The Fluffies

“Don't mention the 'F word'” was the startling advice I received when I introduced myself to the teacher of a class of 2nd grade children with autism. Brushing aside my indignant protestations, she assured me that it wasn't that 'F word' but – she lowered her voice – something infinitely worse. Glancing nervously at her young charges, she hissed that the word in question was 'Fluffies' and with a somewhat haunted expression returned to her work leaving me a mite baffled.

A somewhat circumspect perusal of the classroom as well as listening to the children and chatting to my fellow para educators eventually dispelled the mystery. It turned out that the Fluffies are creatures from a parallel dimension who entered our universe through a wormhole or rift in the temporal-spatial continuum and were promptly kidnapped by the nefarious Walt Disney Corporation. Introduced to the class by one of the children some two years ago, they have now been elevated to a cult and are driving the teachers to utter distraction. The room was full of Fluffy-related artifacts: there were books outlining their history and adventures, maps, drawings and even a board game.  

As to the exact ontological status of the Fluffies, this is somewhat unclear. For some of the children, they were merely an entertaining way of passing the time; for others, they had assumed an almost religious significance. An incredibly bright eight-year old whispered to me in a deeply sinister undertone, “the teachers don't believe in them, but they are in for a big surprise.” Sensing that this surprise might not be an entirely welcome one, I politely declined the child's invitation to help hack the Walt Disney computer system in an attempt to unleash them. To use David Lewis's terminology, there may be a possible world in which Fluffies exist, but I am damned if I am going to help make it this one.

Resisting the Fluffies was going to be a struggle judging by the quantity of artifacts littering the classroom. As well as histories of the creatures, there were maps of their world, comic book-style drawings, elaborate diagrams of the wormhole through which they had infiltrated our universe and complex plans of some kind of apocalyptic final battle that would ensue once they had been liberated. 

Were the Fluffies harmless and should one resist them? Elaborate fantasy worlds are a not uncommon feature of autism and they function as a kind of comfort blanket. For a mind in which disorder is anathema, the contingent and unpredictable actual universe is a source of constant distress. The solution is to exercise a pseudo divine fiat and create a universe from scratch. Unfortunately, the children in this class were not nascent William Blakes and the elements from which their universe was created were borrowed from popular culture – science fiction films and magazines seemed to be the main sources. There was little that could be described as genuinely enriching in the Fluffy universe; it belonged to the world of day dreams rather than to that of aesthetic creativity.

Within autism there is a centrifugal turning in on one's self and private fantasies assist in this.  Immersing oneself in recondite literature or a public mythology – say, the Homeric universe – is not in itself a solipsistic act as this is part of the common culture. The Odyssey or Joyce's Ulysses may not be common reading for the man on the street or the woman riding the Caltrain, but there are people out there for whom these works are immensely important.  Later, I decided to attempt to confront the Fluffy mythos head on.  I calculated that the story of Perseus and Medusa might fit the bill and gave a highly dramatic rendition of the myth.  Certainly, the children were captivated and their eyes grew rounder and rounder as I acted out the story.  By the time Persius pulls the head of the Gorgon out of its sack to confound Polydectes and his followers, my little audience seemed to be in my hands.  The Fluffies were down, but, as it very quickly transpired, definitely not out.

The head of the Fluffy Cult was absolutely infuriated by my heretical attempt to hijack his followers.  At the end of my story he leapt to feet, ran round the table chanting “The Fluffies are coming … the Fluffies are coming” and then ran out of the classroom before anyone could stop him.  Setting off in hot pursuit, I finally cornered the miniature cult leader by the climbing frame where he sat adding a distinctly  malevolent line to his chant: “The Fluffies are coming … The Fluffies are coming … The Fluffies are coming to get you.”  Fortunately, the day was not especially warm and eventually, the child’s temper tantrum subsided and I was able to cajole him into returning to the warm classroom.

 It seemed from my experiment that fantasy worlds can be subverted to some extent by the introduction of a more robust traditional narrative.  However, it is unwise to underestimate the strength of such fantasies.  A few months later I ran into the class at a riding school where they had been taken for a day’s outing. On asking the teacher about the “you know what's”, she told me that they had finally got on top of the cult and didn’t expect any incidents. I chatted to several of the children and was pleased to note that the “F word" didn’t come up once.  I helped tidy up after the event and was going through the children’s discarded art works (pictures of horses)  and noticed that several had rather familiar riders. One was labelled “Emperor Fluffy riding into battle”.   The war has not yet been won, but a sign of hope might be that as well as the inevitable ray gun, the Emperor was wielding what looked like a small Gorgon's head.