Aspergers. What’s Your Excuse?
Some Take It Badly – I Saw It as Just the Next Chapter…
No book on Asperger syndrome is complete without the foundational discovery chapter. It’s a rule. You need a starting point for the rest of the book, or nothing would make sense.
By age eight, I had formalized the belief I was different from the other children. As the only boy being invited to all-girls birthday parties, I somehow knew things would not change any time soon. I clung to the hope that somehow, people would change to be like me, and everything would work out.
I wasn’t preoccupied with being different and alone, as I see in other books on the subject. I expected the other kids to change. It doesn’t align with what I experienced with myself and what I see with other Aspies I know. We expect you to change. We have a life-long expectation – at some point, everyone will evolve and become life-long learners.
Normal boys were rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. The girls were soft, standoffish, and unaccepting. There were exceptions, but I figured out how to ruin it fast, and things evolved into my version of normal.
I was alone much of the time when I wasn’t in school, but I wasn’t lonely. I was neither sad nor happy. I just settled into my routine and went about life as it came.
I read a lot. I was able to put more distance between myself and the other kids by joining the library’s summer reading club – one of my mom’s best ideas – seriously!
I took long walks and observed everything along the concrete, brick, and asphalt confines of my neighborhood – leaving only on store-runs for Mom. I found it odd that everyone knew me. Not just the neighbors but those from outside the neighborhood.
“Hey, Reds!” came from milk trucks, police cars, and down from telephone linesmen. Apparently, Asperger syndrome was not enough of a challenge – it was topped off with red hair.
Corner stores full of canned goods too high to reach and impatient adults were exhausting. The lunchmeat store, four blocks distant, required navigating the crush of adults to the glass display cases of sausages.
The pungent smells of someone else’s favorite meat, the din of shouted orders, slamming doors, bothered workers, hands wiped on soiled white aprons, and gritty sawdust floors tested my endurance.
Mom would caution, “Make sure to count the change!” which I found strange. I knew if the change was correct by the look and feel of it. It went directly into my pocket.
If it was light, I could feel it. Incorrect change set off immediate alarm bells, because breaks in patterns are physical events for me. Correct change was as it should be; incorrect change had a jarring effect.
My problem was: not knowing this was unusual.
…
Routine was my friend.
Until, I found my Rosetta Stone…
This is just a glimpse—there’s much more to uncover in the full book.