Volume Four

*The Way Tomi Hears the World*

Tomi was six when his teacher first told his parents, “He’s not being difficult. He’s just listening to everything at once.”

In class, the fluorescent lights hummed like angry bees. The ticking wall clock sounded like a drumline. Sarah’s chair scraped the floor and Tomi flinched, because to him it wasn’t background noise – it was the whole song. So he covered his ears and hummed to make his own sound, one he could control. The other kids called it weird. Tomi called it survival.

His parents didn’t know the word for it yet. They just knew Tomi could recite every Lagos bus route by age four, but wouldn’t answer when his grandma called his name. He lined up his toy cars by color, then by size, then by how smooth their wheels felt against his fingertips. Change the order and his whole body would lock up. Not a tantrum. A system error.

The diagnosis came after months of evaluations: autism spectrum disorder. His mum cried in the car, not from grief, but from relief. There was a name. There were other kids like Tomi. There were ways to help.

Speech therapy wasn’t about forcing Tomi to talk more. It was about giving him pictures when words got stuck. Occupational therapy wasn’t about “fixing” him. It was about finding headphones that turned the world’s volume from a 10 to a 4. His dad learned that “Look at me when I’m talking” was pointless. Tomi heard better when he wasn’t forced to make eye contact.

At nine, Tomi had a meltdown in Balogun Market. Too many voices, too many smells, too many people brushing past. A trader shouted at his mum, “Can’t you control your child?” She knelt down, held up his blue card with the word “overwhelmed,” and waited. Tomi pressed the card, then buried his face in her shoulder until his breathing slowed. They left without buying the tomatoes. That was a win.

Now Tomi is twelve. He still hates surprise schedule changes and still won’t eat foods that are “wet and dry at the same time.” But he also runs the school’s weather club. He memorized storm patterns for every Nigerian state and gives forecasts at assembly. When he talks about cumulonimbus clouds, the whole class gets quiet, because Tomi talking about weather is like listening to someone describe music.

Last week his little sister asked, “Does Tomi’s brain work different?” His mum answered, “Yes. Different, not less.” Tomi overheard and later typed on his tablet: _Different is why I know when rain is coming before the app does._

Autism didn’t give Tomi superpowers. It gave him Tomi. The bus routes, the weather, the way he notices when his mum is sad before she says anything – that’s all him. The world is still loud. But now he has headphones, and words, and people who wait for the hum to stop before they ask him a question.

And on good days, he hums not to block the world out, but because he likes the way his own song fits into it.