Mundane Things That I Find Funny

I have an unusual sense of humor. Sure, I laugh at other things that people find funny, but usually these people, like me, have a "fringe" sense of humor and laugh the hardest at rounds of Cards Against Humanity or at jokes on South Park. 

But there are other things that strike me... not as funny, per se, but amusing. And these things wouldn't make sense to most people unless I explained why. A joke works when you reflexively laugh at it. But there are some mundane things that I find amusing because you have to think about them. And when you have to think about why something amuses you, it doesn't make most people laugh. But what are these mundane things that amuse me, and why? Is it an Asperger's thing, or does this happen to everybody? Let me give you some examples:

The Boston green line trolleys have only 2 cars, sometimes 1. It especially amuses me when I see these 1-car-only trolleys. Why? Because I lived in New York City for over a decade. With the exception of the infamous and hated G train (which had only 4 cars), all the subway lines in New York had around 10-11 cars in order to accommodate the city's elephantine population. But Boston doesn't even have a million people, let alone the 8 million that New York has. The blue, red, and orange lines usually have 5-6 cars at the most. Probably since the green line is the oldest line and is a trolly and not a regular subway train, it only has 1-2 cars. So when I see a one-car trolly (usually on weekends and in late evenings) I think it's cute. I think of the city of Boston as a person, trying naively to prove it's just like New York by having its own subway system, but not coming close to even resembling New York. It makes me think of a little kid imitating his or her older sibling.

Ten years ago, I was at a water park. There was one water ride which had circular rafts to hold a few people who went down the slide. There was a conveyer belt to carry the tubes back to the top of the ride for the next users:

But this amused me. Why? Think about it. They had to hire engineers to not only build the slide but also to build the conveyer belt that brought the tubes back up. You have to have a serious engineering talent to build such structures, and it amused me that so much effort was put into something so frivolous when there are more important things that such talents could be used for. Not that I dislike frivolity-- obviously I like it or I wouldn't go to water parks!

When I was little, things like this didn't just amuse me: they put me in stitches. I guarantee you that if I had encountered the New York subways and then the Boston trolleys as a kid, I would have laughed hysterically. I would have lost my shit, as they say, over the conveyer belt carrying the tubes up to the top of the water slide. And when I was in elementary school, I thought footballs (as in American football) were hilarious because of their shape. If somebody threw or kicked a football, as it turned end over end it made me think of some weird creature running away. I used to laugh really hard at these runaway footballs, and nobody could figure out why I was laughing. Another time, when I was in 1st grade (age 7), I laughed hysterically in class for no fewer than 10 minutes over the word "grass". Why was it funny to me? I don't know. I think I just thought the word sounded funny. When I was a little older I also thought the word "Batman" was funny.

One of my friends with Asperger's thinks palm trees are "hilarious" when viewed from far away. Why? He doesn't know. He just thinks they're hilarious. Another friend with Asperger's thinks the word "couch" is funny, and when she was little you could not stop her from laughing at that word. 

A trademark of having Asperger's is having an odd sense of humor. But laughing at mundane things? Is that an Asperger's characteristic, or does this happen to other people as well? Comments from everyone on the neurological spectrum are welcome!

Exercise, The Zone, and Altered States

I don't know what happened. Maybe it was the sudden change of weather, from just barely above freezing to the mid to upper 60s. For years I've said that when the temperature begins to rise into the 60s in early spring I feel like I'm waking up from deep coma. Summer is my favorite season (I HATE winter), and the spring weather just gets me excited for the upcoming months. But something else happened. I'm not sure what. I feel like a switch suddenly flipped in my mind this past Saturday. It is a switch that hasn't been fully flipped in about two years.

