I have watched Maria_Zim obsess over this little alien. I have sat with her and seen every episode over and over again. Watching Maria_Zim watching Invader Zim has been very telling. I have come to understand why she has latched on to this character. I would like to share with you my understanding.
It begins with Invader Zim Episode I. Zim's first challenge on his first day of school was to look and act human. He sat at his desk and as he was being introduced to the class he worried greatly that others would see his differences. One student did. Dib, pointed out to the class that Zim was green and had no ears! Zim convinced the class that he had a skin condition. There was no hiding the fact from Dib. To Dib, Zim was different, an alien. Zim placed his finger against the self distruct butten that wrapped around his wrist. He invisioned humans placing him in a test tube as they danced around him. Finally, students said, "So what if he is different. He's just a kid with a skin condition." It had worked. With his differences, Zim had placed himself with humans. Maria_Zim understands that between her world and the typical world, there are differences too. "Mother's Intuition" and understanding autism tells me that Maria_Zim's world is narrow in site, concrete, discriptive and sensory hypotonic. Her narrow sitedness (literally speaking) prevents her from the whole picture. She misses out on social clues and fumbles. She understands concrete because it doesn't change. It is what it is. It stands alone and it can be catagorized. Maria_Zim's nerve endings are hypotonic, they feel numb to her. She senses the world differently than we do. Living with typical humans, she notices that we are comfortable in our skin and that we have a certain way of interacting with eachother. She is also aware of her challenges. Although Maria_Zim seems to hear, understand and process her thoughts; her mind is unable to process her thoughts into the spoken word. Somehthing jams up in her brain causing her to say an irrelavant word like "Corn". Because of this occurence, she chooses to say nothing at all. Maria_Zim has generalization challenges. How many steps are there in brushing your teeth? Think about it. 1)Pick up the tooth paste. 2)untwist the cap 3)put the cap down... and so on. Eventually, you will do this enough to where your brain will do it automatically with out thinking about it. In Maria_Zim's case, these steps are new to her every time. It takes a long time for her brain to generalize a skill. Now, how about following steps. Can you count to 10? Can you count 10 items up to ten? Maria_Zim's one to one correspondence has also been a challenge to her. Maria_Zim can only concretely count up to three. Three cookies, three letters and three steps. Can you imagine her challenges when it comes to reading, writing, and math now?
After learning more about Maria_Zim, is it no wonder that her many challenges and her differences on how she sees the world has her relating with this little alien cartoon named Zim. When she repeats Zim, "Humans!" does she concur? Does she see us as a different species all together? So much to ponder. Meanwhile, join us daily as we twitter and YouTube the many aspects of what is Invader Zim.
For a clip of Invader Zim Episode I.
Thank you to MissEvee138 for posting on YouTube.
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