AtlasWontPutMeDown

An anecdote first. My high school boyfriend’s best friend had Tourette’s. Nobody told me. The first time I met him, was in his basement, and he just kind of started screaming. Nobody else reacted, so I just kind of sat there awkwardly, eventually putting two and two together.

Do you feel like you need to warn people ahead of time, or do you just like to go with the flow and let them figure it out?

Not saying I should have been warned or anything, I’m just telling a story about a time when I had to play it cool because I had no idea what was happening.

I’ll post here for others who are interested, and then PM.

I walked down into his basement, and they were all playing video games. He was sitting in a reclining chair, and just started screaming. First reaction, I thought he was mad at the game. I thought nothing of it. Then the game was over, and he was talking, and he’d tic while talking. This was 10 years ago, so I don’t remember exactly, but I mostly just remember him making loud noises. He was in the middle of saying something and just started making loud noises, that’s when I realized something was up. I’d only ever heard of Tourette’s from middle schoolers who were just being vulgar and pretending they had Tourette’s. So I thought he was a little off. A little weird. I texted my boyfriend and asked him what was up, and he explained. After that, it was completely normal to me.