Longest... intro... ever...
30 Apr 2009, 9:25 pm
My Story
Spinning, spinning… my first schoolyard memories are of spinning. Sitting on the tire swing and kicking the ground in a regular rhythm, my right foot beating out a soft susurration of swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. I would look straight down to maximize the whirl. As the world dissolved into a blur of colors around me I was overtaken by a sense of what I can only describe as ecstasy.
Back in 1970’s America, Asperger’s did not exist as a formally defined syndrome. I was simply the odd kid who played alone, spinning or pacing. In later years, the school "psychologist" would run inkblot tests and call mom into his office in some vain attempt to define, categorize, or label that which was uncategorizable. I was more curious as to what effect my answers would have on the shrinks and the shrinks’ assessments rather than the answers themselves. But I always thought so deeply into things.
Unfortunately, along with the AS symptoms came a number of what I used to refer to as ‘weird powers’. Things it seemed I could do that nobody else could come close to. Apparently, I was some kind of “super genius” on paper. Although I don’t know how much of this I would ascribe to raw intellect as much as I would to the second ability: an almost flawless memory. I could remember almost everything about anything. It could be words, pictures, sounds (especially sounds in a pattern). I was exceptionally good when there was something relational about the images; this or that object was near this or that object. My musical talent manifested itself in the 6th grade when my homeroom teacher made me go to band practice over recess. She and other teachers were upset that I would do nothing but pace back and forth along the same stretch of wall during my free time (there was no tire swing at the second elementary school I attended) rather than playing ‘wall ball’ with the other boys. Although I’m not super-coordinated, my raw physical senses are similarly affected. My sight was 20/5 (20/10 now), my hearing is so attenuated that I can not only hear softer sounds; I can hear more sounds than the usual range. For example, some of you can probably hear electricity even in otherwise “quiet” appliances (like when you can hear when the TV is on even if it is sitting at a black screen with the volume turned down). Smell and taste let me pick out almost every individual ingredient in the things I eat and others really should NOT touch me unless I’m expecting it. As an odd counterpoint to that, I like very strong touch like bear hugs.
So why do I say ‘unfortunately’ in regards to these 'gifts'? Intelligence is great until you start outperforming your peers. Then you become different. You also become something of a threat. Then the animosity starts. I was odd enough to begin with, but throwing that into the mix was like kindling on a fire. Children are remarkably intolerant of differences. Believe me, I remember like I’m still there. Allow me some allegorical (and grammatical) leeway when I say that we naked apes are not so far from the beast as we imagine ourselves to be. I know what lurks beneath every polished veneer of propriety and social nicety. I entered first grade testing out at the junior high school reading level. I could never understand why other kids read things so ‘choppily’. Sometimes I would emulate them. When I knew the answer in class, I stopped raising my hand. The teacher caught on to this and even mentioned to mom how ‘He stays in the back of class and waits until nobody can answer the question, then he looks around and slowly raises his hand’. I may have been smart, but I was not very clever. Eventually, even with the subterfuge, I ended up with the TAG kids. Rather than finding a haven or welcome respite, the TAG kids were every bit the Little Hitlers of the school. A mass of neuroses they were. Some with ‘teacher pleasing complex’. Others with the ‘King of the Hill’ syndrome. Threatened by each other and hanging on to some kind of pecking order, I was a late comer and to be challenged in some intellectual Lord of the Flies arena. Meh. Ultimately, the only thing useful that IQ did for me was to allow me to cloak myself so that I could blend in to the point where I was not receiving beatings or worse. I do this by adopting ‘social styles’ like ‘the presenter’, ‘the cool guy’, or ‘the chick magnet’ (is saying something like ‘chick magnet’ socially apropos nowadays? Or am I waxing barbaric? Well, that’s how I thought of it back then). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not schizo. I’m all 100% me, but I can smoothly move in and out of these ‘social styles’ and associated stock phrases/postures with a chameleon-like ability. Ultimately, this is horrible. I could date girls by being ‘the chick magnet’ and switching to ‘the cool guy’, for example, but I could not maintain this level of the façade for very long. Invariably, these relationships would crumble in time, leaving me devastated. However, I simply could not bear being alone so I would try, try again. It helped that I was considered a ‘hottie’ in my day, because there was no shortage of experimental subjects to date. I say that tongue-in-cheek; people aren’t really experimental subjects to me. Well, not anymore. I’ve even stopped calling them ‘sheeple’. Ma would be proud.
