You've got me sitting on the razor's edge here, man.  I work with Special Needs kids, so I want to be fair to them (and to you).  Yeah, sometimes their behavior can look bizarre to our eyes.  But, you know, they aren't self-conscious so when we laugh at them, the joke is ALWAYS on us.  Because they aren't self-conscious, they take life as it comes.  They live in the moment and, frankly, are generally happier, more contented and more relaxed than the rest of us.  Imagine if you lived entirely in the moment?  Isn't that what every mystical system on the planet has been trying to teach us for, oh, about 10,000 years?  They just do it naturally, they don't have to learn it.  So, while it may look like life has dealt them a bum hand (and in many ways their life is so much more difficult than ours), they still have something that most of us will never, ever have--peace of mind.