aspie

Tolerance in Mental Diversity

Vernon Smith, aspie, Nobel Prize winner: "I think it's different kinds of minds, and the recognition that certain mental deficiencies may actually have some selective advantages in terms of activities. We've lost a lot of the barriers that have to do with skin color and with various other characteristics. But there's still not sufficient recognition of mental diversities. And we don't all have to think alike to be communal and to live in a productive and satisfying world."

~~~~~~~~~~~

I feel mentally diverse today. I'm enjoying it.

Someone once said something to me about what I call 'staring off' or 'spazzing out'. That, apparently, is a waste of time. I'm not sure what better use I could make of that time- gaming? American Idol? taking out the trash? yapping on a cell phone? reading some kind of celebrity gossip? shopping?

I know there are many people who spend thousands of dollars to visit luxury spas where they can relax, let go, possibly even reach nirvana.

Those people go to extraordinary efforts to do what I do whenever I stare at a textured wall or light or moving water. I reach Nirvana in seconds. I wonder if they would pay thousands of dollars to be able to do what comes naturally to me.

And then the coolest ideas suddenly zap through my brain and I feel such a surge of joy over neat thoughts. Like, what if other universes could bump time around in ours? If you're not a cosmology fan, don't scoff. They are actually researching stuff that will probably sound like this.

When I was in 6th grade I realized that a hand waving back and forth fast enough across a projector light could create a faint permanent shadow that light couldn't get completely around. That's really weird, because it was getting through to hit the screen and dilute the shadow. Yes, the teacher had to move me away from the projector.

When I was in my 20's I realized that light could slow down and speed up and take shortcuts. When they discovered fiber optics, I was the first one to say that they would find a way to break the speed of light barrier and that the phone at the other end would ring before you dialed, sure wish I had that documented. Well, guess what. Quantum packets are boosted through fiber optic cables in such a way that it ~appears~ that there was a tiny time jump into the future. But we all know that sometimes a person picks up a phone before it could have conceivably rung after you've dialed, and they say it rang twice...

After that I said Just watch, next they'll find a way to slow light down. Bing. A few years ago they successfully slowed down a beam of light in a lab.

I've never had a college physics class. I'm not a mathematical savant. But I love thinking about light. I mean, photons- they go into your eyeballs, right? And then what...? If they bounced out our eyes would glow. Do we absorb them into our heads? Am I messing with your brain?

A college professor once asked our class what our first memory was. I said mine was of sunlight coming through the branches and making the yard bright green and the flowers bright colors. Turns out that if your first memory is of a thing, you are different than if your first memory is of a person or social situation. It means you're able to see things in a different way than other people, because I guess most people's first memories involve other people. He was curious, testing us to see who of us would survive World Religions. Could we think outside our little boxes?

I didn't even know I had a box. I think I left it somewhere way back in another galaxy.

I remember someone asking me in an anatomy lab what my favorite thing was, and I said, "The raging debate over the age of the universe." Because back then, a few years ago, there was a math error and they had the age set at 1 billion some odd years, and the earth is over 4 billion. But now we know it's over 13 billion years old, so what is my favorite thing now?

Now it's the twisting of time and space stuff. I have a feeling it's happening all the time, we just don't have a way of measuring it yet. Like, you're at work, right? Everyone says it's the longest day... Or some days fly right by. What if they really do? What if our universe is bottlenecking through another universe, hmm? I sure messed with a few minds at work. But it might be possible that we can intuitively feel this stuff.

Or, yeah, I could just be weird. But you know you'd love it on a scifi show.

Enough for now.
- 1:54 pm
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You May Be an Aspie If...

This list is all my own, from my own experiences. I got the idea from You Might be an Aspie If..., which I found so comforting and funny that I was able to more quickly adjust to enjoy being who I am once I found out I'm a mental aberration.

YOU MAY BE AN ASPIE IF...

...you run an entire wash cycle before you remember you forgot to load it-- twice. In a row.