But I digress. Next up is memory. The much vaunted memory. I studied nothing in school and by that I mean I took absolutely NO notes and spent no time on things like rote math problems. Because of this, I was a C student. I would ace every test and fail every homework assignment. I didn’t do them. I didn’t need to. I understood the material and could ace the tests to prove it. So no Dartmouth or Yale for me. I entered a state university with one of the highest scores they’d seen (I would test better, but I have a bad tendency to ‘read into’ every question to the point where I can justify almost every multiple-choice answer). They wanted to put me in a special accelerated three-year degree program rather than the standard four-year where I could self-direct my study. Having had enough of hanging with the ‘gifted’, I told them no. Another problem with a prodigious memory is that, you start acting or chatting about things you assume everyone remembers. “Hi there Linda! That was a great game wasn’t it? ? The football game? Three years ago during the first year, second semester of high school, remember? You sat on my left side wearing a red angora top and white skirt with the white shoes with the little square silver buckles on ‘em? Did your dog Bucky recover from the broken leg?” At which point she thinks I’m a random pervert who is trying to pick her up and has been spying on her because I know her wardrobe and the family info she inanely chatted about to me or others. Or even better, you suddenly find yourself in an advanced college math course going “What the heck is all this” as you calculate formulas for the sake of calculating formulas with absolutely no real understanding of what or why or how this is going to be applicable to anything.
The hearing and musical ability is the worst of all. I don’t even listen to music anymore. I have to have it absolutely quiet if I am working. If I hear a new song, it stays with me for days and days, repeating itself as my mind plays with the melody, the harmony, the individual rhythmic effects, the possible variations in the music (including the vocals). I find myself humming it all the time. When I DO choose to listen to music, I typically play the same song or small set of songs in a loop over and over and over and over and over ad infinitum… Another horrible thing about the heightened hearing is that I absolutely CANNOT carry on a conversation in a noisy room like a cafeteria. Forget about it. It’s not that I don’t want to or that I’m not trying, but there is just SO FRIGGIN MUCH background noise that I can’t hear the person in front of me. There’s the overlapping sounds and the snatches of conversations that make it through and the comforting hum of the generator or air conditioner and the percussive interrupt as someone drops a utensil and.. I’m sorry, WHAT did you just say? I have to cup my ears with my hands to make them louder than everything else. And of course, nobody else has to do this so I’m sitting there like an idiot with my hands on my ears. Band practice was similar to the other classes; I never took my instrument home to practice, simply picking it up and playing it. Even now, I rarely play until some acquaintance calls up (“I heard from Dru that Will said you can play horn, man”) with some sudden need for me to fill in for a spot in their band. I then blow the spiders out of my horn and go play professionally at some venue in downtown Portland before I pack it back up again for another few years. I do this solely to maintain some real-life social connectivity.
There are other smaller ‘abilities’; for example, during my times of self-isolation I have learned to control (with active concentration) various things about my own body from gag reflex to pain threshold (great for the dentist) to the presence or absence of goosebumps. So now I can vomit (or not) on command, woo hoo!
I’ve never been able to truly disclose myself to anyone without a long, slow process of letting myself out bit by bit. I would come across as a braggart or a boor when I’m trying to explain these things – but how could I possibly come across as otherwise?!? I even feel like that’s what I’m doing now, even though I’m doing it solely to find others like myself. I want to honestly introduce myself in order to have a real discussion with what is quite likely the only group of people on the planet who, based upon the posts I’ve been reading over the last month, can really understand me. Or at least accept me. The real me. Not the collection of simulated and learned behaviors I show to the world.
30 Apr 2009, 10:20 pm
*blink* Wow - you just summed up a large part of my farewell gathering last weekend... several people had a time posing questions about things that had happened 5, 10, 15 years ago or more and could not believe when I could recount it in remarkable (and inane) detail. And school... you just hit my experience on the head. Never took notes, broke the curve on tests and generally did enough homework (or broke the curve enough) for a 3.5+ GPA through HS (and this despite atrocious attendance!) and college.
Welcome to WP, I hope to read more from you in the future.
M.