What happened two years ago? I lost 30 pounds. But that was only the beginning. I was going to the gym 5-6 days a week; 4 days a week was a "bad" week for me. I was addicted to working out, and in a good way. I enjoyed the euphoria I got after my weekly special "killer workout" which consisted of a 90-minute swim or protracted treadmill running followed by completing the entire circuit of weight machines. The weight just fell off at a steady rate of 2 pounds per week, and I was getting stronger. My state of mind was changing, I was more alert, and I had more energy. Suddenly, the gym was a single-minded focus for me and was a place I looked forward to going to every day. Eventually, I began training myself to run again. Overall, I was constantly in an altered state. I didn't just feel euphoric coming from the gym-- I felt euphoric going to the gym. And this euphoria kept me motivated and energetic and led to a kind of super-euphoria after working out. It was a wonderful cycle that helped me lose weight, condition my heart, and get stronger. I even found myself drawn to healthier foods and less interested in sugar, which caused my weight gain to begin with (it's a VERY powerful addiction, trust me). Why? Again, I don't know. It's like a different part of my brain was suddenly in charge. But I was also eating less, was eating more sensible portions. I wonder if exercises such as running and swimming, which tighten the abdominal muscles, and perhaps press against my stomach, helped to curb my appetite.

But the light from this switch gradually dimmed a year later. How? I don't know. I was still going to the gym a few times a week, but my workouts didn't "feel" the same. Nor was my motivation the same. I was going to the gym as a matter of routine, but only 3-4 times a week. Then last year I gained back 10 pounds because I was starting to eat more sugary snacks again. When I tried curbing these tendencies and running off the extra weight, I found myself starting to get back into the Zone, albeit slowly. I was running almost every day. But just as as the switch was beginning to turn back on, I gave myself patellar tendonitis. After that, I had to go to physical therapy and could only do cycling for several months. How could I possibly get back in the Zone when I was only exercising my legs? How could I feel euphorically motivated to get on a stationary bike and not do much of anything? I needed a full body workout to do that, and I couldn't even swim (I am not good at freestyle, and breast stroke aggravated my knees because of the kicks involved).

As I started to get better, I began using the seated elliptical at the gym. That worked my arms and legs, but I was sitting. It just wasn't enough. It wasn't my entire body. Then last week I made a decision: For one thing, I was going to go to the gym 6 times a week (trainers recommend you take one day to recuperate) like I did before. If my knees hurt after my workout, I'd just ice them. Even if my knees got worse at first, ultimately they would get better if I took some of the extra weight off-- I'm within normal limits (mid 130s), but just barely.

I started going to the gym more often but it still felt partially forced. But then last Saturday I suddenly felt like I was in the Zone again, for the first time since 2013. A switch had flipped in my mind. I was finding myself doing what I did in 2013: getting out of bed and going straight to the gym. Suddenly working out on the seated elliptical even felt a little different. But why? It's the same workout that was boring me. Then yesterday the temperature went up into the mid 60s, and it was a perfect day for a swim. And suddenly I really, really wanted to swim. I went to the gym thinking that maybe I'd swim for an hour, but I ended up feeling energetic from the moment I got into the pool. I ended up doing a 100-minute swim (plus a 5-minute warmup and 5-minute cool down). I was so energized that the altered state that comes from being in the Zone made me feel that just swimming wasn't enough. No. I was launching myself off from the walls, twisting, turning... I almost felt like I could flip through the air like dolphins do when they swim. In this altered state I felt like I was one giant muscle and the pool was my conquest. That was just how I felt two years ago.

When I walked out of the gym I was wonderfully weary and euphoric. I knew that I would have to take the next day off to let my muscles heal. The expression "getting ripped" isn't just a metaphor-- your muscles do tear and you need to give them a day to regenerate after a killer workout. But I didn't want to take the day off. I wanted to go swimming again today, and I found myself counting the hours until tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be swimming for one hour (as I said, killer workouts are weekly). And it will be a vigorous, energetic swim. What's more, I didn't even have to ice my knees after this workout-- the swimming seems to be helping the healing process.

So I feel like I'm back in the Zone. The switch has flipped. I'm in an altered state. I am confident that I will lose the extra 10 pounds by June with an ultimate target weight of 110 by the end of the summer (yes, 110 is within normal limits for my height. If it's too much of a loss, I'll adjust. No big deal.).  Yes, I know gut feelings don't mean anything, but something else is going on. In this altered state, where I suddenly want to practically live at the gym, where I suddenly have little to no interest in sugary snacks, where I suddenly feel like I can just kick ass, I instinctively know what I need to do. Maybe this is just the fact that it's become easy for me to avoid junk food lately. Maybe it's just the fact that I suddenly feel increased energy during my workout and instinctively know how to make these workouts more effective (ie, the twisting, turning, etc. during swimming, for example). Maybe it's both.

