Recently, someone asked my wife what I was like as a kid.
As some of you know and others may well have surmised, I have autism. I was diagnosed in 1995 -- the first year the diagnosis was recognized by the APA -- with asperger's syndrome.
To meet me, you probably wouldn't know immediately that I live my life on the autism spectrum. But spend maybe 20 minutes with me and chances are you'll see little clues: The difficulty in making and maintaining eye contact in conversation, the overwhelming need to sound professorial when it's uncalled for, my stimming with my hands, etc.
I set out some years ago to write a memoir about growing up as an undiagnosed high functioning autistic child in the late 1970s and early 80s. But that memoir never got very far off the ground. So I thought I'd take some of that material and turn it into a very brief blog series -- a bit more personal, I'll grant -- than a lot of my other writing here. But I promise that series will be brief (maybe just 3 or 4 sporadic posts) about "growing up aspie".
Let me begin here by talking about "the early years".
When I was young we didn't have the money for home movies. But we did have lots of pictures. Most of those have been lost to history, but I remember them like they were yesterday.
I was an average baby/toddler. Maybe a little hard to engage at times. I was often staring intently at something off camera. I was as interested in objects as in people. Give me a stuffed animal and I'd probably hug it. Or wield it like a club. It was a toss up.
Thing is, I was not the most expressive baby. I could be coaxed into a smile for pictures if you worked hard enough, but if left to my own devices I wouldn't smile and nearly never looked at the camera. Instead, in pictures as a child, I look panicked or grumpy or confused way more often than I look happy. And when I do look happy it's in that shrieckish short of way -- as if manipulating my hands in some way.
I know I had trouble responding to my name as a toddler. And I specifically recall an incident with a new ball. My great grandmother had bought me what, to us, was an expensive big plastic ball. I sat on it for hours in the middle of the floor, just bouncing on it. She had to coax me to go outside and play with it. Even then, I sat on it and bounced. For much, much longer than I ever played with it.
There were pictures of me playing on the childhood swing set. I would sit in the swing and move from side to side, not really playing with the swing in the ordinary way children play.
And haircuts: I hated getting haircuts, except for those times when the barber would allow me to play with with clips. And by "play", I mean arrange by size.
Being away from home caused considerable anxiety. For the first ten years of my life, I was practically an only child with my grandparents. I wonder if being the first child -- and the only child with them -- with no siblings to compare my behavior to -- made my autistic traits less obvious to those around me. Until I entered school, that is -- but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I was five the first time we went to Magic World and I saw animatronic characters. I recall sitting in stunned amazement for more than one show, just staring at the characters. I love them so much, in fact, that I became obsessed with their clothes -- and my first real childhood intellectual obsession is borne, with the Civil War.
I read everything I could get my hands on at the time about the Civil War. Granted, I was in kindergarten, but both my papaw and grandmother supported my addictions. We got my first card to the local county library. I tried checking out a book on the life of General Robert E. Lee. The librarian insisted I was too young to read the book so she refused to allow me to take it. I had my first full-blown public autistic meltdown in the library. She told my grandmother that I was "shaddy" and definitely too young to read the massive book. And tried to direct me to a children's section which featured lots of Clifford the Big Read Dog (I'd already read all those books, I tried to tell the lady). That didn't help matters.
Looking back at old pictures is fairly telling. I had telltale signs of Asperger's syndrome at a time when AS didn't exist. I remember being a generally happy kid in my preschool years. Because I didn't attend nursery school or daycare, I guess spent my first five years in a bit of a bubble, happily stimming my way through life.
Then came school ... which will lead me to my second installment.
As some of you know and others may well have surmised, I have autism. I was diagnosed in 1995 -- the first year the diagnosis was recognized by the APA -- with asperger's syndrome.
To meet me, you probably wouldn't know immediately that I live my life on the autism spectrum. But spend maybe 20 minutes with me and chances are you'll see little clues: The difficulty in making and maintaining eye contact in conversation, the overwhelming need to sound professorial when it's uncalled for, my stimming with my hands, etc.
I set out some years ago to write a memoir about growing up as an undiagnosed high functioning autistic child in the late 1970s and early 80s. But that memoir never got very far off the ground. So I thought I'd take some of that material and turn it into a very brief blog series -- a bit more personal, I'll grant -- than a lot of my other writing here. But I promise that series will be brief (maybe just 3 or 4 sporadic posts) about "growing up aspie".
Let me begin here by talking about "the early years".
When I was young we didn't have the money for home movies. But we did have lots of pictures. Most of those have been lost to history, but I remember them like they were yesterday.
I was an average baby/toddler. Maybe a little hard to engage at times. I was often staring intently at something off camera. I was as interested in objects as in people. Give me a stuffed animal and I'd probably hug it. Or wield it like a club. It was a toss up.
Thing is, I was not the most expressive baby. I could be coaxed into a smile for pictures if you worked hard enough, but if left to my own devices I wouldn't smile and nearly never looked at the camera. Instead, in pictures as a child, I look panicked or grumpy or confused way more often than I look happy. And when I do look happy it's in that shrieckish short of way -- as if manipulating my hands in some way.
I know I had trouble responding to my name as a toddler. And I specifically recall an incident with a new ball. My great grandmother had bought me what, to us, was an expensive big plastic ball. I sat on it for hours in the middle of the floor, just bouncing on it. She had to coax me to go outside and play with it. Even then, I sat on it and bounced. For much, much longer than I ever played with it.
There were pictures of me playing on the childhood swing set. I would sit in the swing and move from side to side, not really playing with the swing in the ordinary way children play.
And haircuts: I hated getting haircuts, except for those times when the barber would allow me to play with with clips. And by "play", I mean arrange by size.
Being away from home caused considerable anxiety. For the first ten years of my life, I was practically an only child with my grandparents. I wonder if being the first child -- and the only child with them -- with no siblings to compare my behavior to -- made my autistic traits less obvious to those around me. Until I entered school, that is -- but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I was five the first time we went to Magic World and I saw animatronic characters. I recall sitting in stunned amazement for more than one show, just staring at the characters. I love them so much, in fact, that I became obsessed with their clothes -- and my first real childhood intellectual obsession is borne, with the Civil War.
I read everything I could get my hands on at the time about the Civil War. Granted, I was in kindergarten, but both my papaw and grandmother supported my addictions. We got my first card to the local county library. I tried checking out a book on the life of General Robert E. Lee. The librarian insisted I was too young to read the book so she refused to allow me to take it. I had my first full-blown public autistic meltdown in the library. She told my grandmother that I was "shaddy" and definitely too young to read the massive book. And tried to direct me to a children's section which featured lots of Clifford the Big Read Dog (I'd already read all those books, I tried to tell the lady). That didn't help matters.
Looking back at old pictures is fairly telling. I had telltale signs of Asperger's syndrome at a time when AS didn't exist. I remember being a generally happy kid in my preschool years. Because I didn't attend nursery school or daycare, I guess spent my first five years in a bit of a bubble, happily stimming my way through life.
Then came school ... which will lead me to my second installment.