...you really have used a paycheck for a book marker (like Einstein) and run into it by chance 3 months later when you remembered you were reading that book and decided to finish it.

...you check a pile of books out from the library, start them all at once, get halfway through, and renew them only because you really believe you're going to finish them, even though half of them are disappointing and the other half aren't addressing your questions after all, particularly if they are about physics or paranormal and astral phenomena. Then you renew them again because you forgot to take them back. Then you really do forget all about them and incur heavy fines.

...even with all this forgetting, you can remember in great detail several paintings you once saw in the waiting room of a doctor's office when you were six years old, among a number of other useless flashbacks that include the Herkimer the Homely Doll song on Captain Kangaroo (and wonder if the person singing it was Sterling Holloway), the smell of your lunch box in the first grade, and the heartbreaking disappointment of your first Valentine's day in the first grade. AND the Johnny Appleseed song, and the kitchen table in the first house you lived in, and the time you got a needle stuck in your knee when you jumped on the couch when your mom got up from a sewing project to go do something, and...

YOU MAY BE AN ASPIE IF...

...you wear the same clothes for 48 hours straight, to bed and back again.

...you forget you have makeup on and rub your eyes at work and discover it in the bathroom two hours later- *after* you've helped a dozen customers. And it doesn't freak you out. You just go, "Oh, yeah..."

...yet, in spite of this seeming lack of interest in your appearance, you obsess about the laundry. Or your shoes being clean. Or your eyebrows not exactly matching.

YOU MAY BE AN ASPIE IF...

...you wind up at the doctor's office a day early and are so convinced you've got the day right that they let you in anyway, even though the waiting room is packed and you're not sick.

...you convince a customer at the register that they still owe you $4.38 instead of the other way around, and all the cashiers around you stop what they're doing because even though they can hear the error of your ways, your argument is so convincing they can't help but watch in awe as the customer opens a change purse back up. (This after acing all your college algebra tests in pen.)

...you don't recognize a monthly older couple checking into the hotel where you work even though you can see in the computer that you were the one who checked them in the last 6 times.

...you forget you took lunch already and try to punch back out an hour later for lunch. (stressful day)

...you get lost in a Super Walmart.

...you have to leave the Super Walmart before you're done with your list because the noise and lights and people and overwhelming variety are causing enough anxiety to nearly pull your shirt off while you flap your long sleeves together reading labels. (Seriously, Scott caught me nearly pulling my shirt off once as I flapped. Egads, that would have been a treat for a few people, eh? I don't wear long sleeves to town any more.)

...you're so spaced out leaving a Hallmark store that you run right into the door and stand there wondering why it won't open while you slowly focus back and realize there is a sign saying "Use Other Door" and someone behind you is falling over laughing.

...yet in spite of ALL of this confusion in public and with the public, you are able to alert an entire hotel full of guests to a tornado warning and supervise them into a hallway and keep them calm while a tornado passes by two miles away, and you help clear a large department store of customers while the fire department investigates smoke and fire alarms and you find out you're the ONLY employee that not only remembered to grab a flashlight and fire extinguisher but also followed all the steps properly.

...and you even arrive first on the scene of an accident and save someone's life because you remember in detail everything you've ever learned about airway clearance and taking control of someone in a panic.

...AND you even get a 4-story hospital locked down as a housekeeper at 4 a.m. reporting an extreme error of contagion that a nurse made earlier calling you stat to the ER. (Aspies would make fabulous Star Fleet personnel. We kinda dig protocol and things like OSHA, NEPA, and other technoweenie stuff. Except we might wear our uniforms backward, or for several days in a row. And wind up in the wrong conference room.)

YOU MAY BE AN ASPIE IF...

...you find traffic so intimidating that you change lanes two miles ahead of time to be ready.

...you are terrified of merging on ramps.

...you have to map your route out in your head ahead of time like an inbuilt Tom-Tom, and having to change your route in the middle of it all means you have to reroute a new map in your head.

