AS-Experience

Hiding under a spiral stair case in the green room of the little theatre, I just sat there. I held my head while it throbbed from the overload of negative information its cognition was taking in...the basketball players who smirked mockingly at my big-boned yet scrawny figure, the student council/cheerleader girls who looked over their shoulders in my direction, and whisper a rumor about me--something about me being a pedophile, or starting a hate group dedicated to persecuting people with Asperger's Syndrome. (All right, the last rumor was preposterous but, hey, I once considered bullying other people with AS to be a viable way of winning NT approval. At the end of the day, it just alienated me from people with and without AS alike.)

I had this fantasy where I was having a conference with my teachers. They were sitting at a wooden table, sipping from their Krispy Kreme coffee mugs, overlooking my permanent records. I glance over there to find that one of my teachers had accidentally spilled coffee on my permanent records. The teacher whose coffee blackened my permanent records said that I probably have Asperger's Syndrome. Then she went into her schpiel about how "Assies" are unemployable, speak with a Napoleon Dynomitician drone, and just about every stereotype WE are stigmatized with. I wanted to tell her that she pronounced the name "Aspie" as "Assie". As soon as I tried to tell her, she said to me in a insincere tone that I'll make something of myself, "despite this diagnosis". Four things occured to me: 1. The spilled coffee stained the "accomplishments" section of my record so much that they were barely discernible on paper 2. The teacher who mentioned AS just threw my records onto the table without even thinking about the coffee stain 3. Aspie, which is supposedly "an endearing term for those with AS", can easily become a slur if you replace the "P" with an "S" and 4. Even though it has been said that people with AS aren't able to tell when somebody is BS-ing them, I knew that she was. This may be a fictitious sequence of events, but the truth is there are alot of people like that teacher in my nightmare.

Many psychologists say that "Aspies" are simply "incapable of understanding human emotions when WE (us people with AS) get infuriated when WE don't want to believe that our social communication differences will keep the people in our lives from truly understanding us. WE are scared by a lot of NTs fight reactions toward our inabillity to process social cues instantly and are unintentional failure to understand and obey society's complex social laws. WE get frusterated by the NTs who have attempted to "help" us, but soon fled from our lives. Some of our former NT "friends" laughed at our "eccentric" perceptions of the worlds. Others were downright frightened by them. WE get teary-eyed when we realize that the a good number of us will go through life wanting but being unable to experience social richness, be attractive enough to marry high-maintanance/high intellect/highly compassionate husbands or wives. WE cry when the symptoms of AS keep us from getting jobs at Wal-Mart because WE know that most of US have the intelligence and ingenuity to successfully run corporations. WE can contrubute so much to America, but our bosses think its easier for them to lose their multi-million dollar buisnesses than it is for them to teach US to wait until our co-workers are done their tasks before WE go talk to them. WE are persecuted!

WE hate being labeled by our negative characteristics, but WE call ourselves "Aspies". Why can't WE respect ourselves and just tell the world that WE are people with AS.? We hate being the way WE are but its who WE are! As much as WE can't stand, WE love to thrive off the constant agony of feeling so many different emotions but not being able to express them to NTs in a socially appropriate manner. WE must love it or WE wouldn't fear there being a cure for AS. WE, after WE teach ourselves to pose as NTs during 9am to 5pm , might become the great filmmakers, scientists, writers, and mathematicians of the 21st century. WE might, if WE imitate the manners of the NT enough, have spouses and children. WE'LL do everything we can to prevent OUR children from getting taken into poison-ivy, debris-polluted woods by neighborhood bullies and stipped of $75 polo shirts, baggy pants, capris, and Star Wars shirts. WE hope that those bullies don't take the glasses of AS children, shatter them, and cut them with the shards of their damaged property. WE hope that those bullies won't find innovative ways to torture AS children. WE hope that those bullies aren't athletically built children with AS torturing scrawny children with AS.

WE understand that WE might, like the African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Jews and homosexuals of the US of A be chased on horses by men in blood-stained white sheets, or stomped into tar pavement by Doc Martens. WE hope that WE will be as neuro-typical as we can be without harming the AS individual inside of US. WE have to strive for HAPPINESS: The one emotion that AS individuals and NTs strive for.

trent, I don't stereotype myself as a geek at all. In fact, when people meet me they are mostly surprised to find out that I am passionate about science because I don't "look like a scientist".

I think your post has a very powerful message. It's interesting how my own perceptions of AS have changed so radically over the past few days since I decided to research it. The different permutations of symptoms and their severity seem infinite, as do the experiences of people with AS and thus the world views that they form around those experiences.

I think this is beautiful, as it clearly demonstrates what a wonderfully adaptive and intricate instrument the human brain is. I think you really hit the nail on the head, so to speak, in your last sentence. I have always thought of the pursuit of happiness as the true meaning of life, no matter who or what you are.

Geek Girl: I apologize for my accusing you of stereotyping yourself. I want to thank you wholeheartedly for reading my post. I also want other people with AS to respond to it. I imagine that the responses will reflect how truly different people with AS are from each another. Some people with AS like to call themselves "Aspies". I, on the other hand, don't like to label myself. Any type of criticism of my beliefs-as long as it's not destructive-I'm open to it. Thanks. Trent.

