“Quelle étrange petite fille!” said an agitated woman in the grocery store. When my 8-year-old self asked my mother what the woman had said, Mom didn’t reply, even though she knew some Cajun French, which was often spoken in the part of southern Louisiana where I grew up. Now I know the answer: What a peculiar little girl.
Studies estimate that 1 in 162 children have Tourette’s syndrome, though many children go undiagnosed, reports. In 19 out of 20 cases, the neurological disorder is genetic, according to . Those numbers take on true meaning when you are one of the numbers.
I am one of the numbers. My father is one of the numbers. My grandmother — one of those numbers — was humiliated by her incessant knee slapping and the dogged bullying of her classmates to the point that she dropped out of school in the eighth grade.
If my family and I weren’t personally affected by the statistics, I may have never given much thought to Tourette’s or acquired any real awareness about what those with Tourette’s endure. I doubt I’d even know what Tourette’s really is, because it’s scarcely spoken of, outside of outlandish, mean joking. Tourette’s isn’t what a lot of people think it is.
It isn’t necessarily making dramatic movements or shouting profanities or slapping oneself, though can certainly manifest in myriad ways. According to the , “Tourette’s is a condition of the nervous system that causes people to make sudden and repeated twitches, movements or.