But the Zone isn't just my sudden motivation to "live" at the gym. It all ties in with a sudden increase in confidence I haven't had in almost two years (I got fired from two jobs, which was a severe blow to my ego). Maybe it helps that I recently have been able to get work as a freelance writer. But whatever the case, some switch flipped in my mind on Saturday, the same one that flipped two years ago when I started making exercise an almost-daily part of my life. I don't know how it works. If I could bottle it and sell it, I'd be rich. I also wish I knew how to describe this state of mind because words don't do it justice. Unless you've experienced it, you might as well be asking me to describe what the 5th dimension looks like. But I suspect that there's some chemical change going on. I wish I knew. I wish there would be studies on this sort of thing. I'd like to know what the chemical reaction is and what triggers it. Exercise physiology and how the brain works both fascinate me to no end. But whatever the case, I'm feeling much better about life than I have in a long, long time.

I was originally thinking about writing a post about a state of mind that I sometimes get into, which I call the Monster. But this week I was just feeling too damned positive.

More on Maturity

"[Do y]ou ever feel like a little kid around people your own age?"

That was a question that somebody posted in an Asperger's group on Facebook the other day. I thought, "Oh, God, YES." Actually, I should clarify. I don't feel that way now at age 34, but sometimes I felt that way from adolescence up until my late twenties. In my last blog post, I wrote about how gender conformity is often perceived as maturity. Now I'm going to talk about some of the other arbitrary designations for maturity.

When I was in fifth grade (age 11), I noticed that all the other girls in my class were starting to get crushes on boys (or at least they appeared to-- I'm sure a few of them were actually gay). I felt like I was the only girl who didn't at least pretend to have a crush on a boy. Like many kids (girls especially, for some reason) with Asperger's, I couldn't see what the big deal was about "going out" with someone. That boy over there is cute? I didn't notice, and I really don't see what you're seeing. I just see another person who happens to be a boy. Dating? Kissing? Whatever for? For me that would just get in the way of my writing and drawing. In that same year, all the kids-- boys and girls-- were throwing around sexual slang left and right. Nearly every day I came home from school and asked one of my parents questions (usually my father, if I recall-- probably because his answers were more direct) like, "What does 'humping' mean?" or "What's a boner?" 

I learned the hard way that not at least pretending to have a crush on someone got me labeled as "gay"(keep in mind that in 1991- 1992, when I was in 5th grade, there were very few openly gay people) or "immature". I also learned that if I heard one of my peers using a sexual slang that asking what said slang meant would only earn me ridicule, usually in the form of being called names that indicated that I was immature or at least "out of it". I also remember being afraid to use the word "decibel" in that class when the teacher asked a relevant question during a science lesson. I thought my knowing that word would earn me even more ridicule (I was probably right). But why? Why does knowing "boner" make you "grown-up" but knowing "decibel" makes you a nerd?

I know what you're thinking-- what do 10- and 11-year-olds know about maturity? They're just repeating what they've heard in movies and they don't know what half of it means. Or, in terms of crushes, it's just something new for them so they think it means they're suddenly grown up. OK, fair enough. Except I continued to feel like a little kid all through adolescence and my teenage years whenever the subject of dating came up, no matter what the context. When I was in 8th grade (age 14), I recall one particular instance where my parents were talking to my brother (then 17) about school and his friends and in particular about whom his friends were going out with. I remember thinking, "This is the kind of 'grown up' talk that I'm expected to be part of, but I can't be part of. I don't know how."