I don't personally hate having Asperger's. I think it does me more good than harm in the ways that important to me. Granted, I'm not what other people consider very successful, but I'm not done with my life yet, either. My life would probably be easier in many ways if I didn't have AS and I could get (and more importantly, keep) any job I was qualified for. But I'm sure my life would be harder in other ways as well.

I don't care about "Aspie" being a label, and I don't care what knee-jerk reaction the label might inspire in the poor dumb masses. Any retard that wants to look at me like some "broken person" because I've got that label wouldn't be worth the time talking to anyway - and now they won't even bother me by trying. They'll just go away. Pardon me while I celebrate my good fortune.

I'm an Aspie. I'm a geek. I happily spend most of my waking hours sitting at a computer, reading books, or other "geeky" activities such as dismantling anything that has been assembled by someone else and I don't understand the inner workings of. (Yes, I know that's dangling, and I don't care.) Let's be honest - if you have ever stripped down your keyboard and mouse to individual components and scrubbed it with soapy water so that you can get that "like new" clean and not because you're OCD about cleaning things, but rather because you get a warm-fuzzy feeling about perfectly functioning technology, you're a geek. That's not the only criteria, but it's definitely a powerful one and one that I'm guilty of. (Incidentally, you score extra points if the device works perfectly when reassembled.)


Labels are the big issue for me. Hell, we labeled the normal people. "Neurotypical" isn't exactly flattering, you know. "Normal" is just a nice way of saying "common", and when was the last time anything was simultaneously common and valuable?

The problem isn't that there's anything wrong with us. It's just that the NT's don't have a clue how to deal with us or what to do with us. You give me a job where I can use my brain and come up with elegant outside-the-box solutions to problems or play around with fun tech-toys day in and day out without invasive supervision and I'm happy as a clam. I work 10 hour days without complaint and work faster than most NT's can compete with. Until some mid-level manager comes along, tries to engage me in small talk and then takes something I say the wrong way, gets offended, and fires me. (Not that this has happened. Repeatedly.)

But hey, what are we gonna do? There's more of them than us, and they can just decide not to try to understand us if they want to. And lucky for us, we don't need a whole lot of them to like us for us to be happy. Find one or two here and there with the decency and intelligence to meet us halfway and we're good.

Maybe some day the NT's will figure out the kind of resource they have all around them if they just adjust their attitudes enough to not antagonize us. But if they don't, I'm not going to lose any sleep. Anyone that can't look at me and see a person isn't worth the time it would take me to consider their opinion.

Spektyr wrote:Yes, I know that's dangling, and I don't care.

What does that mean?

Labels are annoying because they create boundaries. Of course they are also very useful, because sometimes it's you need to be able to refer to subsets of whatever it is you're dealing with, including people. In theory, you could call every single object in the whole world a "thing" but that would quickly get very confusing, e.g. "pass me the thing so I can put some more thing in the thing before the thing boils over".

I think problems arise when people mistake subsets of a population for another population altogether. We humans appear to be very fond of making this mistake, in particular when dealing with other humans. Here is something to think about: the concept of race is arguably one of the most destructive concepts in human history, mainly because one race gets it into their heads that another race is in some way "less human", but has anyone ever thought that black cats are in any way "less cat-like" than tabby cats or tortoisheshells? I very much doubt it.

It's sad that people in general do not seem to be very tolerant of difference. We are all people, it's just that some of us are better in certain areas than others, whether that be the ability to digest lactose or host a party or understand quantum mechanics. I don't see why we can't all just deal with that and get on with the more important things in life, like making the world a better place for everyone. If only things were a little more logical, and the people who are actually best at whatever it is they do got the job, instead of those who are particularly good at networking, bullsh*tting, or bribing. Why do you think there is so much corruption in the upper echelons of society?

And just before anyone gets upset about talking about race... I am not a racist (as should be quite obvious if you've read the above). However, as I explained, sometimes it is useful to be able to refer to specific groups of people. I don't really like using the terms "black" or "white" because they don't accurately reflect what I think defines a race. For me, it is like an extension of nationality, and reflects your ancestry. So I would say that I am British, but also European, and that would be my race.

Anyway, back on topic... The same argument can be applied to the plethora of different ways in which the human brain can work. Even a person in a coma is still human. Personally, I don't think that there is such a thing as "normal". I'm pretty convinced that every single person on this planet could be classified as having some sort of neurological condition. So there is no need for any "us" versus "them" sentiment, which usually has only negative consequences anyway.

As an aside, I like the way that autistic conditions are grouped in the "autistic spectrum". The most familiar spectrum is that of visible light, which can be depicted as a rainbow, and this is a prominent symbol of the gay community. I can only assume that the rainbow is intended to represent a celebration of the variety found within our species, and is thus a very fitting symbol for almost any group of people. Hooray for rainbows!

Dangling, as in participle. The correct way grammatically to end that sentence would have been "of which I don't understand the inner workings" but it actually isn't as clear to modern people as the less correct grammer with the "of" is "dangling".

I pointed it out because of my recent post in another thread about grammar.