I know what it’s like to be the kid sitting alone in the cafeteria. I also know what it’s like to be the kid who befriends a kid sitting alone in the cafeteria.

In eighth grade, I was having a very rough year. At the beginning of the year, I was kicked off the swim team for the simple fact that I wasn’t very good, the one place I had a semblance of a social life. I had befriended a few folks at the beginning of the year, but wasn’t very close to them yet and didn’t have the same lunch as them. Most of the time, I ate lunch in the cafeteria alone and then moved on to the library to read or music room to practice my saxophone. I never got particularly good at the saxophone, but it was a heck of a lot better than sitting around by myself in the cafeteria.

Around that time, an advisor for a club I was in (who was also a guidance counselor) suggested that I befriend a classmate. I knew I was nowhere near popular. I was barely tolerated in class among the “smart popular” kids who were in honors classes but weren’t as weird.

But I thought of this classmate in a whole different category. She was someone who I thought had no friends (and I may have been right) and freaked out over “nothing.” My most distinct memory of her up to that point was that once she had gotten so angry in sixth grade that she threw one of those big garbage can tops at someone.

At the time, I assumed the advisor was asking me to befriend the classmate as a favor to the classmate. After all, she did seem to present it that way. Looking back, I see that she was trying to make me a new friend as well, hoping that we could find companionship in each other.

I certainly approached the assignment as a favor to the counselor and classmate. But as open-hearted and genuine as I am – I don’t have a fake bone in my body – I couldn’t be friends with her out of pity. I looked to find the genuine good in her as a friend. And it was there!

It turned out that she was overwhelmed in group settings, but great in one on one conversation. I bet there were some sensory sensitivities going on too. We hung out at lunch that semester and chatted away. As I met another friend who was a year younger, I pulled her in to make a group of three. We bonded over our geeky interests, like the X-Files.

These sorts of memories come back to me when I see social media posts exorting kids to be “inclusive” to their neurodivergent classmates. They decry autistic kids being left out of birthday parties or kids with intellectual disabilities not being allowed to participate in clubs. They say that we have to make sure not to leave people out “just because” they have a disability. I especially feel a stab of pain when I see parents advertising via social media the level of their children’s loneliness, making people feel sad about their piteous state. I even saw one offering pay for kids her son’s age to come play with him.

Looking back, I’m pretty certain that my classmate was autistic and despite the fact that I had an easier time of it, I am too. So both of us were the types of kids people are begging to be included, in our different ways. She was more obvious than me, but still – we were more alike than I would have liked to admit at the time.

I know these posts are well-meaning. I know parents just want their kids and all kids to have friends. They want them to have fulfilling lives with people they can rely on their own age. They don’t want to see their kids suffer.

But dear Lord, I would be mortified as a kid – even in elementary school – if my parents had ever posted anything like that about me or even about “special needs” kids in general if I had been diagnosed then. I would never want to be included just because people felt bad for or pitied me. I would have just about died of shame if I knew someone was being friends with me because their parents made them. (Especially because I had people briefly pretend to be friends and then yank it away immediately.) If I found out, I wouldn’t be able to trust that people liked me for me, not because their mom made them pretend to like me. The thing that made the difference with my classmate was that my counselor didn’t force me to befriend her. It was a gentle, genuine encouragement to see what she was about. And I took that genuine invitation.

It is absolutely true that kids shouldn’t be excluded on the basis of disability. But rather than teaching a shallow inclusion based on ignoring difference – which often becomes a pitiable tolerance rather than anything genuine – we should be teaching kids to seek to understand and appreciate everyone for who they are uniquely. To really get to know people whose brains are different from their own and be curious and appreciative of those perspectives. To give them a real chance to be a good friend.

Weird kids – whether officially neurodivergent or not – want people to be genuine friends with them. To love and appreciate them for who they are. They may think they want someone to change them, to coach them so that they can be like everyone else and just fit in for once. But truly, they want to fit in without changing a thing about themselves, like everyone else.

Fortunately, my story has a happy ending. I met a group of amazing, gloriously weird friends in high school. I became confident and comfortable enough in my own weirdness that I wrote my college application essay about the glories of being a nerd. I married one of those friends – and have two weird kids with him – and I’m still friends with several others. Finding people who fully loved me for who I am gave me the foundation to get through many hard years afterwards. I knew what genuine friendship looked like. That knowledge was a powerful vaccine against accepting shitty behavior from others masquerading as friendship.

I don’t know about my friend’s story. I lost touch with her in high school. I’ve tried to Google her since then, but haven’t come up with anything. I hope she’s doing well though. I hope that she reflects on our friendship fondly and knew that I did appreciate her for who she was.