Asperger's

  • of horses and ACT scores

     
    Ran into a checkout lady at Walmart last night who I went to high school with.  Wow, this next spring will be 30 years.  If I run into her again I might give her my phone number and say Hey, let's go to the reunion.  I've never been to one, and she's been in another state most of her marriage.  We had lockers next to each other one year.  Not exactly friends, but not enemies.  I was so withdrawn back then that I don't recall a whole lot, but she remembered that I was a 'brain' (in spite of the fact that I was nearly failing high school) and asked if I became a doctor or anything.  Wow.  Would anybody really actually care?  I was surprised.  But she seemed cool about it all.
     
    On the way home Scott asked me a bunch of questions about high school.  I tested out in the 3rd percentile but still fell through all the cracks because no one knew I had Asperger's, and I was unresponsive and reclusive and didn't have a clue what the testing meant because no one really took the time with me.  They just assumed I was sullen.  Back then I still wasn't able to look at people in the face very well, yet I had a significant attitude problem.  Might be kinda funny going to a reunion and seeing what a few people think of me winding up having been on the autism spectrum all that time.  Explains a lot.
     
    5 years after high school I retook the ACT to get into college and scored 32 or something, without any coaching or practicing.  That or it was 33 or 34, but I'd rather err on the side of caution.  I pretty much felt like I bumbled my way into college.  Back then I was still so spacey with the Asperger's, wasn't disciplined to focus and connect the dots, and unfortunately wound up getting an advisor that was fired a semester later.  I free floated through most of my degree program, looking at classes like a big smorgasbord.  It took years for me to learn to connect the dots, but I soaked it all in like a sponge along the way.  Scott was aghast last night to find out that I'd scored so high and STILL managed to fall through nearly every crack in the system with no clear direction.  It's funny how long you can live with a person and never realize, eh?  Yes, I'm one of those super smart people.  I'm a few steps away from being Rainman.  (There but for the grace of God go I.)  But because it took me so many years to learn to communicate in this marriage, seriously, it just wasn't evident.
     
    I don't care any more about test scores, but I remember taking the GRE to get into grad school, and I scored super high on two of the tests and below average on the third.  They nearly didn't let me into grad school because I failed the 'logic' part, but the other two were so high that the two old professors muttering to each other across the room where I couldn't hear actually acted like people do on tv.  Scratched their heads, raised their eyebrows, let out one of those big sighs with puffed cheeks that means *wow*....  I never really understood that I'd outscored almost everyone else there on those two tests.  I still don't know what it all means.  No one has ever sat down with me and explained it.  Yes, I scored high, but what does it ~mean~?  I don't even understand how I understood how to answer the questions.
     
    Curiously, I went on to learn how to administer psychological testing and write up evaluations in my first masters degree program.  That was the first time someone told me I'm 'unusual'.  One of my teachers had been testing people for 30 years and had never seen anyone like me.  He said if he hadn't met me in person and could see for himself that I'm perfectly mentally healthy, he'd have written me up as schizophrenic, based on the psyche tests alone that we took as we learned to wield them.
     
    THAT is what it's like living with Asperger's.  That's what it's like being on the autism spectrum.  I managed to break through the barrier of social interaction and communication on my own, without a diagnosis or psychological intervention for many years.  I think more of us manage to do this than is realized.  We *know* stuff.  We can take information and turn it into cool stuff, some of us more on an 'eventually' scale of time.  To some people it might seem useless that we can be so detail oriented, to others we are cool.  But until we learn to verbalize it on a level other people can 'get', some of us fall through a whole lotta cracks.  Until intelligence probability is taken as seriously as social skills when average parents are freaking out that something is wrong with their autistic kids, this world will continue to miss out on some spectacular problem solving opportunities.
     
    Imagine where I could be with my life if someone had taken my testing seriously enough to spend some quality time helping me and my parents plan out an education and figure out how to get the financing.  I did it all absolutely *on* *my* *own*, because I was socially deficit and fell through the cracks.  I think our public education system is what's deficit.  I think it is set up to fail.  But who am I to say, I was just this weird kid who thought it was funny to get others to cheat off me and flunk tests.  And now I think the burgeoning view the media is generating about 'catching' autism early is creating a public awareness deficit that is turning autism into the next birth defect or environmental witch hunt.
     
