Speaking up

I was at a work/social function yesterday, and at some point throughout the afternoon, one particular lady made me speak out. I was not angry, nor was I upset, but I simply felt that the faux pas she made simply needed to be addressed.
This particular person was young – about 18-20 – and she was talking about how she’d been on a shopping day with her mother, and had gone to be alone so that she could express her upset with her Mom. Apparently she was walking around, “releasing all the swear words that had been building up” and afterwards, saw someone she knew. The comment that bothered me was “I was so glad she hadn’t seen me earlier – she would have thought I had Tourettes,” she exclaimed. Everyone in our group started to laugh. Well, except me.
I thought about letting it go. I really had to pause before I said anything. I didn’t want to ruin the fun time being had by everyone, but I simply couldn’t let that misnomer go any longer.
“Actually, my son has Tourette syndrome,” is all I said. A couple of them got very serious looking, and the speaker looked embarrassed. (This was not my intention.) I then went on to explain that a lot of people think the whole swearing thing is the whole Tourette ‘thing’, but in actual fact less than 10% of people with Tourettes have the swearing problem.
One asked me how he ticked, and how we found that our son has TS. Another lady was surprised about the gradual onset of the disorder. After a few minutes of this particular conversation, we were able to move on to other things, and the jovialness of the group resumed.
Was it “politically correct” to make the TS comment? I’m not sure. Was I wrong in pointing out the error of her comment? I don’t think so. I wasn’t mean or hurtful in my comment, but I simply wanted to let the speaker aware that saying such a comment in the midst of strangers really isn’t “okay.”

As I typed this, I have just remembered an incident the A-man told me about last Wednesday: Apparently a large group of kids in the class were acting goofy – as teenagers are prone to do – and one boy sitting near the A-man commented “GAWD – they are all acting like a bunch of ADHD kids.” The A-man said the other student, “Yeah, I’m probably the only one in this class with ADHD and you don’t see me acting like that.”
It sounds as if the other boy was surprised to hear the A-man say this. The A-man told me they had a bit of discussion about ADHD, and then went back to work. The other boy was in the A-man’s elementary school, and knows what the A-man used to act like, but I guess he didn’t realize what had caused the drastic change in the A-man. I told him that I was very proud of him for speaking up. He is really getting good at letting people know the how’s and the why’s of the disorders that affect him – which isn’t always easy to do when it makes you ‘different’ for all the others. He is such a great kid.