Chapter Three(continued)
Becky Helps a Friend, Clare, Who's Worried About Her Little Brother's Behaviour, and They Discuss Misdiagnosing Medical Problems and Other Things

Becky Begins to Tell Clare About Some Thoughts She Has About Parents Misdiagnosing Their Children With Certain Medical Problems

Becky said, "You know I said people on certain courses like medical courses can think they've got the symptoms they're reading about in their course textbooks? There's actually someone on my course who I think is doing something like that. She's a mature student, about ten years older than most of the people in my year. She's got a little boy of about seven years old. It's him I think she's diagnosing wrongly. Last term we studied something, and she reckons he's got it. It doesn't sound to me as if he has. Mind you, it might not be a problem, because soon we'll probably be studying something else that she thinks sounds like what he's got - if he's really got much of a problem at all - and she might decide he's got that instead."

Clare grinned and said, "Maybe you'll study something new every week, and every week she'll decide he's got that instead."

Becky laughed, and said, "Yeah!

Then Clare said, "Anyway, what does that mature student on your course think her son's got?"

Becky said, "She thinks he's got high-functioning autism, which can also be called Asperger's syndrome. If he really has got it, it'll be best if it's diagnosed, because then he can get help, like maybe some training in the skills people with Asperger's aren't very good at, and help to control his emotions like rage better.

"The thing is though, it doesn't sound to me as if he has got it, because there are quite a few common symptoms that people with it often have, that I'm pretty sure he hasn't got. And I wonder if having it diagnosed when he hasn't got it could cause problems, like employers being less willing to employ him later in life - I don't know if that happens, but it's a worry that would be on my mind if I was that mum.

"I actually met the boy one Saturday afternoon. The mum invited some of us to his birthday party. And I know one afternoon isn't all that long to observe someone's behaviour to see if they've got a problem, but he seemed perfectly normal to me. He didn't seem to have any of the symptoms you'd expect him to have.

"I mean, people with Asperger's, or high-functioning autism, often tend to have trouble understanding people's real intentions in situations where other people would find it much easier. For instance, they take things people say too seriously sometimes and think people mean them literally, because they can't detect the differences in a person's tone of voice that other people would interpret to mean they're just joking or being sarcastic.

"And they're often not good at interpreting body language, so, say, if they keep talking and someone looks bored, they won't necessarily pick up on it.

"That kind of thing can make them seem insensitive, like if someone seems a bit upset, or says something in a way that most people would interpret as sounding as if they're a bit upset, and they don't notice. They can say upsetting things themselves as well, because they don't realise people might be upset by them.

"Some people with Asperger's can hog a conversation and talk about just a few things, not realising the other person might prefer to talk themselves sometimes. Or they can show no interest at all in conversations people expect them to join in, preferring to do their own thing.

"Some can show unusual interest in little details about things, not really paying attention to the most important thing that's going on, but seeming to think minor details are just as important as it, for instance concentrating on the colours of the buttons on a person's blouse, rather than listening to what the person's actually saying. It's as if their brain can't prioritise the things that are going on around them in order of importance, so every detail of what's happening around them can seem to have the same importance, so they can feel as if way too much is happening for them to take in at once, so they feel overloaded with information, and can have tantrums because they can't cope, or they have to get away to be alone to calm down.

"And some can be hypersensitive to the textures of food and clothes, and get more than usually upset about ones they don't like.

"Problems like those can make them more anxious than most children, and some will prefer to spend time alone because of that.

"And they can have tantrums about things that wouldn't bother a lot of kids much, like if they're told to stop doing something and come and do something else, and they don't like the idea.

"They often don't like change in general; they often prefer to stick to the same routines.

"And they often haven't got much imagination in the way lots of other kids have, so, for example, while a lot of kids enjoy playing games where they, say, might pretend a tree stump in the garden is a chair or table in a kitchen, to a lot of people with Asperger's, it'll be just what it looks like and nothing more.

"And they can have problems understanding things from other people's points of view, even when they're explained to them. So in an argument, sometimes they won't change their minds no matter what.

"And some might often sit alone with just a few things they're fond of, saying or doing the same things over and over again.

"And there are quite a few other symptoms like those too that some people with it have.

"But anyway, this boy wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary like that when I spent an afternoon at his party.

"You wouldn't necessarily expect someone with Asperger's to have all those symptoms, because not everyone has them all; and sometimes, people's symptoms might be so mild you might not notice them a lot of the time. But still, I would have thought you could expect enough of them to show up regularly that it wouldn't be hard to notice that something was wrong.

"But besides the boy seeming normal when I met him, when I listed the common symptoms to his mum one day and asked her if he had each one, there were quite a lot that she said he didn't have. There are just a few that she thinks he does have, and she thinks they've got great significance, when to me, it seems they could be happening for different reasons entirely. Like she says he can have big tantrums. But then, lots of kids do.

"And she says he gets upset if his routines change. But it turns out she's been trying to give him strict routines since he was born, like always having his tea and going to bed at a certain time, which isn't a bad thing, but it seems they've been stricter about it than most parents, so maybe whenever they don't enforce it now, he worries that something's wrong or something.

"And she said he's very good at noticing the details of things, like he'll draw surprisingly detailed pictures of things, and explain things in a lot of detail when he's asked about them. But that doesn't sound like a problem to me! And when other little kids would probably have been watching cartoons on telly, they used to show him science documentaries and programmes about the way things are made, where they went through things in detail; so I think it's no wonder he learned to be more observant about the details of things than most kids of his age.

"And she says he doesn't get upset by some things she'd expect him to get upset by, like she used to work in a care home, and she had to work on Christmas Day and on some other days around Christmas, and when she told him, he just accepted it, whereas she'd expected him to be upset by it. So she thought that was abnormal, and must be a symptom of the problem.

"But really, why wouldn't he have just accepted it? Surely a kid will only get upset if they've picked up the idea that Christmas is a special time when everyone ought to be with their families, on that particular day, and they've come to expect that; but I think the boy's known for years that some people have to work on Christmas Day, like nurses and policemen, so I don't see why he'd be upset to find out that his mum would be spending hours on that day looking after people instead of being with him, especially because it wasn't as if he'd be missing out on Christmas altogether; all it meant was that his family would be having some of their festivities a couple of days later than most families do. I mean, why should that be anything to be upset about!

"And you could even say that the fact that he didn't get upset about his mum caring for other people instead of being there to party with him might mean he has a nice caring streak!

"My mum became a nurse not that long ago, and she worked on Christmas Day so she wasn't there to be with me for most of it - no, I wasn't just left on my own, in case you were wondering; I spent the day with my grandma and grandpa - but it didn't bother me at all when my mum told me she wasn't going to be with me on the day. So I don't see why it should bother any other kid if their mum or dad won't be there."

Clare grinned and said, "Yeah, but you're not exactly normal yourself, are you."

Becky said sarcastically, "Gee, thanks!"

Clare said, "Come on, you know what I mean."

Becky said, "Yeah. Maybe. Anyway, I know the mature student with the boy was just mentioning that Christmas thing to give an example of what it's like, but still, it just shows you how things can be interpreted in very different ways, doesn't it, especially if people just make assumptions about what must be going on, instead of finding out all the facts they can before coming to a conclusion.