    No, I didn't turn out to be a doctor.  But I'm a good person, a good cook, a good mom, a good wife, and I'm content.  I think the most important thing I have learned in this life is contentment.  If it takes a genius to figure that one out, then there you go.  A few of you out there are completely missing the deeper point to that statement, like be content with who your children are.
     
    I see a few parents blogging here and there about the difficulties of getting a kid with Asperger's into college and keeping them there, etc.  I had a 5 year break after high school, then went to college on my own, and conquered every obstacle by myself.  When I got out of high school I got a job and got married and got divorced, just like a bunch of people do, then asked myself what I want.  I knew I wanted more than the mundane world around me.  Sooner or later we all figure out where we fit.  If you've got an aspie on your hands, sooner or later they'll crave more input.  They'll figure out sooner or later where their niche is if you quit pushing.
     
    I compare myself to a horse.  I see that some people handle horses well, others don't.  Horses can be high strung, anxious, rebellious, strong headed, distrusting, and even mean, depending on their experiences in life.  A good handler knows how to get the best out of a horse without having to treat the horse badly.  A good handler understands how the horse's mind works, and acts in a way the horse understands in order to get the behavior he or she wants out of the horse.  I think people on the autism spectrum are a lot like horses.  With good and patient handling, we eventually learn to respond well, but it takes time.  If you've got a horse on your hands that simply responds to all commands on cue without showing any sign of intelligence whatsoever, you've got a 'broken' horse.  That is what aspies turn out to be when they are put through programs trying to 'fix' them and force them to respond to social cues.  When how the horse responds becomes more important than the horse itself, you've got a sad situation on your hands.  Many smart horses are molded into dumb horses because all that is wanted is certain social behaviors out of them.
     
    Some people brag about being good with animals.  I think it's nice when someone brags about being good with aspies.  Stop grading the behaviors and love the child.  Are you a dog person or a cat person?  I hear it all the time.  There are magazines for horse and bird owners.  There are people who raise odd things like possums and wolves and snakes.  If people could learn to see different personality types the same way they do animals, enjoying what is unique about them, I wonder how much the world would change.  It intrigues me that aspies can behave almost the same way someone's pet does, on a more basic automatic in the moment level, but the aspie is treated worse for it while the pet is loved because it's cute or something.
     
    Maybe that's why I don't care about test scores.  I'm not cute and lovable because I'm not all furry or scaly or feathery or something, so I see no reason to perform for any other kind of attention.  You know why I'm not a doctor?  Besides having absolutely no moral support whatsoever as a person who wouldn't respond on cue, I thought it would take too long.  Too long for what?  I had no sense of time!  I wound up spending *more* time in college than I would have if I'd gone for a medical degree.  But plain and simple, that was it.  I actually wanted to go into the medical field, and I bet I'd have been pretty good at it, but I had no idea what to expect and how to plan and no one going over it with me.  There you go.  I'm a brain, and I'm not a doctor.  And I could tell you the disdain I have for House.
     
    So the wild horse went galloping off toward the mountains, untamable and carefree.  And then woke up one year and realized she was a human.
     

  • the accidental soul traveler

     

     
     
     
     
     
    I was never a new ager.  I grew up Christian between a Mennonite father and a mainstream Christian mother.  I was never exposed to anything other than that excepting to science fiction through the tv, which back then was pretty dismal, and book titles as I walked through book stores.
     
    Since I was a very small child, and mostly during high fevers since my parents didn't take me to doctors after the age of 6, I have had strange experiences in my sleep that didn't fit what I knew in my waking life.  Once in awhile I would catch myself 'drifting out' along a wall or window, across the room from my body.  I would be able to see minute details up close, such as cracks in the paint, dust on the window, or a bug that should have been impossible to see from my bed.
     
    I didn't talk about these things.  Being on the autism spectrum, I wasn't inclined to share anything in my head in the first place.  But I also had parents who either ignored me or staunchly regarded such things as being of the devil.  I knew better than to bring it up once I realized I'd like to know more.
     
    I spent hours lying in bed doing things in my head as I transitioned from preteen to teenager.  I was also very active and did lots of things outside, like biking and climbing trees, frequently testing to see how high a fence I could jump, or inventing new games with the other kids.  But during quiet times, I preferred being left alone to 'think'.  I didn't realize back then I have a unique form of synesthesia and was doing thought experiments.
     
