There’s a sick knot in my stomach right now. I know it’s not reality, but it’s hard to imagine nonetheless.

I love crime shows. I especially love “Third Watch” and “Law and Order.” “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” is my favorite of the “L&O” franchise. On Friday nights, I’m in pig heaven. Between A&E and USA, I get my fill of crime shows. All I need to do now is purchase the first and second seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street on DVD, and I’ll never leave my sofa.

Tonight I was flipping between “Third Watch” and “L&O: CI.” Can’t get much better, can it? Except, well. It went downhill rather fast.

I love Vincent D’Onofrio. He played in one of the most unusual episodes of “Homicide” as someone who’d become pinned between a train and its platform. The entire episode features D’Onofrio and Andre Braugher, who plays Det. Pembleton. While Det. Bayliss canvasses the crowd, D’Onofrio and Braugher converse about - anything and everything - because the minute the train is moved, D’Onofrio’s character will die. (The pressure of the train against his body is keeping severed veins or something intact.)

D’Onofrio is a magical actor, in the right character. He makes you forget he’s an actor, and you’re watching a show. His character Det. Robert Goren on “L&O: CI” is brilliant. You can almost see the wheels turning in his head. He uses sheer intellect and cleverness to solve crime. Sadly, very rarely can I keep up.

It’s one of those shows where he figures it out just as you shout it at the television. Brilliant.

Perhaps that’s why I took such personal offense to tonight’s episode. The episode, entitled “Probability,” found the detectives uncovering an insurance scam while investigating the seemingly-random deaths of homeless men throughout the city. “Third Watch,” however, was running a more tension-filled episode surrounding a shooting in a school. It’s easy to guess what got more screen time.

Once, though, when I flipped back to L&O, they’d introduced a nerdy insurance guy. I spotted a poorly-acted overplayed Autism caricature within a minute. His symptoms were muddied so that they didn’t quite make sense. But the knot in my stomach arrived when a particular set of dialogue was used (obviously not verbatim). The nerdy guy, in his mid-forties, suddenly averts his gaze from Det. Goren. “I’m sorry,” he says jerkily. “If I look at someone for more than 2/3 of the time, I seem aggressive.” [silence] “If I look at someone for less than 1/3 of the time, I seem dishonest.” [silence] “I’m still learning.” And he jerkily, nervously walks out of the room.

I knew at that point it was Asperger’s. They were using some sort of caricature of Asperger’s to show the ADD-riddled audience in ten seconds or less what this person suffered from.

Shortly thereafter, Goren reads off the symptoms of AS to his partner and the ADA. In one blog I just read, it mentions he at this point says he has it as well, which makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t hear this. Goren’s partner comments early on that the insurance man is Goren’s “older, even geekier brother.”

D’Onofrio’s portrayal of Goren as having AS makes more sense to me than the awful portrayal of the nerdy insurance guy. I look at Justin and wonder. How will society view him? A “nerd”? Probably. That’s okay, because there are lots of cool nerds out there. But what else?

Perhaps the creepiest thing about tonight’s hour of crime was that the storyline of “Third Watch” revolved around a nerdy kid who was constantly picked on by the “jocks” of the school. He got tired of it, and went on a shooting spree, picking out football players, cheerleaders and the like.

I wish I could say I can’t understand that feeling at all. But I’d be lying. The people who were the worst to me in high school were the jocks. When my best friend earned a spot on the Varsity Drill Team, she moved her locker to Jock Hall and I was repelled. It always felt as though my brain cells were being sucked out of my ears when I entered that hallway. It was filled with every “popular” person in school. (What I didn’t realize, however, was that I was popular. I was the center of attention, especially in my sophomore/junior years, in the band geek crowd!)

The poor shooter on “Third Watch” had parents who didn’t give a damn, either. Think Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.” Uninterested parents, nerdy kid who’s picked on by dumb jocks. I’m only surprised things like that don’t happen more often.

I don’t want Justin to have to suffer through any of that. Being picked on or being the butt of jokes. He struggles to catch sarcasm, or understand when something is a joke. He works hard at it, but many times he misses. And I want to punch kids out left and right when I hear he had a rough day from teasing.

Camp has been an especially awful exercise in terror. I will never, ever make him go to camp again as long as I live. Every day there are incidents. On Wednesday I wanted to follow him up to the pavillion, find the kids who were picking on him, and quite literally knock their damned heads together hard. Mess with whatever you’d like, whomever you’d like, even with me. But don’t mess with my kid.

I just took the Asperger’s quiz again. I seem to take it about once a quarter, hoping my score changes. The last time it was a 32; this time it was 28. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. That scares me. It was much easier to deal with when I could blame it all on my ex-husband.

Whatever the case, I don’t want Justin perceived as the character on L&O who was twitchy, nervous, jerky, and clueless. I don’t even want the nation to connect the dots between Asperger’s and that portrayal. I want people to see Justin as the kid he is - sweet, guileless (mostly), but just in need of a little guidance to be socially successful. I worry about his future. But I thank God for today.

Touching on a tough one,

michelle