"And the thing is that if she interpreted that thing about her son not being upset about her not being there for Christmas very differently from the way I'd interpret it, how do we know she isn't interpreting lots of other things differently from the way some other people would interpret them too?

"I mean, I can't be sure there's nothing more to the supposed symptoms the mum with the little boy thinks he's got than I think there is, because I'm not with the boy every day like she is, obviously - I only ever saw him on one afternoon; and apart from that, I'm only going by the way she's answered my questions about him and what she's told us about him. But I've never seen why the things she's mentioned should be things to really worry about, so I tried to say to her that the problems he really does have might be caused by something else entirely, and that some of the things she mentioned might not really be abnormal at all.

"But she wasn't convinced by anything I said to try to persuade her that her son might not have Asperger's after all, for some reason, and she took her little boy to the doctor's and said she thought he had it. The doctor told her to write down all the things that happened over the next few months that seemed as if they were symptoms of the problem, and then get back to him. That's obviously a good way to go about things, but I reckon she's been taking things too far.

"There isn't a blood test or a brain scan to diagnose Asperger's, so it's common for it to be diagnosed partly by parents being asked to write down what they notice about their children that fits what they think are the symptoms over a period of time.

"The thing is though that one problem I reckon might happen is that confirmation bias can come in, which is where people interpret things in a way that makes them think they just confirm that they're right about an opinion they already hold about something, when really they might not do that at all, and the people are just making a mistake in thinking they do; or they've got a certain theory about why things are happening, and, probably not even realising they're doing things in a biased way, they look for evidence they're right, but they don't look for evidence they might be mistaken, so they don't find evidence that'll make them doubt their opinions, and just become all the more convinced they're right.

"You know, like if there was a really hot summer day, and someone who believed global warming was happening fast interpreted that as meaning they were right to believe that, or that it might be even worse than they thought, when really, average temperatures that year might actually have been a bit colder than normal, but it had never occurred to them to look into evidence they might not be right.

"Or if someone believes God's doing miracles in their church, if the pastor lays his hands on a stranger to the church in a wheelchair and they immediately jump up, they might immediately assume it's a miracle, instead of thinking it might be, but that it might also be that the person's playing a game and was never really disabled, or that they're in league with the pastor and they're both tricking the church, or that the person in the wheelchair can walk a little bit, and they're so offended by being touched by the pastor that they've jumped up to get away."

Clare grinned.

Becky said, "Well, I reckon some parents might get confirmation bias when they're looking out for a child's symptoms of what they think is Asperger's and things like that, and I can think of three reasons why it might happen:

"One is because parents might interpret anything their child does that they think fits the diagnosis as meaning they've got it, rather than thinking of as many possible alternative reasons why they could be doing it as they can; so it convinces them even more than they were before that they have got it.

"Another is because they might only pay attention to what the child's doing that seems to confirm that they have got the problem, rather than looking for any evidence that some things they're doing are things you definitely wouldn't expect from someone who had it, and things they're not doing that you would expect someone with it to do, that might be clues that they haven't got that but something else, or that they've got nothing at all, but that their behaviour's just a part of the natural variation in the behaviour of children in the general population.

"Another reason is that they might look up information about the problem they think their child's got on websites about the problem, to find evidence that it fits the description and to find out what advice they give, but it might never occur to them to look at websites for help with ordinary children, to see if they get the impression the problems are actually not that unusual in the general population.

"To give an example of one of those things, the person on my course who thinks her son's got Asperger's said one day that she'd been having a tough time with him the evening before because he'd been grumpy and argumentative all the time. She said that at tea-time, she'd given him some pizza that was left over from the night before, and he got all upset and refused to eat it because it had pepper on it, whereas the night before it had had pepper on it too, but he'd eaten it happily. The mum said, 'That's autism for you!' But I thought, 'What if it's actually something else entirely? What if it was because pepper's much more tolerable on crispy hot pizza than on pizza that might be cold or lukewarm and a bit soft and manky-tasting after having been around for a while?'

"And the mum says the boy used to feel loving and affectionate towards her, but now they argue a lot, and it seems the mum puts a lot of that down to autism too, whereas I suspect the causes are rather more fixable, like ways of communicating that could be changed so what they say doesn't antagonise the other one any more; so it's a pity. Still, she might decide he's probably got something else after she's studied more on our course.

"It reminds me of something I once heard, where someone who taught remedial classes with children with behavioural problems in mainstream schools said she got more and more unhappy with teaching a particular boy who would play up and behave badly when she was trying to teach him, and she started wondering why she was coming to dislike him more and more and to feel more and more stressed by teaching him, till she wasn't enjoying life at school at all.

"Then she realised the reason: At a workshop to help teachers like her that she'd been to a while earlier, it had been suggested that people keep a log they updated every day of all the bad behaviour the kids in their classes were doing. That was probably to help diagnose them if they had any disorders, and to help people decide what help might be needed in any case.

"But she'd found that the more she concentrated on noticing his bad behaviour to write it down, the more she'd begun to feel as if the bad behaviour was all there was to him, because that was all she was looking out for. She concentrated on noticing what was going wrong so much that she stopped thinking about what was going well. Also, the more stressed she was with him, the more angrily she treated him, which made him behave worse. So it was like a vicious cycle, with her thinking in detail about everything he'd done wrong, getting angry and stressed about it, behaving more and more grumpily, impatient and annoyed with him as a result, and him reacting to that with anger so he behaved worse as a result.

"When she eventually realised she was doing that, she stopped writing a journal of all his bad behaviour; and then because she wasn't looking out for it and concentrating on it so much, her attitude towards him improved. She didn't get so angry with him, so they got into less arguments. When she started noticing what he was doing well more, and praising him for that, they started getting on better, and he wanted to do more to please her because he liked it when she was pleased with him, so his behaviour improved quite a bit.

"So I wonder if a similar kind of downward spiral can happen when a parent thinks their child has Asperger's - they make a point of remembering all the things they think are evidence of it, and then everything they notice that might be evidence of it makes them feel more worried, and they're looking out for it more so they spot more of it, and some of it makes them angry because it's bad behaviour, so they tell the child off more because they notice more of it, so the child gets more irritable with them because of that, and the relationship deteriorates, and that just convinces the parents all the more that the child has the problem they're worried they've got.

"Also, I wonder if part of the problem is that if they're looking out for the bad behaviour for a long time to help diagnose it, they won't be trying to find ways of improving it, like looking at self-help books for parents of ordinary kids who behave badly or a bit strangely by psychologists, because they'll assume it can't be fixed till it's been diagnosed and they get professional help with it; so the problem behaviour likely won't have much of a chance of getting better before the parents get an official diagnosis. That might make the parents more stressed and irritable, because it might mean they have to put up with it for longer, and that might mean they get annoyed with their children over a longer time, so they have more conflict, they're all unhappier, and the parents put that down to the child's Asperger's too.

"Mind you, sometimes, they might have problems that mean advice in normal self-help books wouldn't work for them, because they're being caused by different things than usual, so trying out solutions that work for a lot of children might be less likely to work, and some parents might get irritated with their children when they don't work, because they blame them, or something like that; so trying solutions before the child gets diagnosed might backfire sometimes.