    I didn't realize until I was grown up and well into my 30's that not all my dreams are just dreams.  I had known for a long time that in some dreams I follow roads, visit buildings, watch people, witness disasters, and sometimes even 'step in' and feel other people as themselves, but I didn't take it seriously until I woke up upset from one dream in which I had tried to interact and had scared the other people in my dream half to death.  Could they really see me?  I assumed in the dream they could, but it was a dream, wasn't it?
     
    I have been many places in my dreams, and seen many things.  Some of my dreams are scattered through surveys, articles, and other posts.  I will not repeat them.  But here is last night's dream.
     
    The geographical layout was that of a fairly large barren plain (miles and miles) rimmed on one side by a row of jagged mountains.  It wasn't a mountain range, more like separate mountains.  The plain didn't have much in the way of vegetation, nor did the mountains.  I had a job testing equipment inside one of the mountains.  It was a very complex automated drill system designed to self regulate, self repair, and 'make decisions' via interface with what reminded me of a computer system, only it was intuitive and occupied a different sort of space than the drill system.  It was part of the drill system and yet separate.  My job was to do a final test run before leaving the system on its own.  I had been observing the drill system for some time, but still had to follow final protocol and authorize it.
     
    During the dream I really thought this was me.
     
    I climbed into the drill system to 'ride' in a tight spot of criss crossed bars that wouldn't be involved in the machinery's meticulous movements, but would allow me to travel along with it and observe its interface with the intelligence system.  It was very dark inside the mountain, but I had no light that I recall.  I could see what happened anyway.  The system started up, I felt it work, vibrating as multiple drill bits chewed through the mountain in arcs all around me.  The noise was incredible.  I must have had a force shield of some kind around me, because I was not hit with flying debris or even dust, and I had no fear of danger.  I watched in great detail this unique geometrical design full of drill bits rotate and literally fix each other, all the while the intelligence system giving redundant audio relay of every move being made.  I've never seen anything like it on Modern Marvels or any kind of scifi show.  I was completely absorbed in the machinery and being fascinated by how it worked.
     
    Then something happened.  I was watching a special drill grind a drill bit down while the rest of the drills continued rotating and chewing when I smelled a peculiar nasty odor and immediately reacted with panic.  I knew I had to get out of there fast or die, simply by smell alone, and everything in the dream from there on was utter confusion.  So now I'll tell the rest from my later point of view of realizing what happened.
     
    "I" wasn't supposed to be there.  That wasn't really me, I was simply experiencing something along with another being who didn't know I was there.  But once that smell hit me, I recoiled and panicked, not realizing that wasn't really me, because I was still deep in the dream.  I wanted out of the machine and out of the mountain and into fresh air as quickly as possible, and I pretty much hijacked that poor being's body making it happen.  I interfaced with the intelligence system and initiated an emergency shut down and it was all I could do to get through the sequence to the point where I could literally escape through the bars and get out the entrance and stand up outside.  But we were still very confused together.  I wanted very strongly to push a 'come get me' button, and the other being didn't know why.  I couldn't understand why it was so hard to make 'myself' continue with my panic, but apparently the other being was already questioning its sanity in a very protocol kind of way, so I struggled as hard as I could and suddenly woke up.  Once again, I was very surprised to find myself in bed, in this life, in this body.  The body I'd just left was smaller, the thoughts and feelings I'd had were much different from me in this life.
     
    Looking back, the odor that tripped my own panic button wasn't lethal to that other being, and it was able to ignore it.  It had no idea what in the world the problem was.  But in my own head, and still being tied to my own body, I instinctively knew that odor was highly toxic, and I was afraid it would kill me.  If I had not smelled that odor inside the mountain during the drilling, I'd probably still be there in my sleep.
     
    This is one of many many dreams I've had where I'm not even human, and most likely not on this planet.  This is not the first time I've confused other people or beings in my dream.  Usually I'm just part of it all and nothing interrupts the flow of experience, but sometimes *I* start to filter in as a separate person and things start getting confusing.
     
    I wanted to write this one down so I wouldn't forget it.  I've never kept a dream diary, but if I did there would have to be many categories and definitions of dream types.  This one is the most interactive accident I've had in quite a while, where I interrupted the other person's experiences.  Waking up from these kinds of dreams does not always cut the dream off.  For a few seconds after I was waking up, I knew the other person was wondering whether the interrogation he'd go through would find him unfit for work or much worse.  I felt really bad about not being able to go back and explain it was all my fault.
     