Think that was just my perception? It didn't help when my mother kept nagging me throughout my teenage years, asking me whom I had a crush on. This was a topic I was enormously uncomfortable with. For one thing, my mother kept trying to engage me by pointing to celebrities on TV and saying, "He's cute-- don't you think?" That made me feel put on the spot. For another, when I got a little older and finally did start getting crushes, I refused to talk about it because the topic was too embarrassing for me. I experienced crushes very intensely and I knew that Mom wouldn't understand. When we had one of these conversations when I was 17, I tried to assure Mom that I had had crushes but that I just didn't want to talk about them. She didn't believe me and started lecturing me about how kids my age are interested in dating. She told me that I was at an age at which I was supposed to start feeling attracted to boys-- or girls, if I was gay. But I remember thinking that I found it hard to believe that every single person on the planet except me experienced romantic/sexual attraction on a regular basis. For me it was unusual (last year I learned this is called demisexuality), and I thought there had to be somebody else out there besides me who fit this profile. But what in the world did it have to do with maturity? Why not just another trajectory of development? 

I also recall a time when I was in the counselor-in-training (CIT) program at my summer camp when I was 17. The staff would not let me work with kids for the first half of the summer because my less-than-stellar social skills got translated as immaturity (nobody knew what Asperger's was in 1998). I understand now that they did have some valid concerns, but the same staff often did very appalling and unprofessional things that at age 17 I recognized were not conducive to running a summer camp safe for children. For example, a lot of the counselors did drugs. I don't mean on their 2 1/2 days off they went to New York with their friends and smoked weed (but I'm sure they did that as well). I mean they did drugs (usually weed, but probably more in some cases) on their breaks. They often even cut activities and let the other counselors pull their weight. During campers' rest times, the counselors often went to the staff lounge to smoke weed and left their kids unsupervised in the cabins. Even then I saw the clear hypocrisy in their concerns about me. I actually cared deeply about the kids and went out of my way to help them if something was wrong. But it didn't matter because of my lack of social savoir-faire.

As you might have guessed, at camp I had the reputation of being an anti-drug fascist. A fellow CIT finally asked me what I would do if I knew for a fact that a particular person on staff was doing drugs. I said something like, "Well, that depends. If it were something relatively harmless like weed, I would tell them how I felt about it and remind them that they shouldn't do it when they're supposed to be caring for kids. If it were LSD or heroin, I would probably report it because it's a safety issue for the kids." All the other CITs were completely stupefied and even upset when I said this. Why? Why were my social skills issues considered immaturity but doing drugs at a children's summer camp wasn't? Again, it's arbitrary. 

What I think it comes down to in all of the aforementioned cases is that people often mistake conformity as maturity. This is true whether it's gender conformity, conformity in expected psychosexual development, conformity in knowing the right slang, and above all-- conformity in social skills, even at the expense of doing the right thing.

Despite that uncomfortable discussion with the other CITs at camp, I didn't feel like a little kid around them. But that was the exception, not the rule. I often felt that I was much younger than my peers outside of camp because I just could not relate to them. I also felt like a little kid around people who were just a few years older than me inside of camp and out. This continued well into my twenties and it reached a crescendo when at age 27 I got a horrible crush on a Sergio, a guy 8 1/2 years older than me who had been a counselor at my camp in 1995. We had found each other on Facebook and hit it off immediately and became friends. However, he shunned me as soon as he figured out I had feelings for him. We haven't spoken since. That same year, my ex-best friend Melanie (1 year older) got married. She didn't invite me to the wedding and she cut me out of her life. Both shunnings were in 2008. It was a horrible year, and between the incidents with Melanie and Sergio, I felt like a little kid. I was not only too immature to have a friend 8 1/2 years older, but also too immature to have one of any age who was married. I began to feel that these little milestones that people take for granted were also a reflection of how immature I was. Because getting married wasn't on my radar, I was and always would be an immature little kid.

My feelings of being a little kid around my peers and people slightly older than me finally changed in late 2009 (age 29). I cannot divulge the exact details, but it did involve me becoming a regular on an Internet forum. People of all ages were interested in what I had to say. They thought I was interesting and intelligent and many praised me for my unique perspective. They didn't treat me like an annoying little kid who was dominating the forum (as did happen on a listserv in college). It was this kind of validation that I needed to be able to begin putting people like Melanie and Sergio behind me.

I hope this blog post gives everyone something to think about. I think it's important.

Gender Conformity= Maturity?

