Julian Delan celebrated his 8th birthday with his parents at a Justin Timberlake concert in San Jose earlier this week. His mother was worried about taking their son, who was diagnosed autism, to the concert. She was nervous about how other people would react to his clumsiness, repetitiveness, and his volume. She explained, “ My husband, on the other hand, hoisted our giant 8 year old as high as he could get him, not thinking he might disrupt anyone while I worried the people behind us wouldn’t be able to see. And all the while Julian in perfect autistic fashion was repeating himself over and over, knocking into the chairs and dancing and singing and yelling, “*It’s my birthday!! This is my present! This is my present! I LOVE YOU JT*!!” Now I have found that others don’t always find all the things you find beautiful about your child to be so beautiful but I think that’s where Leonard Bernstein comes in. Everyone around us saw it. Everyone felt it but none of us could name it. And at the perfect quiet moment, the group in front of us started yelling to get Justin’s attention, because despite his loud volume, Julian’s voice was not carrying. Only repeating. And then before we knew what was happening, the group in front of us that had turned out to be so incredibly kind all night to our birthday boy, and these gorgeous girls who I was convinced would be totally annoyed by Julian, had captured Justin’s attention. And then it happened. Justin Timberlake was singing Happy Birthday. They all were. The awesome grandmother of 3 sitting in front of us. The model-esque girls sitting to our right. The people sitting to our left that offered us the video that they captured of the whole thing. They were all singing. All 25,000 of them.”
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