There was a time when a family kept an old plastic glass as it was the most valuable asset of the house.
It had no economic value. It was scratched, consumed by time and out of production for years. Yet losing it could have had much more serious consequences than anyone could imagine.
That glass belonged to Ben Carter, an English boy with severe and not verbal autism. Ever since he was two years old, he agreed to drink only from that precise blue model with two handles. It was not a whim or a simple habit: it was the only container with which he felt safe.
Every other glass was rejected.
With the passing of time the last remaining specimen began to deteriorate and the family lived with constant fear. They knew well what could happen, because Ben had already been admitted in the past for dehydration after he refused to drink from different containers.
At that point, his father, Marc Carter, decided to try the impossible.
He published on social media the photograph of the glass and told their story, hoping that someone, somewhere, still kept one.
The answer exceeded all expectations.
In a few hours thousands of people shared the appeal. There were those who swept in the attics, who controlled old boxes and who searched in the markets of the usate. From all over the UK, and even from abroad, packages containing identical or very similar glasses began to arrive.
The wave of solidarity also arrived at Tommee Tippee, the company that had produced that model many years before.
When he understood how important that simple object was for Ben, the company decided to go beyond any expectations. After tracking down the old original mold preserved in a factory in China, in 2016 he made five hundred copies perfectly identical and sent them to the family.
Ben's father was an indescribable emotion. He learned that receiving that delivery was even more beautiful than winning the lottery.
For those looking from outside were just plastic glasses.
For Ben they represented tranquility, continuity and the possibility of living a daily gesture without fear.
This story has helped many people to understand an often unfamiliar aspect of autism: what in the eyes of others may seem like an insignificant detail, for someone may be an essential point of reference.
Sometimes empathy arises from this: to stop judging what we do not understand and begin to look at it with the eyes of those who live it every day.