Summer Heat And A Noisy Co-Host

James Guttman 0:00

It's a journey made with pod. Hi, Pod I'm Dad. Hi Pod, it's James Gutman. Welcome back to another edition of the podcast. It is hot. It's hot out. It's July. It's mid-July. It is 2026. Thank you for joining me here on a Friday. Whether you found me on Spotify, Audible, whatever. We're streaming everywhere. HiPod I'mdad.com. In the background is my boy Mr. Lucas. He is squeaking like a canary over here. He's laying on the bed next to me. So what better time than to do the podcast? And what I love about doing the podcast when it's about autism appreciation, it's about my son, is that I spent like 10 years doing pro wrestling. They were podcasts, but they were before podcasts. That's how much of a trendsetter I was to the point where I'm forgotten by history. But we used to call them audio updates. And I would have to hide, literally hide in the corner of the house because I had him in the background. We can talk about you. You can squeak away, right? Right. Yeah, man. And I I'm so I'm so blessed to be able to do this, to be able to share with you guys stories of my son, to tell you about him, to correct things that bother me. And one of the things that I wrote about on Monday, um, and it's something that's kind of come up in the past, but really I felt like I put it best in the post on Monday.

What People Get Wrong About Profound Autism

James Guttman 1:31

And it was called the thing people get wrong about profound autism. And that's a term that I've learned in the last few years. I've learned severe autism, profound autism. There's a lot of descriptors for my son's version of autism. He's nonverbal. There are life skills that he has to work on, um, maybe for the rest of his life. Definitely far off from from working. And while I support autism acceptance and I'm there, and I totally we all support each other. Um it doesn't affect us, right? Like Lucas isn't, he doesn't need provisions made for him to work, at least not now, and it'll be a while, but that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna fight for the rights of others to have that, right? So, and that's been the thing from the beginning. That's why autism appreciation became something that we wrote about, something that we dealt with, because autism awareness is for people like my son, somebody who might be in public and might make impulsive noises or do impulsive things. And I want people to be aware, hey, you don't have to stare at them. It's not a show. This happens, this exists, we're all different. That's autism awareness. For people who are um, I mean, I'm supposed to say high function, I don't know what you're supposed to say, but people who are able to work and people who want to be a part of societal things. So I think that's the big separating point, right? Like we can have labels and fight about it, profound, severe, upper, you know, well, high functioning, low functioning. At the end of the day, Lucas does not care about your world. Lucas does not need to go to the prom. Um, if you make Lucas do something in your world, he will appease you. He's done it to me a million times. He won't get excited if you give him a football and you tell him, go catch a, you know, a touchdown. You don't say it like that. You gotta say it clearly, go catch a touchdown. You would say that he wouldn't care. Another kid might care. They make a movie out of it, you know. Billy, Billy too, catches a touchdown. And everyone cheers, and they're like, That's what autism is. For that kid, that's what autism is. For my son, if you give him the football, he's gonna look at you. He'll run and he'll run and he'll run right back, hand it to you, and want his iPad or want something else. You like that? He wasn't laughing, maybe he's laughing. Um, but yeah, so it's a totally different situation. And for Lucas, he doesn't need autism uh acceptance. He doesn't need you to let him play football with you. He doesn't need you to do those things, but I support people who

Why “Eradicate Autism” Cuts Deep

James Guttman 3:50

who do. And my issue, you're right, buddy, and my freaking kid, and my issue that I talked about on Monday is that last year, and look, if I'm gonna say this, you know, you mentioned politics, people think it's about it's not about politics, it could be anybody who said it. Uh, Robert Kennedy stood in front of the world and talked about wanting to eradicate autism. And look, I'm not gonna get deep into semantics and this or that. Don't get rid of it. All that's up to you guys as a case-to-case basis. My issue is not what was being said um in terms of what they wanted to do and find out. I've said before, I don't need a cure for Lucas's autism. I don't care where it came from, I don't care about it. You guys can do it. I'm totally down with that. I would never want to take away the thing that is a dominant part of his personality by waving a magic wand. I want him to naturally learn, I want him to fix himself. But somebody promising me a cure is not gonna make me all giddy. I don't want a different kid. I love my kid. My kid's great. This is great. What are you laughing at? I love that he's like this. No, I don't know, nobody in my life is like this. Um, so I don't want that. But what bothered me, I'm not gonna do the impression, was Robert Kennedy went out there and he said about autism when trying to portray it as a terrible thing. He said, Some of these people will never have a job, some of these people will never get married, some of these people never pay taxes. And I heard all of those things, and they're my son. My son will most likely not get married. Dude, what are you doing? Well, not get married, he will not pay taxes, he might not have a job, probably won't have, you know, he's not going to be a captain of industry. I want him to do all those things. I love him, and I would love for them to figure out a way to teach him these things, and he catches it. Great, but if not, I love him regardless. It doesn't matter. But when that man stood in front of everybody and talked about people like my son as if he was less of a human, it bothered me. And when I turned to the autism community to see their reaction, the dominant reaction