...you have the city memorized in a very two dimensional way, so you don't recognize where you are three dimensionally until you check the map in your head.

...you've been pulled over for going too slow in a school zone or on a highway.

...you've ever gotten into the wrong car at a store and wondered who left their sweater there or put the dangly thing on the mirror.

YOU MAY BE AN ASPIE IF...

...you happen to know more about an obscure bit of trivia on a map or about another country than the college professor.

...you don't 'get' calculus, but the professor tells you that what you're trying to explain, describe, or ask about is two semesters down the road.

...you get a joke someone tells in another language that you don't speak, but a joke in English stumps you.

...you can't figure out your fellow classmates to save your life, but you ace your sociology major and anthropology minor.

...a particular word consumes half your day, and you walk around pronouncing it in various styles and inflexions, ignoring the stares. pink, pink, PINK, pink, *pink*, pink

...a professor has to send a lower classman to find you, a grad student, on the first day of classes because you are lost, but when you walk into the room and the professor asks you to explain the scientific model to the class before you even find a seat, you jump on the chance to expound, much to the chagrin of the professor.

...you delight in arguing quantitative sociological analysis with a mathematics professor who doesn't agree with you that sociology is a science.

...finding flaws and holes in other people's reasoning is *fun*, no matter how unnecessary.

...a professor asks the students who they idolized growing up, and you say Mr. Spock.

...you got extra credit in a Logic class just for mentioning that you own a copy of Heidegger's "Being and Time".

...you'd rather watch the latest series on cosmology and physics on the History channel than anything else on tv.
- 9:14 am
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Autism AWARENESS??

Since this is Autism Awareness Month, as showcased on the xanga front page in a featured post, I'd like to share this small insight that is so SPECTACULARLY overlooked by the public in general.
Dr. Temple Grandin

I'd also like to share this little tidbit.
Mildest autism has 'selective advantages' - Business- msnbc.com

A teacher's thoughts on Asperger's.

I am autistic. I have autism spectrum disorder. I have Asperger's Syndrome. These are all the same thing. Granted I am verbal and socially interactive, but I have come a long way in 40 some odd years. And funny thing, I didn't need intervention or 'help'. All I needed was for everyone to back off and let me be myself. Turns out I can run intellectual circles around everyone around me. I may not be able to handle hanging out at the mall very long, and I might embarrass you in public, and I might really annoy the heck outa you when it comes to debating a topic, but dang, at least I have a clue when it comes to problem solving and dynamics.

I was APPALLED at how misinformed so many people in the comments on that featured post were, even though some of them have spent years living with ASD people. It's one thing to be ignorant because one isn't exposed to information. It's another to remain ignorant surrounded by it.

In light of such ignorance, I prefer being aspie, I thank God I am aspie, and I am so glad I am aspie. As much as I stumble around and seem to fall on my face socially and whatever, at least I am able to catalog and remember pertinent information, like what Asperger's IS. I thought that's why we HAVE brains. I don't know if I can handle one more person using phrases such as 'those people' and 'terrifying condition' and 'mental illness' and 'we found a way to fix it' (referring to someone else in the family). O-M-G

I can't tell you how many times I've wished I could 'fix' other people being cruel or bubbleheaded or bossy or codependent. I suppose if I were 'normal' I would be able to be those things better.

Sorry so crabby, but most of you out there have no clue you are not only SURROUNDED by aspies, but may even be aspie yourself. The latest guesstimate I heard was one in 150 people, which in any statistical book makes it FUNCTIONAL in society.

*walking off flinging my hands back and forth*
- 11:25 pm
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bluejacky

I've started transferring my survey posts over to Surveypalooza so people coming in from search engines on mobile devices will be able to see the surveys.

Apologies for the missing vids, another upgrade during the server migration swept through like a scan sweeping through the Enterprise. I'll fix those later, kinda busy...