"I mean, like, say if most children would get better at something they weren't good at with practice, but children with certain conditions wouldn't get better at it no matter how hard they tried. A self-help book that advised parents to get a child to do something they weren't good at over and over again till they got better at it might work for a lot of children, but if parents of a child with one of those conditions were expecting it to work for their child, they might start thinking their child must just be being naughty if it didn't work, so they might get annoyed with them.

"Still, I can't imagine there really being a problem, as long as parents know that if a kid can't seem to do something they're trying to teach them to do, there might be a good reason why, and that also if a child starts to get upset when they try something, it might be best to stop and try something else instead, or to try what they're doing at a slower pace, so the child has more time to get used to it, and can start with easier things for a while."

Becky and Clare Meet Another Friend, and Have a Bit of a Laugh Again

Clare said, "This is interesting stuff; but you know, I think I'm going to need to go up and buy another cake, to give my body fuel to power my brain enough to be able to take all this in!"

Becky chuckled, and said, "Come on, it can't be that hard!"

Still, they both decided that getting another cake would be a nice idea anyway, so they both went up to get one.

While they were in the queue, they met another friend of theirs, Laura, who asked them what they were planning to do at Easter. The holiday was mere days away.

Becky grinned and said, "We're going to do something special this year. Normally my mum's brother and sisters, and my brother's wife and little boy, and my auntie Joan's husband, come around, and Grandpa buys us all a big Easter egg each, and he buys a nice lot of chocolate creme eggs, and one of us hides them in the back garden, and the rest of us hunt for them. But this year, my mummy said she thinks we're all getting too fat, so she thinks we ought to cut down on them.

"I told her that if that was the way she felt, we could easily cut down the size of what we ate, by hunting for garden peas in the garden instead of chocolate creme eggs. That way we could hide the same number of things as usual, but they'd be much smaller. I told her that one of us could go out and hide about forty individual peas all around the garden, like in flower pots with plants in them, or right up in the middle of a load of tree branches, and that kind of thing. And since we always seem to lose one creme egg and it can turn up months later somewhere, because the person who hid it forgot where they put it, I said we could have a new rule that no one would be allowed to go indoors till all the peas had been found, even if we were all out there all night on a big pea hunt."

Clare giggled and asked, "What did your mum say when you said that to her?"

Becky said, "She just laughed and told me I was being daft! I think we Are going to cut down a bit on chocolate eggs though, because she did tell my grandpa she thinks we're all too fat."

Laura laughed and said sarcastically, "I bet that went down well!"

Clare giggled, and said, "Your mum sounds like a bit of a killjoy! ... A bit of a kill-tact as well, if there is such a thing!"

Becky grinned and said, "Actually I don't think she told Grandpa she thinks we're all getting too fat, as such; I think she just said she thinks it would be nice for us to get into being healthier or something. As if just a few Easter eggs on a special occasion would make enough of a difference to make it worth cutting down on them! Oh well!"

Laura said, "Well, if you really want chocolate, there's enough in here to make up for it! Just imagine how fat you'd get if you ate the whole lot!"

Clare giggled and said, "Yeah, and if you ate it all at once, you might have to phone your mum and ask her to carry you home when she came to collect you, telling her you'd got so fat it took too much energy for you to walk any more!"

They giggled again.

Then Laura said, "I can't imagine that going down too well! Mind you, even when someone seems to think it'll be nice for you to have some chocolate, you can find yourself in the dog house! ... Well, I don't mean that literally, obviously, especially since chocolate's toxic for dogs. But I mean you can end up being disapproved of.

"My older brother got married a couple of years ago, and the first Christmas they were married, his wife made us all these nice chocolate truffle things. I enjoyed mine. When the next Christmas came round, I thought I'd try to compliment her on them, to be nice, since I hadn't told her how nice I'd thought they were before, since we don't often see each other. So I told her I'd enjoyed them.

"She took it completely the wrong way! She must have thought I was hinting that I'd like her to make some more! She said grumpily, 'I'm not making any more!'

"Everyone thinks she's moody, well, apart from my brother, probably, since he married her. No one's ever told her though. But I made a mental note never to compliment her on anything again, because she might take a lot of things the wrong way, for all I know!"

Clare smiled and said, "Oh that might be a bit drastic! Surely there can only be so many compliments a person can take the wrong way!"

Becky grinned mischievously and said, "Oh I don't know. I mean, let's think: If you told someone you thought their hair looked nice, they could say, 'Well I'm not pulling it all out and paying someone to turn it into a wig and giving it to you!'

"Or if you say to someone, 'I like your dress!' they could say, 'Well don't think I'm giving it to you! I like wearing it myself!'"

Laura giggled and said, "Just imagine if a man told a woman he liked her dress, and she said, 'It's too bad if you want to wear it yourself! I'm not giving it away!'"

Becky and Clare laughed.

The Friends Discuss People With Annoying and Strange Habits, Extreme Politics, and Why Raising Taxes Won't Always Make a Government More Money

Then Clare asked, "So what are You doing over Easter, Laura?"

The conversation instantly became serious, as Laura said, "I expect I'll be seeing quite a few of my family. Actually, I'll be glad to get away from here for a little while. There's this awful bloke on my course who keeps irritating me! I'll give you an example of the kind of thing he does:

"When I first met him, he sounded all nice and compassionate, because he said things like, 'I want to make it my mission in life to eradicate poverty from the world!' Well I thought that was a bit ambitious, to say the least! But I thought at least it sounded as if his heart was in the right place. But I've changed my mind since then! He doesn't seem very nice at all! And I don't think he even cares that much about poor people; I reckon he just wants to do something that'll bring him some glory or something! I don't know.

"But it's weird; he likes to think of himself as a Marxist, and goes on about how world poverty needs to be abolished. Some of the things he says sound nice, but then when anyone says that Marxism has led to some people using it to put systems in place that have caused a lot of people terrible suffering, even when the intentions were actually good, such as some of the schemes communist governments have tried, he doesn't say they were a bad thing, or explain how they could have worked better if only certain things about them had been different, or anything like that; he just tries to change the subject by turning things around on the person who made the comment, by saying things like, 'Well, would you like me to tell you about the terrible suffering capitalism's caused?'

"And then he starts talking about sweatshops in various parts of the world and things like that, and asks the person how they can justify capitalism as a system when that kind of thing goes on!

"So he can manage to divert the conversation into an argument where they're on the defensive, trying to convince him that capitalism isn't all bad, forgetting they'd meant the conversation to be about communism.

"But if you insist on bringing the subject back to any suffering the policies of Marxist governments have led to and things like that, such as forcing farmers to sell the food they produce at really low prices to feed poor people, which sounds nice ... well, for the poor people anyway, but it's led to farmers thinking it isn't worth making the effort to even produce it if they're not going to get much reward for it because they'll hardly make any profits, so they haven't bothered to work hard to produce much, so it's actually led to less affordable food being around, not more, so people have even gone hungry and even starved, - if you say that kind of thing to this bloke, he'll eventually tell you that the suffering of even millions is sometimes necessary to bring progress into being.

"That doesn't even seem to make sense, because the results of that kind of thing are hardly what I'd call progress!

"But then he'll get straight back to talking angrily about the suffering capitalist systems have caused in the world, insisting that the person he's arguing with should justify it all if they believe in capitalism.