I was thirteen years old when I first realized that most people thought of being a tomboy as a childhood phase rather than an enduring personality characteristic.

In fact, this mindset is so pervasive to the point of cliché that it is a plot device in many movies. That is, unless the girl is particularly young, she is presented as a tomboy in the beginning of the movie only as a segue to illustrate her journey into becoming a "young lady", usually at around age twelve [Now and Then (1995) immediately comes to mind]. And these movies seem to reflect the expectation that being a tomboy is a phase that is put to rest around the start of puberty, especially when a first crush enters the picture. In fact, the word "tomboy" specifically refers to young, prepubescent girls. There is no equivalent word for teen girls or adult women that does not have a lesbian connotation.

Like many women with Asperger's Syndrome, I was a tomboy growing up and still identify as one today. By my mid-teens, I got a very clear message that being a tomboy was considered a sign of immaturity. When I was fourteen, I went with my family at Boston's New England Aquarium. My parents asked me to put my baseball cap on backwards. This was really unusual as they both hated it when I wore baseball caps backwards (Dad just hated backwards-pointing baseball caps to begin with; Mom disliked the fact that it made me look boyish), but they asked me to do it so that I would look twelve and be able to get into the aquarium at the eleven-and-under ticket price. When I asked Dad why wearing my hat backwards would make me pass for eleven more easily, he said, "Well, it makes you look like a little tomboy." Yes, and people assume tomboys are little girls.

Over the next few years, I had numerous fights with my mother about my choice of clothing. I  preferred T-shirts/sweaters and jeans and only dressed in girly clothes on holidays when Mom made me (I hated it but put up with it because I knew it would be over in a couple hours). But she wanted me to dress girly at school as well. She thought it would stop the horrendous bullying I experienced. During one of our fights, Mom said to me, "You're growing up and it's about time you start looking like a girl!" Again, there was the implication that being a tomboy and dressing like one is immature. These fights scared me because I knew that I would never, ever be comfortable in what I jokingly call boob-neckline shirts, dresses, skirts, and makeup. If I were still this way as an adult, would that make me perpetually immature?

Over the years I have begun to wear slightly more feminine clothing than I used to (still no boob-necklines, skirts, dresses, or makeup), but usually these garments have a bit of a "hippie" edge to them. I have grown to like some of the "hippie girl" clothes. And I didn't start wearing them because I thought people would see me as more mature or because I wanted to impress a guy, but because my tastes slightly changed. Right now I can hear somebody saying, "Well, that's a sign of maturity." But why? Why is conforming to gender expectations considered maturity? What about butch lesbians who dress girly in childhood and then present butch in adulthood? Nobody would ever dream of saying that the fact that they figured out that they weren't girly girls (or simply experiencing a shift in preferences)-- that is, being honest about who they were-- was a sign of maturity.

What has always bothered me is how movies present their tomboy characters going through a drastic, overnight change rather than a gradual, subtle and nuanced change. In Now and Then, the tomboy Roberta tapes her boobs and wears androgynous clothing. But by the end of the movie she has stopped taping her boobs, not because she no longer feels the urge to do it, but because she wants to impress her first crush. And of course by the end of the movie she is wearing girly clothes. I've often said cynically, "Coming-of-age movies about boys and girls have two things in common-- discovery and boys."

Oh, but it's just a movie, you say? Well, I remember in eighth grade one of my best friends went from tomboy to girly-girl literally over the course of a weekend. And this change wasn't superficial. It marked the beginning of a drastic change. Within months, my friend no longer shared my interests and I barely knew her anymore. Things only went downhill from there, and she even eventually sided with the bullies.

Oh, but what's wrong with being a girly girl, you ask? Aren't you being just as bad as those who say that tomboys are "wrong"? No, I'm not saying that being a girly-girl is wrong. I just find myself wondering why so many tomboys change drastically overnight. In fact, I've noticed that with girls in general, not just tomboys. Many girls (by no means all of them, but enough that it left an impression on me) I knew growing up seemed to change their interests and their personalities within the first year of adolescence. The boys on the other hand? Yeah, they grew up, but their interests grew with them. They weren't left by the wayside.