_________________
My thanks to all the wonderful members here; I will miss the opportunity to continue to learn and work with you.
For those who seek an alternative, it is coming.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
30 Apr 2009, 10:38 pm
Spinning, spinning… my first schoolyard memories are of spinning. Sitting on the tire swing and kicking the ground in a regular rhythm, my right foot beating out a soft susurration of swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. I would look straight down to maximize the whirl. As the world dissolved into a blur of colors around me I was overtaken by a sense of what I can only describe as ecstasy.
Back in 1970’s America, Asperger’s did not exist as a formally defined syndrome. I was simply the odd kid who played alone, spinning or pacing. In later years, the school "psychologist" would run inkblot tests and call mom into his office in some vain attempt to define, categorize, or label that which was uncategorizable. I was more curious as to what effect my answers would have on the shrinks and the shrinks’ assessments rather than the answers themselves. But I always thought so deeply into things.
Unfortunately, along with the AS symptoms came a number of what I used to refer to as ‘weird powers’. Things it seemed I could do that nobody else could come close to. Apparently, I was some kind of “super genius” on paper. Although I don’t know how much of this I would ascribe to raw intellect as much as I would to the second ability: an almost flawless memory. I could remember almost everything about anything. It could be words, pictures, sounds (especially sounds in a pattern). I was exceptionally good when there was something relational about the images; this or that object was near this or that object. My musical talent manifested itself in the 6th grade when my homeroom teacher made me go to band practice over recess. She and other teachers were upset that I would do nothing but pace back and forth along the same stretch of wall during my free time (there was no tire swing at the second elementary school I attended) rather than playing ‘wall ball’ with the other boys. Although I’m not super-coordinated, my raw physical senses are similarly affected. My sight was 20/5 (20/10 now), my hearing is so attenuated that I can not only hear softer sounds; I can hear more sounds than the usual range. For example, some of you can probably hear electricity even in otherwise “quiet” appliances (like when you can hear when the TV is on even if it is sitting at a black screen with the volume turned down). Smell and taste let me pick out almost every individual ingredient in the things I eat and others really should NOT touch me unless I’m expecting it. As an odd counterpoint to that, I like very strong touch like bear hugs.
So why do I say ‘unfortunately’ in regards to these 'gifts'? Intelligence is great until you start outperforming your peers. Then you become different. You also become something of a threat. Then the animosity starts. I was odd enough to begin with, but throwing that into the mix was like kindling on a fire. Children are remarkably intolerant of differences. Believe me, I remember like I’m still there. Allow me some allegorical (and grammatical) leeway when I say that we naked apes are not so far from the beast as we imagine ourselves to be. I know what lurks beneath every polished veneer of propriety and social nicety. I entered first grade testing out at the junior high school reading level. I could never understand why other kids read things so ‘choppily’. Sometimes I would emulate them. When I knew the answer in class, I stopped raising my hand. The teacher caught on to this and even mentioned to mom how ‘He stays in the back of class and waits until nobody can answer the question, then he looks around and slowly raises his hand’. I may have been smart, but I was not very clever. Eventually, even with the subterfuge, I ended up with the TAG kids. Rather than finding a haven or welcome respite, the TAG kids were every bit the Little Hitlers of the school. A mass of neuroses they were. Some with ‘teacher pleasing complex’. Others with the ‘King of the Hill’ syndrome. Threatened by each other and hanging on to some kind of pecking order, I was a late comer and to be challenged in some intellectual Lord of the Flies arena. Meh. Ultimately, the only thing useful that IQ did for me was to allow me to cloak myself so that I could blend in to the point where I was not receiving beatings or worse. I do this by adopting ‘social styles’ like ‘the presenter’, ‘the cool guy’, or ‘the chick magnet’ (is saying something like ‘chick magnet’ socially apropos nowadays? Or am I waxing barbaric? Well, that’s how I thought of it back then). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not schizo. I’m all 100% me, but I can smoothly move in and out of these ‘social styles’ and associated stock phrases/postures with a chameleon-like ability. Ultimately, this is horrible. I could date girls by being ‘the chick magnet’ and switching to ‘the cool guy’, for example, but I could not maintain this level of the façade for very long. Invariably, these relationships would crumble in time, leaving me devastated. However, I simply could not bear being alone so I would try, try again. It helped that I was considered a ‘hottie’ in my day, because there was no shortage of experimental subjects to date. I say that tongue-in-cheek; people aren’t really experimental subjects to me. Well, not anymore. I’ve even stopped calling them ‘sheeple’. Ma would be proud.