"That's just silly, for one thing, since you can believe in the basic capitalist system of people being allowed to start their own businesses and make profits so they can live a bit of the high life, without believing in the worst excesses of the system that you can get in some places, and that you used to get here before laws came in to stop it, like businesses being allowed to be all about profit so they don't care about the safety or well-being of the workers, since spending money on making things safer or on improving working conditions in other ways would eat into their profits.

"You know, it's weird, because this man doesn't seem to be able to comprehend that there are any midway points between one thing and the other; he just seems to think in extremes, as if he thinks things are all good or all bad.

"And that seems to go for the suffering communist governments have caused too - he seems to imagine it must have been good suffering if it was communist suffering, whereas the suffering people have gone through because of what people have been allowed to get away with in the worst capitalist regimes must be bad suffering because it's capitalist suffering.

"It's as if he thinks one type of suffering just doesn't matter, and he tries to shout a person down if they even try to mention it; but if suffering's inflicted by another kind of system, even though it's not actually worse suffering, it's somehow terrible!"

Becky and Clare couldn't help but smile at Laura's last couple of sentences.

Becky said, "I think that kind of thing's called ego-defence, where people like having their opinions, and they know they're going to feel uncomfortable if they're challenged so they have to start worrying about whether they're really true, so they try to use tactics to shut down conversation about them so they won't have to, like distracting people from them by attacking other points of view, especially ones they know will get those people on the defensive so they'll get engrossed in what they're saying and won't want to change the subject back to the opinions they're trying to protect, or by slightly changing the subject, to do their best to make sure no one gets the chance to mention problems with the things they believe.

"I think part of the reason people end up with extreme views like the ones that person on your course must have might be because they like having their opinions so much that they've got a closed mind to thinking about whether any alternative points of view could teach them anything or change their minds, so they don't even want to think about them; and then because they won't even think about them, they just keep themselves convinced that they're right. ... Or something."

Laura said, "It's even weirder than what I've told you, because I've known people to start insulting this man on my course, and then he flops down in a seat and declares, 'I'm not going to bother trying to rid the world of poverty any more! I've completely lost faith in human nature!'

"It's as if all it takes is a few insults, and he goes from truly believing he's capable of ridding the world of poverty single-handedly and being very passionate about the challenge, to deciding the entire human race just doesn't deserve it any more so he isn't going to bother even trying to do one single thing about any of it, just because a few people insulted him!"

Becky and Clare laughed. But then Becky said, "Actually, it sounds as if he could have some kind of mental disorder.

"Funnily enough though, a friend of mine on my psychology course said something a bit like what you just said not long ago about someone she's argued with on an Internet forum. I suppose that by some strange coincidence, it could be the same person."

Then Becky grinned and joked, "Or maybe there's a secret school out there where people go to learn how to be annoying in certain ways, and one lesson they have is a 'How to annoy people by pretending to have laughably unrealistic ideas about easily ridding the world of poverty and then instantly changing your mind about wanting to one day' lesson, and a 'How to respond to what people say to you without even saying one sensible thing but just making stupid accusations against them' lesson."

They chuckled. Clare said, "I'm sure some people don't need lessons in saying stupid things!"

They giggled again.

Then Becky said, "Anyway, my friend told me that this man on the Internet forum she was on would keep saying silly things, like, 'I have a vision of how I'll one day encourage everyone in the world to live in love and peace and harmony with each other, where people will no longer be divided into rich and poor, because everyone will have the same amount to live on. One day I'll stop working for the ugly capitalist system, and go and make my vision a reality.'

"Well that might have sounded good, but when he was asked how he'd do it, he said he had no idea, but that it might be good to tax all those greedy rich people massively and give the money to poor people."

"A bit like Robbin Hood then?" said Clare with a grin.

Becky said, "Well that's what he probably thought; my friend said she came to the conclusion in the end that he probably just wanted to be admired as a hero, because when people mentioned other kinds of suffering, it seemed he couldn't care less about it, and even made insensitive jokes about it. She said she thought it was weird.

"Anyway, if anyone pointed out flaws in his arguments, like saying, 'And just how do you imagine you're going to get to control all the governments of the world so you can make them tax all rich people really heavily?' or, 'The trouble with that idea is that whenever governments tax rich people heavily, a lot of the rich people just get creative at finding ways of evading paying tax, so the government can actually end up with less tax than before; and some rich people move to other countries, and if they're employers, they can close down their companies or take them overseas instead, so all the employees they had in the country with the high tax rates that were meant to help poor people are made redundant, so they actually become poorer, and might need the help themselves', he would just start getting insulting and making stupid accusations about the person saying those things.

"And if anyone tried to reason with him about how his insults didn't make much sense, he'd just make more of them, and it would get into a silly argument. He just didn't seem interested in listening to what anyone said at all.

"He wouldn't listen or change his views even a tiny bit, no matter how polite and well-reasoned what they said was, like if they didn't say even one bad word about him at all, but all they said was something like, 'There's probably an optimum level of taxation, where it's high enough so government policies can be quite humane, like providing a good health service and free schools so no one has to go without healthcare and education because their families can't afford it, but not so high that the policy backfires, for reasons such as that significantly more rich people than usual start trying to evade all the tax they can so they don't end up having to pay loads and loads, by, say, putting a lot of their money in bank accounts abroad in places with lower taxes, so any tax on them goes to the governments there, not to the one with the high tax levels.'

"My friend said she told him that arguing with him was like trying to argue with a frying pan - it made no sense and wouldn't listen, but it would sometimes just spit little bits of what she'd put into it out again.

"Like she might try to explain to him that governments with high tax rates could actually lose money and forfeit money they'd otherwise get in the future, for reasons such as that rich people starting businesses might register them in some country with lower taxes instead of in their own one, which would mean that the taxes on them would go to the government demanding the lower taxes, not to their own government. Apparently, every business has to be registered with the authorities in one country or another, partly because it's the law that every business has to pay taxes, so the authorities need to know what to tax.

"Or my friend would try to explain that higher taxes could mean fewer businesses were started so fewer jobs would be created, because some people who might otherwise start good businesses and create good jobs might not want to bother any more, because they'd think, 'Why should I bother, when I'll have to give most of my money to the tax man so I won't get to enjoy much of it?'

"But whenever she tried saying anything like that, he'd just more-or-less repeat one line of text she'd written back to her, and say things like, 'You're only saying that because you're a capitalist shill'. He'd do that kind of thing whenever anyone tried to reason with him. You know, he wouldn't even bother to argue at all but would just say something that sounded moronic! So quite a few people got really annoyed with him in the end.

"Mind you, it would be much more of a problem if it was a government policy-maker behaving like that, and not just some twit on an Internet forum! Maybe some government policy-makers really are like that. I hope not! But who knows!

"Actually, that's maybe partly why some social unrest and even revolutions start, because for whatever reason, governments won't even listen to people when they try to protest against policies they think are unfair to them. Maybe some protests or even revolutions could even be stopped in their tracks if governments publicised that they were willing to negotiate with and listen to people who were angry about their policies, and they were willing to explain all their reasons for doing what the people were objecting to so it was more understandable, and change their policies if they were doing harm.

"But anyway, hopefully that daft man my friend was arguing with on the Internet forum won't ever want to get into government! Not that he'd get very far ... hopefully! My friend said it was irritating talking to him though.

