I have had tics all my life, always coming and going, blinking, clapping, lunging, facial tics, vocal tics... the only one's really stayed and irritated me to any seriously depressive state were the coughing/breathing tics and most of my others are only a few in a day so no big deal, especially since medication & mega B, Q10, Selenium, Zinc on the brain detox front... low Salicylates are essential for me too.... but anyway... that's not the point of this letter.

During one of my recent lecture tours I was being driven about by friends with an autie teen daughter and as I was experiencing plenty of stress I had one of my string of various vocal tics go off.... I've had many... the 'ker' tic, the 'g-g' tic, the 'ger' tick, the 'um-nd-ah' tic, the 'minimop', 'guacamole', 'burgundy', tics... but the one in the car was an 'ng-ger' tic... a bit of a variation on the 'ger' tic with a new 'ng' preceding it. Anyway after three hours in the car and a few of these NG-ger' tics I was feeling a bit embarassed. So I told the driver, sorry about all the 'NG-ger' stuff. He replied casually and cheerily, 'what you need is a little bit of 'NG-ger' management. True story.

That's got to be one of the funniest responses to any of my tics and I've had mostly abusive one's growing up (as many of my tics annoyed others sometimes more than they annoyed me) so this warm, funny, accepting one was simply so nice. If only all people with tics were surrounded by such easy going people.