My favorite fictional Aspies

My very favorite show on tv is the Red Green Show. This Canadian television show, which is on my local PBS station, features the "Possom Lake Lodge" which has a cast of odd characters, the vast majority of whom are male.

At the helm, is Red Green himself, a middle aged guy who is always inventing things that require old Dodge K cars and lots of duct tape. One of my favorites was when he cut two K cars in half and duct taped the front halves of each car (the half with the steering wheel) so he could have two sets of steerable wheels. He used bungie cords from the "front" steering wheel to the "back" steering wheel to syncronize the turning of the tires in parallel parking. He also once put the beater part of an electric mixer in a cordless drill. I actually did this myself before I bought myself an electric handheld mixer at the thrift store ($5 and it works great).

Also there is Mike Hammer who is a more or less reformed thief, Dalton Humphries who owns a store and makes the unreformed Scrooge look like a big spender, Edgar Montrose who is an expert on dynamite, and Winston Rothschild III who runs the alliterative "septic and sewage sucking service."

And then there are two Aspies. One is Harold, who is Red Green's nephew. Red always makes fun of him, but often Harold is right. Harold is the master of funny little noises that get a laugh from the audience and are his way of being Harold. Harold is also politically correct--for example, he wanted his stag party to be for female friends and family members as well as male friends and family. Harold can be pedantic without realizing that he is annoying other people, particularly Red.

There is only one female character who has been on the show more than one time (there are plenty of fictional women, such as the wives--particularly of Red and Dalton) and that is Harold's fiance, Bonnie. This is an Aspie love story. Harold is not in his twenties and Red was despairing that he would ever get married, but then Bonnie comes along. She is the perfect mate for Harold because she acts like him. She wears nerd glasses and the two of them together are both hilarious and sweet.

At the end of each show, the men of the lodge solemnly recite the men's prayer: "I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to, I guess." That about sums it up.