"Actually, one thing she thought of doing was just coming out with silly things, so at least she'd be entertained by talking to him, whenever he made some of his daft claims, or it was obvious he wasn't going to listen to what people were saying; she said it reminded her of a proverb that says, 'If someone asks you a silly question, give a silly answer; really, trying to talk sense to someone who only wants to be silly makes you as silly as the person who asked the silly question', ... or it says something like that anyway.

"It's like the old saying, 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.'

"You know, if you keep trying to reason with a person and they keep just not listening, it's unlikely they'll change, so it makes much more sense to do something different than it does to keep trying.

"My friend said one thing she learned from arguing with this annoying man was that if a person doesn't seem to be listening to a word you say but just wants to say offensive things, it's probably best to stop arguing with them about their opinions altogether, since otherwise you'll only get frustrated and annoyed when they respond to all your effort by saying something that makes it obvious they're not even thinking about what you say and probably not even reading it; so instead, she said you could start speculating about what their motives might be for behaving the way they do, you know, like saying, 'It might not be fair of me, but I've come to believe that the only reason you say what you do is because you're desperate for attention, or for an adrenaline buzz that'll make your life feel more worthwhile, and provoking people is the only way you can think of to get it.'

"And then my friend said no matter how much they protest, she reckons it can be good to insist on psychoanalysing them some more, as well as criticising their method of arguing - that's if you can even call it arguing! For one thing, it'll be a whole lot more fun than answering their accusations or trying to make them see reason!"

The others smiled. Then Clare said, "I think I might be the silly one here, actually, for imagining that coming up here for refreshments would give me a break from having to use my brain power!"

They laughed.

They'd just reached the front of the queue. Laura had come with some friends, and she was intending to go and sit with them. But they wanted to just finish their conversation first, so they bought a cake each, and stood around talking for a bit longer.

Becky said, "Anyway, on this forum I was telling you about where this daft man kept saying stupid things and then not listening when people tried to reason with him, my friend said it was funny, because when any argument had died down, he would go back to all his talk about how wonderful the world would be if poverty was completely eliminated from it and everyone was nice to each other, and how he loved humanity. Sometimes he'd even say he thought the world would be better if there was no money in it at all!

"He would swing between feeling sure he could heroically make the world a much better place all by himself where everybody loved each other, and then, if a couple of people insulted him, deciding humanity just wasn't worth the effort and he wanted to just grab all he could get out of life, no matter at whose expense it was; you know, it was as if he decided that the fact that just a couple of people had insulted him must mean that the entire population of the world was unworthy of any help, and even deserved to just be exploited!

"It sounds as if he was daft, as well as being one of those people who only seems to think in extremes, for some reason!

"When he'd calmed down, my friend said he would change his mind yet again, and decide he was capable of making the world a much better place all by himself after all!

"I suppose it's possible he's got some kind of mental problem, and we shouldn't think it's funny or just daft. I suppose, maybe she shouldn't have even argued with him. You just can't tell these things if you only know someone from a forum.

"But my friend did argue with him for a while, because she kept feeling annoyed by what he said, especially when he brought her name into it, like criticising the way she argued. Mind you, then she decided there was a funny side to it, so for a bit of light relief and some fun, she made up a funny story, partly making fun of the ideas he had and the things he said, about some people who decided they wanted to be socialists and take over the world all by themselves and turn it into a utopian socialist state, although not for very good reasons. He actually told her he enjoyed the story. ... Well, most of it anyway."

Becky Begins to Tell a Wacky Story

Laura asked Becky what the story was about, and she said, "OK, I'll tell you it, as far as I can remember it. It went something like this:

"Pat Cashless was a successful auctioneer, selling impressive amounts of useless junk to people who couldn't possibly need any of it. At first he was very proud of himself! But the more he sold, the more he became disgusted that people were so willing to buy so much from him, when there were so many people in the world going without any junk at all; and he hated the fist fights over useless junk that would often break out on his auction-room floor. He thought, 'Are all auction rooms like this, or just mine?'

"So he decided the entire Capitalist system must stink from the bottom right up to the top! He decided he could be the one to change the world, making everyone give up Capitalism and want to become part of a Socialist utopia, with him getting all the glory for starting and leading it. All in the name of goodness, of course!

"So in preparation for his attempt to dominate the world, he left town with no money, no clothes, ... well, apart from what he already had on, and nothing else. He wanted to prove to himself that it was possible to live without money, so he could convince everyone else in the world that it was, because he could say he'd proved it was possible by doing it himself.

"His name hadn't originally been Pat Cashless, but Pat Cash; he'd been named after a famous Australian tennis player his parents had once liked. But as he left town to start his no-money lifestyle, he changed his name, as a symbol of his new life.

"His first day's wander in the woods was quite blissful, ... till he got hungry, and realised he was going to have to find food without paying for it if his moneyless lifestyle was going to work.

"He wandered around feeling more and more miserable, till he spotted some berries growing on a bush. Normally he'd have worried that they might be poisonous, but he was so hungry by then he didn't care. ..."

Becky Tells Clare More of Her Theory About Why Some Parents Can Misdiagnose Their Children With Certain Medical Conditions

Laura thought her friends might be wondering if she'd abandoned them. So she said, "That sounds like a fun story, Becky. It would be nice to hear the rest of it sometime. I'll go back to sit with the friends I came in here with now, but perhaps you can tell me the rest of it when we next meet up."

Becky agreed.

Clare made a face and said, "Ooh, you've made Becky leave it on a cliff-hanger now!"

Laura grinned and apologised, but still went back to her friends.

So Becky and Clare carried their cakes and went back to sit down. Soon, they were back into their conversation about parents misdiagnosing their children's problems again.

Clare said, "It's interesting that some of the things you were saying about that man on the Internet forum sounded like what you were telling me before about how people with Asperger's syndrome can think in extremes, and not be able to understand things from other people's points of view. I wonder if that man, and the man on Laura's course she was telling us about, might have it."

Becky said, "It's possible, maybe. Mind you, there are other possible things that could be causing their behaviour too.

"Actually, I remember reading a conversation on an Internet forum where one person said they reckoned there were some people there who claimed they had Asperger's when they didn't really, but that they probably thought that claiming they had it would mean they could get away with being insensitive to people. I don't know whether that really was the case. But I think there were a few people there who'd diagnosed themselves with it. I'm not quite sure about that. But if they did, then they might have been mistaken, since after all, getting a diagnosis from a medical professional who could rule out other possible things would probably be more likely to be accurate.

"The same with parents diagnosing their children with it, when their children might really have something else, or nothing unusual at all. Maybe part of the reason why some parents might worry that a child of theirs is abnormal is that because families are much smaller nowadays than they used to be, and also because people often don't live as close to their extended families as people tended to before, parents maybe often haven't got as much experience of the variations in behaviour that different children can have as they would have done before, so if there's is behaving a bit dramatically or aggressively or differently from what they'd expect, they haven't got so many other children's behaviour to compare it with, if any at all, so they're not so likely to assume it's just normal and look for help from other parents or in self-help books for ordinary parents with difficult children, but instead they might start worrying that something's really wrong.