But I digress. Next up is memory. The much vaunted memory. I studied nothing in school and by that I mean I took absolutely NO notes and spent no time on things like rote math problems. Because of this, I was a C student. I would ace every test and fail every homework assignment. I didn’t do them. I didn’t need to. I understood the material and could ace the tests to prove it. So no Dartmouth or Yale for me. I entered a state university with one of the highest scores they’d seen (I would test better, but I have a bad tendency to ‘read into’ every question to the point where I can justify almost every multiple-choice answer). They wanted to put me in a special accelerated three-year degree program rather than the standard four-year where I could self-direct my study. Having had enough of hanging with the ‘gifted’, I told them no. Another problem with a prodigious memory is that, you start acting or chatting about things you assume everyone remembers. “Hi there Linda! That was a great game wasn’t it? ? The football game? Three years ago during the first year, second semester of high school, remember? You sat on my left side wearing a red angora top and white skirt with the white shoes with the little square silver buckles on ‘em? Did your dog Bucky recover from the broken leg?” At which point she thinks I’m a random pervert who is trying to pick her up and has been spying on her because I know her wardrobe and the family info she inanely chatted about to me or others. Or even better, you suddenly find yourself in an advanced college math course going “What the heck is all this” as you calculate formulas for the sake of calculating formulas with absolutely no real understanding of what or why or how this is going to be applicable to anything.
The hearing and musical ability is the worst of all. I don’t even listen to music anymore. I have to have it absolutely quiet if I am working. If I hear a new song, it stays with me for days and days, repeating itself as my mind plays with the melody, the harmony, the individual rhythmic effects, the possible variations in the music (including the vocals). I find myself humming it all the time. When I DO choose to listen to music, I typically play the same song or small set of songs in a loop over and over and over and over and over ad infinitum… Another horrible thing about the heightened hearing is that I absolutely CANNOT carry on a conversation in a noisy room like a cafeteria. Forget about it. It’s not that I don’t want to or that I’m not trying, but there is just SO FRIGGIN MUCH background noise that I can’t hear the person in front of me. There’s the overlapping sounds and the snatches of conversations that make it through and the comforting hum of the generator or air conditioner and the percussive interrupt as someone drops a utensil and.. I’m sorry, WHAT did you just say? I have to cup my ears with my hands to make them louder than everything else. And of course, nobody else has to do this so I’m sitting there like an idiot with my hands on my ears. Band practice was similar to the other classes; I never took my instrument home to practice, simply picking it up and playing it. Even now, I rarely play until some acquaintance calls up (“I heard from Dru that Will said you can play horn, man”) with some sudden need for me to fill in for a spot in their band. I then blow the spiders out of my horn and go play professionally at some venue in downtown Portland before I pack it back up again for another few years. I do this solely to maintain some real-life social connectivity.
There are other smaller ‘abilities’; for example, during my times of self-isolation I have learned to control (with active concentration) various things about my own body from gag reflex to pain threshold (great for the dentist) to the presence or absence of goosebumps. So now I can vomit (or not) on command, woo hoo!
I’ve never been able to truly disclose myself to anyone without a long, slow process of letting myself out bit by bit. I would come across as a braggart or a boor when I’m trying to explain these things – but how could I possibly come across as otherwise?!? I even feel like that’s what I’m doing now, even though I’m doing it solely to find others like myself. I want to honestly introduce myself in order to have a real discussion with what is quite likely the only group of people on the planet who, based upon the posts I’ve been reading over the last month, can really understand me. Or at least accept me. The real me. Not the collection of simulated and learned behaviors I show to the world.
WOW you are one of the coolest, highest functioning aspies on here! you actually have special talents! sweetaroo man. congrats!
40 is a young age to find out. my dad is almost 50 and he still does not know.
_________________
Some of the threads I started are really long - yeay!
30 Apr 2009, 11:12 pm
I'm also 40, officially diagnosed 3 years ago. Welcome aboard!
_________________
I am a very strange female.
http://www.youtube.com/user/whitetigerdream
Don't take life so seriously. It isn't permanent!
