Today I am going to my first birthday party.

First, I changed into my swimsuit. It's all blue and green, and it's basically shorts and a t-shirt made out of swimsuit material. I thought I might get cold, so I put on a sweater over it.

Then I told Alan about my camera-headband idea. He thought it sounded good.

Then I worked on a website that I'm making. I think it's going to be a blog with all of these journal entries on it. Some people might find them interesting someday.

Then someone's mom came to pick me up. My parents had arranged a carpool system of transportation because our maglev was doing something else at that time.

I sat down in the car, and put my bag on my lap. There were two girls next to me: Mia and Estelle. I know Mia because I often have to sit next to her in school, but I only know Estelle very vaguely. The boy sitting in the passenger seat, Devon, had earphones in and was (presumably) listening to music off the Ambinet. Devon's mom was sitting in the driver's seat. I don't see why it's still called the driver's seat, because the person doesn't drive the car: the car drives the people.

Mia and Estelle stopped talking as soon as I got in the car, which was nice, because I prefer it when people don't talk. Then Mia just started looking at me. That was strange.

"Awkward silence," Estelle whispered.

Devon's mom turned around. "Hey, sweeties, why aren't you talking? I'm sure Torrin would love to talk to you."

"She has autism," Mia said. "She doesn't talk."

"Oh, that's such a shame," murmured Devon's mom.

I was a bit offended, so I said: "I talk, but only when it's about a subject I'm interested in."

Devon's mom said: "Oh... um... okay. What do you like to talk about?"

I said immediately: "Computers."

No one responded, so I assumed that they didn't want to talk. That was perfectly fine with me.

After approximately thirty seconds of silence, Mia told the car to play the current top 40 pop hits. Extremely loud music blared out of the speakers, and I immediately covered my ears. I don't think Mia and Estelle noticed, because they were singing along.

"Turn it off!" I screamed.

They didn't pay any attention.

I pressed the "mute" button on the side of the door. The car suddenly became blissfully quiet.

"Hey!" yelled Estelle. "We were enjoying that!"

"I wasn't," I said.

"Well, it's not our fault you're so sensitive," said Mia.

This annoyed me a lot, so I told her angrily, "You don't understand. I can't handle—"

"This may come as a bit of a surprise, Torrin," Mia interrupted, "but the world doesn't actually revolve around you."

I was about to inform her that the world actually revolves around the sun, which in turn revolves around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which in turn revolves around the gravitational anomaly in the vicinity of the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster—but then I remembered that it was a metaphor and she was implying that I was egocentric. Which made me angry, because they were blaming me for my sensory processing disorder.

For the rest of the car ride, Mia and Estelle talked quietly about boring topics like celebrities, boys, reality TV shows, and shopping. I was glad because they weren't talking too loudly, and they weren't talking to me or about me.

*

Then we got to the water park, and I started to regret accepting the invitation. Even from fifty yards away, I could hear the booming music playing above the screams of younger children. I remembered with a shock that I had forgotten to bring my earplugs.

We went through the "reception" area, meeting up with Jess and the other people coming to her party. I was dismayed to see that there were many more people at the party than I had expected. They were all chatting very loudly. I covered my ears until we were inside the theme park.

Unfortunately, the actual theme park was much, much louder. There was extremely loud music and people yelling and screaming and crying and the sound of water—

"Hey, Torrin...?" I heard Jess' voice above the uproar. "Um... do you want to come and play in the water?"

"No."

"Then would you like something to eat?"

"Yes. But not sandwiches."

She said: "Well, we brought chips and popcorn...."

I said: "That's acceptable," and followed her to the picnic table where the snacks were set up. I ate some of them. Many of the people with us—including Mia and Estelle—had taken off their outer clothing and were now in very small, tight bikinis. I thought they looked incredibly uncomfortable.

"Are you cold?" I asked Mia.

She looked at me oddly and replied, "Um, no."

"You look like you might be cold, since you have a lot of skin showing and we're about to go in the water. Also, you should make sure to put sunscreen on because—"

"Sheesh, Torrin!" Mia replied. "I can take care of myself without you criticizing everything I do, okay?"

I was slightly hurt by this, because I had only wanted to help, and she had been taking it the wrong way. I suppose that's the way it often works when people think differently. Words—at least, words in regular conversation—don't usually convey what a person is really thinking. Unfortunately, the only solutions to this problem I can think of at the moment all involve disregarding the privacy of the individuals in question.

I could speculate more on this topic, but I think that I should continue recounting the events of the birthday party.

Jess decided that everyone should go on a ride called the "whirlpool". This didn't sound like a good idea to me, because a whirlpool is "a rapidly rotating mass of water in a river or sea into which objects may be drawn, typically caused by the meeting of conflicting currents." (I got that definition from the dictionary.) In other words, whirlpools are very dangerous.

Fortunately, after walking there, I realized that it was an artificial whirlpool, and that the water was moving very slowly. It wasn't as big as I had imagined. Perhaps it may have been fun if there weren't twenty of us trying to get in at once.

"Torrin," Jess said as she was getting into the water, "you have to take off your shoes."

Oddly, this hadn't occurred to me until now. I hate taking off my shoes, unless I'm in my house. And even then, I don't like taking off my socks. My feet are very sensitive to tactile input, and most tactile input I get from my feet is unpleasant in one way or another. However, I couldn't go in water with hiking shoes, so I took them off and put them far away from the ride so that no water could get on them.

The bottom of the pool was incredibly rough, and slimy at the same time. It felt weird on my feet. Also, there were occasional small rocks or pieces of dirt, so I spent most of my time looking down at my feet and making sure I didn't step on them. I was still hyperaware of the incredible noise of the water park—along with the loud conversations, giggling, screaming, and splashing of the other kids at the party.

I kept thinking about the last sensory shutdown I had—four years ago—and hoping I wouldn't have one now....

After roughly five minutes (it seemed like longer), we were finally out of the whirlpool. I quickly put on my shoes. Jess was leading everyone else to the next ride—a very, very tall water slide.

Jess' mom was standing about five yards away, apparently supervising us. I walked up to her, and said, "I want to go home."

She looked at me with an expression I could recognize as surprise. "But we've only just started, honey! Don't you want to go on the water rides?"

"Absolutely not," I told her.

"Well... are you sure you don't want to stay for cake?"

"What kind of cake?"

"Vanilla, I believe."

"I don't like vanilla cake."

"If you're sure you want to go, I could have the maglev take you home...."

"I'd like that," I replied.

I gathered up everything I had brought to the party, said a quick goodbye to Jess, and climbed in Jess' mom's car.

Legally, a person has to be sixteen to be by themselves in a maglev, because if the car breaks down or runs out of battery (only the old ones run out of battery, though), they have to know how to drive it. Normally, I would never break the law, but I was just relieved to be away from the party. And even though I'm fifteen, I know how to drive. My parents taught me last year, because they don't trust self-driving cars. I agree that driving is a useful skill, but I don't see why people don't like autonomous vehicles. Apparently, back when all cars were human-driven, there were far more car accidents. Now accidents are very rare.

I put my address into the maglev's console, and it started to drive. Then I remembered that I still had the camera-headband. Hopefully Alan had seen everything.

When I got home, my parents were a little bit annoyed, but not very. I went into my room and talked with Alan about the day.

Then I watched a particularly good episode of Doctor Who that involved robots.

Nothing else interesting happened today.