"And I wonder if their diagnosis can also sometimes be like a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is where someone thinks a thing is going to happen, and then they behave in a way that actually makes it more likely to happen, and when it does, they think that means they were right all along about how it was going to happen.

"So in this case, it could happen because a parent notices things that worry them that they interpret as signs of a particular problem, and then they tell a child they think they've got a particular problem, and then the child starts behaving more as if they have, for a couple of reasons:

"One is that if a parent lets the child know they think they've got a certain problem like Asperger's, perhaps with the best of intentions, and tells them it makes people, say, find it more difficult to make friends, and that people who have it tend not to be very good at imaginative play, then the child might lose confidence in their abilities to make friends and be creative, and whatever else the parent has told them people with Asperger's tend to be bad at, because they stop believing they can do those things well. And a person's confidence in their ability to do things has been found to be part of what determines how well they do them. If they stop being confident they can do them, they'll often stop trying to do them well, because they won't see any point in trying if they expect to fail.

"so they might not have been all that good at them before, but instead of trying to get better, they might get worse at them. Or they might stop trying to do them altogether, because they think that if they can't do them well, there won't be much point in putting effort into them at all; or they might be worrying about making more and more mistakes, especially if they worry their problem might get worse, so they might want to avoid the stress.

"For instance, if they think they're going to have problems making friends, they might become more withdrawn and stop trying to make friends, because they're scared of being ridiculed if they make mistakes; or if they're worried about their ability to be imaginative, they might stop wanting to play certain computer games where people have to be creative, because they're worried about failing.

"There was a famous experiment where a teacher one day told the kids in her class that research had found that people with blue eyes were more intelligent and capable than people with brown eyes. No research had really found that; she was just making it up to see what would happen. I think some of the kids with blue eyes teased kids with brown eyes about it in their break time. The teacher gave them some tests, and the kids with brown eyes did worse on them than the people with blue eyes.

"Then the next day, she told them she'd made a mistake, and that the research had really found that people with brown eyes were the more intelligent and capable ones. She gave them more tests, and the kids with brown eyes did better in them than the kids with blue eyes that day.

"So that seemed to be evidence that how well a lot of people do in a subject has quite a bit to do with how much they believe people think they're capable of, and how confident they are that they are actually capable of doing well in it.

"And I reckon it can work in a similar way when it comes to tantrums as well: If a parent tells their child they think their bad tantrums are caused by a problem they've got that can't be fixed without medical treatment, the child won't have an incentive to try to stop themselves having them, like trying out little techniques they pick up that might help calm them down.

"Instead, whenever they have an urge to have a tantrum, instead of thinking they need to try to control it, they might think they just can't help themselves because they've got this medical condition, so they go ahead and have the tantrum; and they might have even more tantrums than they did before, because if they know they're expected to have them in certain situations because that's what the information their parents have looked at says children do when they've got the condition their parents think they've got, then if they do feel angry, they might think it's a sign a tantrum's coming on and let one loose, thinking that's just what the medical condition's doing to them, instead of thinking they need to try to control themselves.

"I don't know if that really does happen, but I wouldn't be surprised.

"I'm not saying I don't believe parents should look out for evidence their child has a certain problem to help doctors diagnose it or anything; I'm just saying I think they should also look out for evidence the problem might be something else instead, and to try not to give their child expectations that they'll behave in a certain way and not be able to help it, unless they really do have good evidence that that's the case.

"And I think parents ought to bear in mind what I was saying earlier too, about how although it's good to have a diagnosis if a kid's really got problems and a diagnosis will mean they get the help they need, being eager for a diagnosis and pushing for one, when a child might just have a normal variation of the kind of behaviour a lot of kids just naturally have, could mean their kid has to live with that diagnosis for decades, and how can anyone tell it won't affect things in years to come like their employment prospects?"

Becky and Clare Have Fun Talking About People Embarrassing Other Family Members, and Tell a Few Stories About Doing it Themselves

Clare said, "That's a good point. I don't think it would be nice for a child to have a diagnosis of a mental health problem or learning disability on their records for years because their parents thought they had it when they didn't really. It might be embarrassing, for one thing.

"... Actually, haven't parents got a reputation for embarrassing their children though? I came across some funny stories about parents embarrassing their children on the Internet, not in serious ways, but just in embarrassing ones. It made me laugh.

"There was one story about an adult child who'd written a book that got published, and she was signing copies of the book for the public, and there was a big queue of people wanting her to sign their books, and her mum joined it. When she got up to her, she said in a very loud voice, 'Are you managing your laundry without a washing machine in the house, darling?'

"And there was a mum who ran down the street in her pyjamas after her daughter who'd just left the house to go to school. Her mum ran after her to the bus stop, waving a piece of toast she'd forgotten to eat before she left.

"And there was a dad who used to embarrass his kids when they used to go past cars that loud rap music was blaring out of in their car; he would turn up his opera tapes and blast out the street with those! Imagine it! You'd worry that people thought it was Your music, wouldn't you, and that you were an opera fan!"

Becky laughed.

Then Clare grinned and asked, "Have any of your family ever embarrassed you?"

Becky said, "If I was easily embarrassed, some of the things my grandma's said to me over the years would have embarrassed me! She's a lot better than she used to be, since I got in a temper with her at around the time I first came to university and told her to stop doing it. But before then, and still nowadays sometimes, she's got this annoying habit. Someone else will be talking, or she'll be saying something herself, and then she or they will say a word that for some reason, she decides I might not know the meaning of. So she stops what she's saying in mid-flow, or interrupts the person talking, and asks me if I know what the word means. It's annoying, because I'd far rather be listening to what they're saying, especially if it's an interesting story, than having some conversation that goes right off at a tangent about just one minor thing that happened to be mentioned in it, that might mean I don't even get to hear the end of the story! And I always know the basic meaning of the words she asks me if I know the meaning of anyway!

"So anyway, I didn't really know how best to deal with it; but then I decided I needed to think of something I could say that might stop her doing it. I thought that maybe if I started saying things that shocked her a bit or that she wouldn't like to hear, she'd get worried about asking me questions like that in future, since she might worry about what else I might come out with. So I thought up some things to say.

The first time I said one was when me and my grandma and grandpa were in a park, and there were other people around who might have heard what we were saying. My grandpa was telling me about things my auntie Joan had told him about a holiday she'd just been on to France. He said she'd been to Paris, and visited the Eifel Tower. Before he got to tell me what happened next, Grandma asked me, 'Do you know what the Eifel Tower is, Becky?'

"Well, I'm never quite sure what she's really asking when she says things like that - I mean, I think, 'Does she just want to know if I know the basics of what it is, - in which case, why doesn't she realise I must have learned about those in primary school? - Or is she wondering if I have a great in-depth knowledge of its structure and goodness knows what else, and she somehow thinks that if I don't, I'd prefer to hear all about it than listen to the rest of the entertaining story!'

"Well I wouldn't! So anyway, when she asked me if I knew what the Eifel Tower was, I said, 'It's a great big tall sea monster, isn't it, with five legs, three noses, two heads and seven horns! It lies down and hides in the sea all day, but then it creeps out of the sea onto the beach at night, doesn't it, looking for people to eat! So how many people did it kill?'

"Grandma said, 'The Eifel Tower isn't a sea monster, Becky!'