And I will say this: Outgrowing "that tomboy stage" does occasionally happen in the same nuanced and gradual manner of the changes that we all go through as we grow up. And when it does, it seems more authentic and less of a response to peer pressure or a feeling of obligation from a first crush. In the summer of 2000 when I worked at a camp in Michigan, there was an eleven-year-old girl, Karen (not her real name) whom I initially mistook for a boy. She dressed in clothing that clearly came from the boys' department, and she had a boyish haircut. Same deal in 2001 and 2002. When I returned to volunteer for two weeks in 2007, Karen was eighteen years old. She had grown her hair out and her clothing was somewhat more feminine. But she didn't become super-girly-- that is, she didn't undergo a drastic change, superficially let alone in her personality. Yes, there are pictures of her on Facebook in dresses, but there are also pictures of her wearing androgynous clothing (though not the male clothing she wore as a child). When I saw her in 2007 with a more feminine look, I knew that it was still Karen in there. She simply changed the way she dressed and wore her hair. She was still funny, irreverent, intelligent, and athletic Karen. And I had never known her well, but I knew enough to know that she most likely grew out her hair and changed her clothing style as a personal decision, not as a response to peer pressure. She probably underwent a gradual, nuanced change that likely reflected a change in taste. But again, is that a reflection of maturity, or just a change in taste?

One of the reasons I blog is to raise consciousness about unconscious assumptions many of us have. There seems to be an assumption that gender conformity is a sign of maturity. Actually, I think conformity in general is seen as a sign of maturity. More on that next week. Stay tuned!

What I Knew Part II: A Lot More Than You Think!

My previous blog post talked about the perception of people with Asperger's as gullible and how, if anything, I was more vigilant than most people need to be. The thing is, I knew and understood a lot more than many people (including my own parents, of course) gave me credit for, and I don't just mean in the realm of knowing when I was being manipulated.

Looking back, it seems that adults thought of me as so detached from reality, almost as if they saw me as a goldfish swimming aimlessly through a bowl and repeatedly hitting my head on the side. It seemed that they thought that I didn't know that I was hitting my head, let alone know that most goldfish don't do this. But I knew. I knew and understood much more than they realized. And despite what they thought, I was very aware that I was different.

By the time I was eleven, I had some vague idea that I was being looked at, that something was going on behind my back, that adults were talking about me. I was well aware that my parents thought there was something psychologically wrong with me. So around that time when I started seeing a psychologist, Dr. Klein (not his real name), I knew I had a lot to be suspicious of. My mother usually talked with Dr. Klein alone for five minutes before my session started. But one day she was in there for almost the entire hour that was supposed to be mine. After I realized that a long time had passed, I knew that something was going on, that they were talking about me. I did what any suspicious eleven-year-old would do: I sat outside the door and eavesdropped. 

I remember Mom saying in exasperation, "She doesn't tell me what she wants." I knew exactly what she was referring to. One day (maybe the same day; I don't remember) before school I was looking for my bra. I had just started "developing", so needing a bra was a new and embarrassing thing for me. Like any adolescent girl, I didn't want my father to hear me talking about it. I found my mother and whispered, "I need my bra." She couldn't hear me. "What?" she had asked in a very loud voice. "My bra," I whispered again.  She still didn't hear me. She kept talking more and more loudly. Not wanting Dad to overhear, in a normal voice I said something like, "My... you know." Mom didn't figure it out. So there she was that afternoon, telling Dr. Klein that for some reason something was preventing me from communicating a simple request. The fact that it hadn't occurred to Mom or Dr. Klein that I would eavesdrop and the fact that Mom couldn't figure out that I had been trying to tell her without Dad overhearing that I was looking for my bra speaks volumes: It shows just how little adults thought I knew and understood. 

Around the same time, I had started drawing violent Addams Family cartoons. I knew not to draw violent pictures in school. But Mom forbade me from drawing them at all because for some reason she was inordinately convinced that I was indeed drawing them in school. Of course I knew at age eleven that there were certain activities appropriate for different contexts! I may have had trouble with some of these, but not all of them as my parents thought.

