One thing about the lumbering SUVs that so many people seem to need to negotiate Washington, DC's urban jungle (yes, we do have some wicked potholes, but still...) is that for those of us in normal cars, the vanity plates on the SUV ahead is front, center and eye-level.

So, there was no missing the message on the bumper of that green Tahoe, or Expedition, or Global Warmer waiting for the light at Wisconsin and Whitehaven the other morning. The message was AUTISM.

I think it was the first time I've seen a vanity plate devoted to a developmental disability. My reactions were complex. On the one hand, as the parent of a child who lives somewhere on the mild end of the autistic spectrum, I felt a sort of fellowship. On the other hand, we've wrestled as a family with this issue of labels, and haven't really come to a resolution. It's been a particularly sore point this year, since we're applying to some private schools, and I have been nervously trying to decode the signals coming from various admissions-office people about how well they understand his learning style.

I wondered if the owner of the vanity plate was an autistic adult, in which case I would feel that this was a great expression of pride, maybe the expression of a growing civil rights consciousness. ("Don't ask me to look you in the eye, and I won't ask you to arrange your CD collection by recording date.")

Then I thought (cynical me) that maybe the plate belonged to someone who had made a very nice living, thank you, out of autism. A psychologist or an educational consultant or something. No, not even in Washington, I decided.

Finally, I considered the possibility that it belonged to the parent of an autistic child, and this made me a little uncomfortable. It's one thing to celebrate the enormous strengths, abilities and intellectual power that often accompanies a diagnosis of autism, to be proud of a child's uniqueness...and another to assume that simply by declaring one's pride, you can get others to share it.

Whatever the real story, it certainly is progress when something that used to spoken of only in whispers pops up on a license plate. The rate of autism diagnoses is soaring, so any signs that autism is going mainstream -- maybe even becoming cool -- raise the chances that autistic children will be more thoroughly accepted by their peers, teachers and everyone else.

It's interesting that one well-known group involved in pushing for more research into autism -- Cure Autism Now -- comes in for criticism from autistic individuals who, quite frankly, don't think they need curing. A group called Aspies for Freedom (Aspies is a name adopted by individuals with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism) has even launched a petition drive against Cure Autism Now.