"I said, 'Yes it is! So who died?'

"She said, 'No it isn't! The Eifel Tower's a big tower in France!'

"I said, 'Oh That's what you're thinking of! No! That's not the Eifel Tower; That's the Trifle Tower! The Eifel Tower's a big sea monster. I think it lives on the nearest beach to us. Honestly Grandma! I think maybe you're losing your memory for letters, so you've forgotten that there's a T and an R at the beginning of the name of that tower in France. Maybe you'll eventually forget the beginning letters of a lot of words, so you'll be saying things to me like, 'Ecky, the Rifle Ower's a ig all ower in Rance!' and, 'Ecky, lease an ou et ee a rink?' instead of asking me for a drink. You and your memory, Grandma!'

"Then my grandpa told me off for teasing her!

"Anyway, another time, I was at their house with my mum, and they had some friends round. One of them was talking about how she'd been on holiday to Devon or somewhere, and she'd been to this safari park. She was talking about the animals she'd seen, and she said something about a rhinoceros. I never found out what the end of the story was, because Grandma said, 'Do you know what a rhinoceros is, Becky?'

"Well again, if she just wanted to know whether I knew the basics of what one is, I don't know why she wouldn't realise I must have got to know that in primary school like everyone else must have! If she wanted to know if I was longing to hear a description of the intricacies of their chemical composition and their mating habits or something instead of the story we'd been listening to, I don't know why she'd think that!"

Clare chuckled and said, "I doubt your grandma herself knows about the chemical composition of a rhinoceros! And I very much doubt she wanted to talk to you about their mating habits!"

They both laughed.

Becky said, "No, probably not actually. But anyway, I was a bit annoyed that she would ask me a question like that, especially in front of her friends, so I said, 'Yes, that's the name of the latest antipsychotic drug the doctor put me on after I ran out of the house naked that time screaming about your toilet being haunted by a big crocodile. Remember? What antipsychotic drugs are You on nowadays?'

"I think Grandma was a bit embarrassed, and she said, 'I don't know what you mean! Anyway, I'm not on any antipsychotic drugs!'

"I said, 'Oh, what drugs Are you on then? I know you do take drugs.'

"My mum told me off that time. She said, 'Becky, that's enough! Stop teasing Grandma!'

"I didn't really run out of the house naked screaming about the toilet being haunted and get put on antipsychotic drugs, by the way, and my grandma isn't really on them. The only other drugs she takes are pills the doctor prescribed for her.

"Anyway, there was this other time, when me and Mum and Grandma and Grandpa had gone out somewhere for the day, and we stopped to have dinner in this cafe. Grandma mentioned that she was thinking of cooking some fritters for her pudding one day. She asked me if I knew what fritters were.

"Well, I've got a vague idea, but why she thought I'd be that interested, I don't know! I said, 'Oh yes, they're bits of dinosaur poo, aren't they. Remember when those archaeologists were excavating that ancient dinosaur lair near your house, and they said they'd found some ancient dinosaur poo, and it had decomposed so the things in it had separated, so it was actually possible to see grains they'd eaten in it, and they would be safe to handle since the poo would have broken down till it was harmless, so there wasn't any nasty bacteria in it any more? Remember you said you wondered what the grains tasted like nowadays, and they said they didn't know but it would be best if no one tasted them, but you were really keen to, so you stepped forward and snatched a poo out of their hand and took a huge mouthful? Remember that?'

"Grandma said, 'No I didn't! There have never even been any excavations near our house!'

"I said, 'You're getting very forgetful in your old age!'

"Then Grandpa shouted at me. He said, 'Becky, if you carry on talking like that, I'm going to get angry and make you leave the cafe!'

"I was annoyed about that, so I hardly spoke to them for the rest of the outing! I didn't want to say something, only to get shouted at again!"

Clare chuckled, but said, "I can understand them getting annoyed though; I mean, maybe people on the next table heard you and believed your grandma had really done that! Honestly! Perhaps those stories ought to go in one of those emails that gets passed around to people on the Internet about kids embarrassing their families! I got one of those once. I can't remember what it said, but there were lots of little stories in it about kids saying things in public that embarrassed their parents, ... and I bet you'd say all of them!"

She grinned.

Becky said, "Maybe you said lots of embarrassing things to your parents too when you were little!"

Clare said, "Well, I suppose I might have said a few, but they've never told me about any. Actually, I did embarrass my brother recently. I found an old recording I made when he was a baby, where I was playing with him and he was making baby noises, and there was one point where I said, 'Ugh! Don't dribble on me!'

"Anyway, I found this recording recently and played it to him. I teased him that in about a decade's time when he starts bringing girlfriends home, I'm going to play it to them all, and then on his wedding day, I'll make a speech at the reception where I play it through loudspeakers in front of all the guests, and tell them it was him when he was a baby."

They laughed, and Becky asked, "What did he say?"

Clare said, "I think he said something like, 'You dare!'"

Becky grinned, and then Clare said, "Actually, now I think about it, I do remember one of the stories in the email I got about kids embarrassing their parents. A woman said that when she was about ten, she played a bit of a trick on her little brother. He was about three. Their mum was going to have a new baby. She wanted to keep the name she was thinking of giving it a secret from the kids till it was born, and this girl told her brother for fun that she'd heard her mum telling someone she was going to call it Elderberry-Flan-Socks.

"She didn't think about the trick she'd played, till her mum called her a little rascal one day, and told her that her brother had told everyone in the nursery school he went to a few times a week that his mum was going to call her baby Elderberry-Flan-Socks, and when she'd walked in there to get him, the teacher had asked her if it was true!"

Becky laughed.

Becky Finishes Telling the Wacky Story She Started Earlier

They carried on giggling and chatting for a little while. Then Laura, who'd stood in the queue with them listening to the story Becky had started about a silly man deciding he needed to turn the world into his idea of utopia, came up to them. She said, "The others I was with are leaving now, so I thought I'd come and say hello to you again, and see if you'd like to finish telling us that story you started, Becky. It sounded as if it was just getting to an interesting bit!"

She sat down with them.

Becky said, "Allright, I'll give you an idea of how the rest went.

"Well this man, Pat Cashless, was in the woods, just starting his moneyless lifestyle, suddenly realising he'd need to feed himself with at least something he hadn't paid for, when he came across these berries. And because he was so hungry, and a bit silly, he didn't worry about whether or not they might be poisonous, but just ate them. he could have easily gone home instead and just got some nice food out of his kitchen cupboards. But he didn't think of that, or thought it would mean he'd failed to prove it was possible to live a moneyless lifestyle like he'd told everyone he could; so he just ate the berries instead.

"To his surprise, they gave him interesting hallucinations. He would have decided they were a blissful tool to create the peace and harmony in the world he dreamed of, and given up Socialism immediately to grow them, in the hope of making masses of money by selling them all around the world, and sitting enjoying hallucinations all day by constantly stuffing himself with them, if he hadn't felt a bit sick and been so scared of what was happening that he hadn't enjoyed the experience.

"He decided he'd need to eat something more sensible, but he wasn't sure what. He did think of killing rabbits to eat, but he felt far too squeamish and was too much of an animal lover to do that. ... So he decided to go back home and recruit people to his socialist cause who'd be willing to kill them and cook them for him, so he wouldn't have to do it himself.