01 May 2009, 10:37 am
Welcome, ViperaAspis,
Question: It seems to me you're a bit more of a genius than you are autistic? You say you are able to "adopt ‘social styles’ like ‘the presenter’, ‘the cool guy’, or ‘the chick magnet’." To my mind that requires quite a high level of social skills? Like wow, if only I had known how to pass myself off as cool ... 
Maybe you're better able to fit in than the typical Aspie, but what you run into is more along the lines of jealousy when it comes to your gifts and abilities?
Can relate to you when it comes to things like memory and keen hearing.
See you around the forums.
_________________
~~ the phoenix
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine." -- REM
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richie
Supporting Member
Joined: 9 Jan 2007
Age: 65
Gender: Male
Posts: 30,142
Location: Lake Whoop-Dee-Doo, Pennsylvania
01 May 2009, 6:04 pm
To WrongPlanet!! !
_________________
Life! Liberty!...and Perseveration!!.....
Weiner's Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross references.....
My Blog: http://richiesroom.wordpress.com/
16 May 2009, 10:26 pm
Thank you all for being so welcoming to me. I have truly found some kindred spirits during my short time here.
Learning2Survive: I only have one thing to say to you, Bender, ONE THING: 001100010010011110100001101101110011!! ! BTW, did you know that's a website too? Slap a .com on the end and check it out (Safe for work). Love that show.
Whitetiger: Love the YouTube videos. Very insightful and helpful.
Phoenix: Very valid and intelligent questions. In the interests of brevity I did not go fully into describing that the scripted behaviors are organized into categories that I'm referring to as 'social styles'. To become 'The Cool Guy' for example, I spent many months hanging around where the Popular Crowd gathered intently studying the alpha male(s) from behind mirrored shades. I memorized as much as I could stand of body posture, gait, mannerisms, gaze length and frequency during type of conversation, head tilt, etc. all further subcategorized into 'Laughing' / 'Just Got Bad News' / 'Flirting', etc.. Sometimes I’d appropriate the entire conversation chain for use later if it was non-specific enough. When put together these became an emulation of a high level of social skills, but not the skills themselves. I found myself in completely unfamiliar territory when invited to a social gathering like a party and this is where I would fall apart and do something socially unpalatable. This would inevitably lead to my eventual ejection from the group. Although I got better each time, the ‘get together’ situations were significantly different enough to be impossible to completely navigate through.
Currently, these scripts are less useful because the primary appropriated conversations are all rooted in the 1980’s. But if I have to go to an 80’s party I can be the super-popular life of the gathering for an average of about 14 minutes…
I don’t think I’ll ever go in for an official diagnosis. I am not in need of public support or programs; I became employable (with many problems and issues, though) when I could keep ‘The Professional’ going through eight hours of intermittent social contact. Also, I don’t need the diagnosis to feel I belong to the group. For me, I walk like a duck, talk like a duck, and pass wind like a duck (if you will). Also, based on my fields of study and work in the field of Psychology, I really DO feel I have the qualifications to self-diagnose this. Child me fits squarely within AS parameters. Adult me has adopted too many coping behaviors to qualify. But who am I inside? Should the shell disqualify the man? Of course not. The main thing I know is that for the first time ever I really feel like I’ve found a place where I fit in; no, THE place where I fit in without having to be something else. And I’m so very tired of being something else. I look forward to seeing you around the forums as well, friend.
And to all friends: I'm so happy to have found you all.
lelia
Veteran
Joined: 11 Apr 2007
Age: 71
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,897
Location: Vancouver not BC, Washington not DC
02 Jun 2009, 4:40 pm
welcome> i just read your intro and enjoyed doing so.
memory..hmmm - yes...i relate.
as for your avatar? one of the best around. the tinfoil looks excellent.
leejosepho
Veteran
Joined: 14 Sep 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,011
Location: 200 miles south of Little Rock
29 Oct 2009, 12:13 pm
Yes, and *so* tired of being anyone else.
Glad we both made it here!
_________________
I began looking for someone like me when I was five ...
My search ended at 59 ... right here on WrongPlanet.
==================================
04 Nov 2009, 11:21 am
Here here, Lee! Cheers.
Also, I enjoy the wisdom in your posts.