     

  • mind blindness

     

    One of my favorite sayings that I made up used to be "Mark Hammill doesn't exist long ago in a galaxy far, far away."
     
    One of the drawbacks of being aspie, at least for me, is mind blindness.  Keep in mind that Asperger's is a spectrum disorder, not a black and white diagnostic tool to define the brain function of an entire group.  It's basically a description of a variety of problems that some people can have that 'normals' don't.
     
    Mind blindness in general means that I'm not supposed to be able to 'read' faces.  I miss little facial cues that indicate how the other person feels.  I might not notice someone is fantastically bored with me yapping on and on about something I'm obsessed with.  Very typical stuff you read about aspies.
     
    But sometimes it goes deeper than that.  I have a facial recognition deficit problem, kind of like people get with brain traumas.  Even when people are familiar to me, I don't see them in my head the way they really look.  In the past I have been mildly laughed at for describing someone and getting the hair color wrong, and I just saw them within the week.  I also do this with eye color, and if I were to get really detailed, I couldn't accurately describe someone's nose as pointy or round.  It's not so much I can't remember as I'm so easily able to switch pieces and parts around in my mind.  I can reconstruct faces much like computers do.  Aspies are notorious for thinking in pictures, which means I can construct extremely detailed scenes and symbols for everything I hear or read or think.
     
    The facial recognition problem gets a little amusing.  I worked a hotel desk for a couple of years and saw thousands of faces come through.  Some of the regulars got a little miffed if I didn't greet them like old friends or family members.  Some of them would stand around and talk to me and I wouldn't even remember I'd spoken with them previously until they asked about something I'd said before.  One older couple was truly hurt when I didn't remember them at all, even though, checking the computer records, I had checked them in myself not just the month before, but every month for six months.  I had to apologize and explain I have a deficit in facial recognition.
     
    Conversely, I'm a little creeped out when people walk up to me in Walmart or somewhere and start talking to me like they know me.  I carry on a conversation just fine, but I never remember who the heck they were.  One time I asked the person what their name was, and they were so put off that it spoiled the rest of the conversation, which was quite short, and oddly, I never got the name.
     
    I tend to lose people I'm with easily in public because I don't see them in a sea of faces, so I try to remember what they are wearing.  Sometimes this backfires, and I wind up following other people around, to no end of cracking up on Scott's part.  I can't tell you how many times I've surprised other people in Walmart thinking they were Scott when I was done absorbing myself in a label.  I have this thing about jars and labels, kinda distracts me.
     
    Likewise, I get tv personalities mixed up like crazy.  I never could keep Dan Rather straight from a couple of other news reporters.  There are a few actresses I can keep straight because I've seen their movies so often (usually scifi movies), and by now Harrison Ford is iconic in my head, but I had no idea Steve Carell, Dan Burns, Maxwell Smart, Evan Baxter, and the mayor of Whoville were all the same guy.  Do you know how many times I saw the complete Star Wars trilogy before I knew who Mark Hammill was?  Probably dozens.
     
    There are some faces I never forget, usually because the person has made a huge impression on me in some way.  This doesn't happen very often though.
     
    I didn't realize that being like this is considered so defective until I ran into a person last year that specializes in doing therapy with patients who have suffered brain injury.  I was at a fundraiser laughing with someone about meeting them all over again 5 minutes later, and this woman happened to be in a nearby chair.  She was very intrigued that I have this much difficulty with facial recognition and was still able to hold jobs for years.  She asked me how I identify people, and I said it's an overall thing.  One person is tall and has a certain voice, another person is round and has a certain chuckle, another person reminds me of a cartoon and cracks me up, stuff like that.  It's not that I'm completely unable to recognize a face, it's more like it doesn't get properly catalogued.  If I have to go by a face alone with no other identifying characteristics, I get confused.  I have found pictures of several celebrities that have Scott's eyes and nose, and for some reason he reminds me of an uncle when he's tense, and his hair is like this or that person, and pretty quick, it's all a jumble in there.  It's like I don't see the whole face and tag a name to it.  What I see are similarities that some parts have to dozens of other faces I've seen, and the rest kinda just blurs in my mind.
     
    So if you walk up to me to show me your new colored contacts, don't be surprised if I have no idea who the heck you are.   
     

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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...

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