This guest post is by Clyde Fruits, an autistic high school senior, musician, athlete, advocate, and community volunteer who plans to study Music Industry–Audio Production at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh. Clyde is applying for the Spring 2026 Making a Difference Autism Scholarship through KFM Making a Difference, the nonprofit founded by Kerry Magro. Kerry was nonspeaking until age 2.5 and was diagnosed with autism at 4.
Autistics on Autism: The Next Chapter shares stories from more than 100 autistic adults about what helped them while growing up and pursuing their dreams. All proceeds support KFM Making a Difference initiatives, including this scholarship program. To invite Kerry to speak at your school, company, or organization, submit an inquiry here.
Clyde Fruits is a senior at McFarland High School who will attend UW–Oshkosh in fall 2026. He loves sports, music, film, television, and theater and has spoken on panels across Wisconsin. Clyde works part-time at Subway, volunteers in his community, participates in Special Olympics, composes music, sings, and plays piano and drums.
Throughout my life, I can say that having autism really has set a lot of different things in perspective for me. The only way I can describe it is a unique experience. It is one where your brain will not stop switching topics inside your head, where you are consistently drawn to different curiosities around the world because of a boundless sense of wonder, and where you firmly believe that you have to think outside the box and make something happen in the world in order to be important. It’s something I’ve tried to ignore many times, but I still keep coming back to it. I guess I’ve always felt this way since I can remember.
I grew up constantly surrounded by music. My mother would always find the radio stations that were playing the big hits of the decades, and I would also be exposed to some of the newer music going through the airwaves. Back then, it was a love. Now, it is a passion—one that has affected multiple parts of my personality. Being a so-called “music man” means that I’m seeing music in a way that not a lot of other people are seeing it. While some people envision a full studio album with general radio hits that don’t take up a half hour, I see a concept to create an album with suites, radio hits, instrumentals, and choir pieces. These wonders of the mind are definitely difficult to try and describe to other people without sounding as though I am in over my head. But I’ve always trusted myself in my thoughts that this is the path I want to take with music.
My social anxieties whenever I’m around people are probably hard to quantify because it happens just about every day of my life when I am in public. Sometimes it’s hard to talk about an idea in my head using the correct words and descriptions, sometimes certain sounds or people will bug or irritate me, and sometimes I just lose focus on whatever I am doing and immerse myself into whatever fantastical world I find on my phone. I will not argue that it has sometimes limited my potential, and I do understand my mistakes. It’s always been a part of my life, and will continue to be.
I’ll forget to do simple morning chores, or maybe a homework assignment will slip my mind. I have experienced every one of those moments, because if it were possible to deliberately trade bodies with another person, and then talk down on them for not doing something so simple, I would beg my life for that. But that kind of stuff won’t exist. And I won’t beg. Because being neurodivergent has actually led me to some discoveries that make me appreciate myself as a human being.
One of those discoveries is that I see the world through a lens that no one else can access. Where someone else might see a minor league baseball team with average attendance, I see possibilities to expand our creativity to make the name known throughout the nation. I could be writing about three songs a day, all with generic chords and less than stellar lyrics, but I’ve still got so much of my life in front of me to see if there’s something else that will make me just as happy as what I’m already doing.
I’m getting to be around people I enjoy spending my time with, I’m being active in a community that is able to accept me for who I am, and I’m discovering new opportunities every day that allow me to express my creative freedom around a group of people who are willing to hear what I have to offer. But I think more than anything, the best thing about me is being able to present a unique personality that not many people have. If we envision the people we hang out with as separate ingredients that make one amazing potion mixture, I would say my mind is probably the rarest and most misunderstood in the pot. But by spending time around this unfamiliar ingredient, you’re getting to know it better, and you’re starting to accept it.
If we encourage people to think about the autism community through perspectives like these, perhaps it will be a little easier for people to develop a clearer understanding of how we fit into the world. It’s a dream that will take some work to fully get done, but it’s a dream that people are willing to commit to if it means giving autistic people a little more breathing room to just be their fun, loving selves instead of eating lunch at a table with no one else besides them.
This is not just an idea. It is a vision of reality that is still taking shape. But with all of us explaining what we see and think, clarifying what helps us feel more involved with other people, and actively working to make a more truly unified world, there’s a very strong possibility that this small thing that we think of as a tiny little seed called “inclusivity” will grow into a bold and beautiful flower unlike anything the world has ever seen or known.
This is the dream. This is what happens when we all make a stronger commitment to making our world a better place. This is the chance to finally bring our voices into the spotlight, and not be afraid about what we have to say. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. This is the peek into the mind of an autistic individual who wants to experience all the wonders that this world has to offer. This may be a dream, but it has just as much potential as anything else to become real.
That’s what having autism means to me.
By Clyde Fruits
Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also autistic, founded KFM Making a Difference in 2011 to help autistic students receive scholarship support for post-secondary education. Help us continue this work by making a tax-deductible donation here.
You can also invite Kerry to speak at your next event by submitting an inquiry here. Kerry speaks with schools, businesses, government agencies, colleges, nonprofits, parent groups, and conferences on autism, employment, college success, mental health, inclusion, and bullying prevention.