"So he went home, and did successfully recruit a few people, who were willing to live in the woods with him for a long time, living on what they could find.

"Two of them were thugs who enjoyed fighting, and had decided to become socialists after they couldn't be bothered to work, so they'd lost the lousy jobs they had, couldn't make enough money to keep them in the boozy lifestyle they were accustomed to, and grew resentful of the government that wouldn't give them more.

"Their socialist feelings grew more passionate after they'd been picked up by the police for fighting in pubs several times, mostly after they were refused drinks they couldn't pay for, which they decided was entirely unreasonable. Their fights resulted in them spending a night in the cells on a few occasions, which gave them quite a bit of time to mull over their lifestyles, and decide they must be being victimised by the system. They came to blame the system for every one of their misfortunes instead of themselves. So they decided it must all be bad, and made up their minds to fight against it.

"Pat Cashless thought they'd be especially suitable to work for his socialist cause, because they didn't mind the thought of killing rabbits for them to live on.

"Another of the men who joined his little commune had always been envious of rich people, since he knew they didn't have to put up with the boring jobs he'd had to put up with since he'd dropped out of school, and they could live in luxury. He stewed and stewed over it till he developed such a serious grudge against them that he thought that if he couldn't be rich, he didn't want them to be rich either. That's why he decided to be a socialist and fight for the cause; but if he ever found out that a long-lost aunt of his had died and left him a fortune, he'd immediately forget all about the socialist principles he'd decided to have, and revel in luxury for the rest of his days.

"The other man who joined them was a hippy type, who had always hated hard work, so he thought it would just be fantastic if he could have as much money as other people even if he didn't do any work. That's why he got to be enthusiastic for socialism.

"Anyway, they all went to live in the woods together.

"It was nice during the summer. But as it got to winter, they realised they'd need a new plan if they were going to survive the cold. None of them had even brought winter clothes out with them, since they just hadn't planned ahead in the summer when they'd left their homes with the romantic dream of living for socialism in the woods.

"They hit on the idea of taking over the world for the socialist cause and turning every country in it socialist. Then they'd be able to have all the clothes they liked, without paying for any of them. They thought that if they could take over the White House and the United Nations buildings in America, it would mean they'd taken over the world, since everyone would have to listen if they were the heads of the United Nations and America. They thought that then they'd be able to go and live in the White House in the warm together forever.

"They thought they had a great plan to overthrow the American government. They'd never known what to do with all the rabbit guts from the rabbits they killed for food. As the weather had got colder, they'd tried wrapping them around themselves to keep warm. But they stank so much, it was rather off-putting. So they'd ended up burying months' worth of them in a great big hole they'd dug, packing the earth down hard on top of them. Only days afterwards, they decided they needed to get them all out again, so they could use them in their great plan.

"They'd dug the hole with their hands, after they realised they had nothing to dig with, and decided they couldn't possibly try to get hold of money to buy spades, since that would be selling out their no-money cause. And they persuaded themselves that digging with their bare hands would be the romantic way of doing things, allowing them to watch the sunset while they dug.

"Anyway, they got all the stenchifying rabbit guts out again, and put them in suitcases they'd brought with them. They managed to sneak into the airport and onto an America-bound aeroplane in the middle of the night, and all hid in the toilet together. They stayed there till they got to America.

"No one bothered them, since as soon as they got near the loo, the stench from the rabbit guts and the fact that it had been months since they'd washed became so overpowering that everyone assumed there must be someone with truly terrible stomach trouble in there and decided they'd wait to go till they landed, since obviously someone's need was far greater than theirs.

"One or two people did call out, 'Are you allright in there?' They were a bit startled when it sounded as if about five people were answering at once."

Just then, Laura interrupted. She grinned and said, "When I asked you to tell the rest of the story, I hadn't realised it was this inappropriate to be told in a cafe! I'm glad you didn't get to this bit while we were still standing by the queue to get cakes and things! Just imagine a long line of people all looking forward to getting a cake, all hearing you just as they got to the front of the queue, and each one suddenly deciding they didn't fancy one after all and going back without buying anything!"

They giggled.

Becky said, "Allright, I'll just tell you the basics of the rest of the story, so it won't be long before it gets to the end.

"Well, when the plane landed in America, the socialists waited till they were fairly sure all the other passengers must have got out, and then they all crept out of the toilet together. They managed to get out of the airport by opening their suitcases and flinging putrid rabbit guts at anyone who tried to stop them.

"They all felt hungry, especially when they saw people selling food on the streets. But because of their strict no-money principles, they didn't have any to buy food; so instead, they opened their suitcases and threatened to fling rotten rabbit guts over any market stall holder who refused to give them some when they asked.

They ate their fill, and then went and found the White House.

"They crept up to the security guards guarding it, and then at the command of Pat Cashless, they all opened their suitcases and flung a load of rabbit guts at the guards! The guards staggered backwards and threw their hands over their faces to protect them in horror! They had dogs, that thought there must be real rabbits somewhere around if there were so many rabbit guts there, so they ran away, trying to find them. The guards ran after them to catch them, glad of the excuse to run away from the rabbit guts without looking like sissies and cowards.

"The socialists were free to triumphantly march into the White House!

"The president was coming out to see what the commotion was about just then. They just stopped short of marching into him, and flung rotten rabbit guts over him instead. He screamed and ran away!

"They excitedly ran into the White House, thinking that must mean they'd been able to take it over!

"They stopped to look around in awe and wonder at all the luxurious things in there! They were very pleased with themselves, and started wandering around the White House, admiring everything.

"But then the man who'd joined Pat Cashless's socialist cause who'd been filled with envy for years because he wanted to live like rich people did said, 'Wow! Just think! We could sell this stuff and make a fortune, and live in luxury for the rest of our lives!'

"One of the pub brawler socialists was angry, and yelled that he was betraying the socialist cause! Then he punched him, and a fight started!

"Pat Cashless yelled at them to stop, saying that if they didn't, he'd have to call the police!

"They told him that would be stupid, since then they'd all be arrested. But he insisted he would anyway.

"But it turned out that someone else had called them. They charged in and arrested the socialists.

"They appeared in court not long after that. The world's media were there to report on the case!

"The judge gave them a very light sentence, because he thought the case was the most amusing thing he'd heard about in a long long time! A few recesses had to be called during the case while he burst out laughing and took some time to compose himself.

"So just days after they were sent to prison, the socialists were released. The world's media was there to meet them at the prison gates.

"Over the next few days, they were interviewed for lots of radio stations and television channels and newspapers. Millions of people enjoyed the story about their takeover of the White House, and the socialists achieved celebrity status.

"Soon, advertisers were offering them jobs advertising their products, comedy programmes were inviting them on to do reconstructions of their White House takeover, they were paid a lot of money to appear on chat shows, and they found they could live in luxury!

"None of them objected to anyone having money any more! They loved having money! They lived in the lap of luxury, and they'd never dream of going back to live in their miserable socialist commune in the woods or trying to persuade anyone to become a socialist ever again! They'd all completely lost interest in socialism!"

Becky sat back after she'd finished the story, and the others grinned.

Clare said, "I liked that story. It sounds as if your friend's good at making up stories."

They chatted on for a while.

Then they got up to leave.