The Harm In “Not All Autism”

James Guttman 5:48

was that doesn't describe my autism, or not all people with autism are like that. And that hurt. Because so what? So what if they were? Why does my son not paying taxes make him less of a human being to you? You know what the problem must be, and it's clear, and I'm here and I'm saying it over and over and over again. What Lucas brings to the table benefits me, and it benefits his family, and it benefits the people who know him and love him and learn from him. Lucas does not benefit you in terms of the public. I do work, the work that I do, people read it, they read my writing, not even just the autism writing, but anything I write about, people read it, I get paid for it, it's fantastic. Maybe you work at a car dealership, you sell cars, people buy them, they drive them, it's fantastic. Maybe you work at McDonald's, you make hamburgers, people eat them, they're not so great, but they eat them, it's fantastic. All those things happen, right? And you have to, we all benefit each other in society. But then someone like Lucas comes along who maybe only benefits people who love

Worth Beyond Jobs And Taxes

James Guttman 6:51

him the most, people who know him the best. And to some people, it's like, well, what does that benefit me? Why does that matter? And that right there is the most ironic part of the whole story. And I want you to hold on to this. I want you to remember this. Autism appreciation is about appreciating the beauty of my son's personality because of autism. How he doesn't use people, how he doesn't see them as commodities, how he doesn't go to them just for what they can do for him. And the ironic part is that I have to preach autism appreciation to people who will never understand because they don't have autism and they don't see the world the beautiful way in which my son does. They see it selfishly. They can't fathom what a person who doesn't give them things can do in their society. If Lucas doesn't want to participate in your sporting events and your school uh functions and all these things that everybody's supposed to love, doesn't he want to be a baseball star? Doesn't he want to be, you know, Cody Rhodes? Doesn't he want to wrestle? And he doesn't want to do any of those things. He just wants to be himself. And you watch these enlightened people who think that they're so much better than someone like my son shake their head and not get it. Well, I don't I don't understand. And you know why? Because they think, and maybe they know deep down that if they couldn't contribute anything viable for the rest of the world, they would feel worthless. My son is not worthless. The gift that he brings for me to his sister, to his friends, to people who know him, is is honestly seeing the world in a way uh that most of us could never even think of. Lucas uh sees everything the way he wants to see it. Nothing is influenced by anything. If he likes something, it's

What Lucas Teaches About Freedom

James Guttman 8:50

because he likes that thing, not because his friend liked it. If Lucas plays with a toy, it's not because he saw it on TV or it was you know mentioned in a TikTok video, it's because he wants to play with that toy. He sees value in it. He might not even play with it the way he's supposed to. There's no instructions, no one cares. He'll play the same video clip over and over and over again. Why? Because it means something to him. And for every single one of us who has ever been singing in the serial aisle and then sees somebody turn the corner to come down the aisle and stops because now you're not alone anymore, you are exactly where I am. The type of person who watches someone like my son and is in awe of it. Because deep down I'm just like Lucas. Deep down I want to clap and jump and scream and sing all the time. And it's social norms that stop me. It's the restraints that I put on myself for my fear of how I'll be judged and how I'll be seen. And my son does not care at all. You can't learn from that. You can't understand the lessons that are in that. And that's why. That's

Why I Share Lucas With You

James Guttman 10:02

why. Deep down, and I've you know, I've been doing evolution with you guys, I've been doing it since 2017. But honestly, that's the reason why I left the wrestling business. I had been doing it forever to get into this and be able to write about him. And I started, I gave up being paid for wrestling. I was writing about wrestling, and it was part of my life, magazines, books, and I did this for free. And I still pretty much do it for free. There's very little advertising. I don't get paid directly by advertising. I keep everything there's no advertising on this podcast at all. Zero. I've been approached, I've been asked, people want to send me stuff. The main idea here is Lucas. He's the one that I want to share with you guys. The book, the writing, the podcast, the videos, the TikToks, the blog posts. It's all that's all about him. And it's also the world will know exactly what this kid contributes. Because this is it, this is what he contributes. Read it. You'll see, learn something from him. I'm not, I mean, I'm observing and maybe I'm I'm interpreting different things, but the lessons are from him. I'm just telling you what I'm seeing. Hey, but come here, right? Are we right? Can we say goodbye to everybody? Can you say? You guys hear do you guys hear Sesame Street in the background? Um, I guess I'm being taken. You want to get food, right? He wants to get food, he always wants to get food. Uh yeah. All right, I'm gonna take him with me. I'm gonna go feed him uh some more food because god forbid he doesn't tower over me. And I'll be back. I'll be back on Monday with a brand new blog on HiblogomDad.com. Follow me, please. Social media. Hi, James Gutman, H I James Gutman, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. You name it, I'm there. Hallelujah. That does it for me. Thank you so much for joining me. Till next week. This is James Gubman saying, be well. Bye, Pod. I'm dad.