When I was turning eighteen, I was friends with a girl, Jenna (not her real name), who was fooling around with Wicca. When Mom found out, she yelled at me to stay away from her. Recently I got back in touch with Jenna (as detailed in "Why Do You Keep Dredging These Things Up"?) and I mentioned the Wicca incident to my parents. Neither of my parents remember the incident or even who Jenna was. Mom said that she was likely scared that I would join a cult (I do remember this being the case; Dad and I had had a conversation shortly after the incident). I recall feeling insulted that Mom would think I would be stupid enough to do something like that. When I brought up the incident a few weeks ago, Mom mentioned that I was a "kid with problems" and that was why she had reacted the way she did. I was a month shy of my eighteenth birthday at the time. Of course I knew that cults were dangerous! The Heaven's Gate suicide had happened a little over a year before, and I remember thinking that it was horrible and that it was amazing how easily people could be indoctrinated. And my parents knew that I had had these thoughts because we'd talked about it at the time (the absurdity of thinking that trying out Wicca is a direct pathway to a cult is another tangent I won't get into here). 

I often missed social cues, but I was also better at reading between the lines than many people gave me credit for. In the summer of 1998, when I was seventeen and in the C. I. T. program at Camp Negev, my counselors told me on the first day that they were not letting me work with kids. When I asked why, they said that they wanted me to do "a special job". Suspicious that there was something else going on, I forced it out of them. "It" was that they were not comfortable letting me work with kids. Did they really think I wasn't going to know that there was something they weren't telling me? Did they really not think I would force it out of them? Throughout the day, I was quite upset and went to one of the head staff about it. When I asked her why I was being kept from the kids, she told me that people "had concerns". But I had had enough experience to know that someone telling me that they "had concerns" was a euphemism for something more serious. I had enough experience to know that it could mean, "You're weird", "We see you as a problem," "We don't want you here", or all of the above and more. Long before that, I knew when people were keeping something from me, or not telling me the entire story. "Forcing it out of them" is something I have long since had down to an art. Why wouldn't I, if experience taught me that a lot went on about me behind closed doors?

What I Knew Part I: Asperger's and Gullibility

Probably one of the most prevailing stereotypes is that people with Asperger's Syndrome are remarkably gullible. Many books for parents of kids with Asperger's implore them to make sure their kids know when someone is trying to manipulate them in any way. Parents are told that they will have to constantly give their kids a reality check, because their kids often don't know what is going on.

Growing up, my problem was the exact opposite. If anything, my bullshit radar was on high sensitivity. By the time I was eight or nine, I usually knew when people were trying to manipulate me, whether in the form of being sarcastic (and people with Asperger's are not supposed to be able to understand sarcasm??) or in the form of sounding overly sweet in some way. And actually, my own parents often accused me of being paranoid. There's an old expression: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you. My teachers and parents often felt that other kids were genuinely reaching out to me and I was just nastily blowing them off. Occasionally that was true (and why shouldn't I be extra vigilant if experience told me that most people wanted to humiliate me?), but an overwhelming majority of the time I knew exactly what was going on, that other kids were trying to set me up or were mocking me in some way. The fact that my teachers and parents rarely believed me made it more difficult.

For example, when I was in 7th grade (age 13), I was very uncomfortable changing for gym class in front of everyone else in the locker room, so I changed in a shower stall. One day, a classmate came over to me and asked in a mockingly sweet tone, "Excuse me, can I please come in there? I want to change and I don't want anybody to see my panties." Of course I saw that she was mocking the fact that I was uncomfortable changing in front of everyone else. A stereotypical person with Asperger's who takes everything literally might interpret this as someone genuinely wanting to come into the stall with the person already there and change so that the other girls don't see whatever cutesy patterns are on her underwear. And that's another thing-- the panties reference. I knew she was making fun of what one might see as the silliest, most childish reason for not wanting to change in front of others. I think we all remember being six years old and telling each other, "Ooh, I can see your underwear!" or "Nice underwear!" or "Ha ha, you have Care Bears underwear!" She was implying that my not wanting to change in front of others (which had nothing to do with underwear, a poor body image, or even modesty but rather just the simple fact that I was not used to it) was babyish. I understood as quickly as any neurotypical person, and I told the girl to go to hell.

