makes no sense!” my dorm mate exclaimed.
“What do they have you do?” another girl asked.
“They have us do this stupid circle thing! The first part is easy but the second part makes no sense and I have to explain it all! I'm studying all night, step one, I need coffee, step two, redbull, step three, that’s when the Tourette’s set in.” The last part was accompanied by a rapid blinking motion.
“Please don’t,” I said in the silence directly after. There was a pause for a moment before she spoke again.
“So, it’s uh…” she was kind of just staring confused. I picked up my jacket and stormed out of the room. My roommate yelped as I slammed the door to our room.
“Uh, hi Nora,” Lia said from her bed where she had textbooks and notes scattered everywhere. “You good?”
“Frances made a Tourette’s joke right in front of me!”
“She what?”
“Yeah, know your fucking audience Frances! I get it, people make those jokes but don’t do it in fucking front of me!”
“I can’t believe she would do that, did she know?”
“If she didn’t before she does now, Ashley and Valerie were there and they both definitely know.”
The entire next day I was cold to her every time I saw her. She didn’t apologize that night when I asked to meet with her. Ashley had told her that I had Tourette’s but Valerie told her to let me calm down before talking to me. That arguably made things worse.
“I didn’t know that you had that. What I meant was that I get tics when I’m stressed out.”
“Stress tics are different than Tourette’s.”
“And I didn’t know that, I’m sorry.”
“And all I wanted was an apology.” I forgave her after explaining some misconceptions about Tourette’s. Lia took another week to do the same.
“She didn’t know.”
“I’m still mad at her.”
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*Pah*
“Is that a new tic?” my band section leader asked.
“Yeah, it’s vocal. It sucks.” I said. *Pah* *Pah* *Pah*
“Too bad you can’t keep time with that, would be useful.”
I laughed.