That evening I told my parents about it and also mentioned that I had told the girl to go to hell. I told them that the girl was being sarcastic (I think facetious is a more appropriate term) when she asked to join me in the stall. Dad's response was, "It sounds like you were the one who was being sarcastic. You need to give other people a turn if they want to change in there." Dad somehow missed the implications of the girl's panties comment and the fact that she said that she wanted to come in there with me.

There were many other times throughout my childhood when other kids would pretend to be nice to me just to fuck with me, as the expression goes, and I saw right through their act. If someone told me that they loved my out-of-control-Orphan-Annie-thick hair that I hated, I knew they were being sarcastic. If a boy came up to me and said, "Oh, baby, will you go out with me?" I knew he saw me as a loser and thought it was hilarious to ask me out and call me baby. I knew that if kids who'd bullied me all year long asked me if they could sign my yearbook (or vice-versa), they were just entertaining themselves and their group of friends. I refused to let them sign my yearbook, and I refused to sign theirs. Of course, my parents would hear about these incidents and think that the kids were being "nice" and that I was being "paranoid" and blowing them off in some way.

I recall that a number of times Mom commented that people tried so hard to be nice to me and that they were going to stop being nice to me if I kept being paranoid. She had absolutely no clue, and I knew exactly what was going on, exactly what I was looking at. But by 9th grade (age 15), I really began to second-guess myself and wonder if Mom was right. So for the rest of high school and in early adulthood, when I knew damn well that others were fucking with me, I often played along just in case they weren't fucking with me. Also, I often ended up playing along because I didn't know what else to do. It was a bit embarrassing to say, "Yeah, I know you're fucking with me." In 9th grade I missed a day of gym class. When I came in the next day, a girl said, "We missed you so much and we needed you on our team." I was always terrible at sports. But I knew getting visibly upset and saying, "Go to hell" or some other comeback wouldn't fix anything. So instead I said something like, "I'm not that good." I didn't know what else to say. Guess what? This playing along made me look, well, gullible to many people.

Mom often commented that I never took advice from people (this wasn't true, but that's another blog post altogether). So with her comments about my not being nice when people reached out to me in mind, I threw caution to the wind one evening when I got an odd phone call from someone. The girl on the other end of the line said her name was Margaret and that she was my best friend from 3rd grade (age 9). Every antenna in my head went up immediately. My best friend in 3rd grade was not named Margaret; in fact I had never known anybody named Margaret. But I thought about my mother's comments about not being nice when people reached out to me and decided to be nice. I asked the girl what she'd been doing for the past six years and what her phone number was. She told me she'd just moved into a new house that day and that she also was a supermodel. Once again, I knew this sounded ridiculous. But, again, my mother's advice was in my head.

"Margaret" said that she had a boyfriend who was trying to break up with her and she didn't know what to do. Then she said she was thinking of committing suicide. I still thought she was bullshitting me but... what if she wasn't? So I told her something like, "No, don't kill yourself. It's not worth it." At that point, my parents (who had been out all evening) had just come home and listened in on the final call, the one about suicide. After I got off the phone, my parents informed me that it was indeed a prank call. "How could you fall for something like that?" Mom demanded. Well, here's her answer. I was trying to take her advice.

In his memoir Atypical, fellow Aspie Jesse Saperstein relates a story of when some classmates played a cruel prank on him in high school. He received an email one day from a girl named Liz. She said that she had always thought he was a nice person but that she was too shy to approach him at school. When I read much of Jesse's (I'm on a first name basis with him; he's my age and I hung out with him one time last summer when he was visiting Boston for a book tour) memoir, I felt like I was reading my own story. But this is where Jesse and I part ways: Had somebody sent me an email like that, I would have wondered how they got my email address and would have been very suspicious of their motives. In fact, in high school someone who I didn't know actually did send me an instant message online. This person was real, and we chatted briefly, but I was very careful about what I said, lest it be used as ammunition against me.

Jesse wasn't suspicious, however, and he believed that Liz was his close friend. In fact, Jesse even went out on a date with her. But the problem was that Liz wasn't even real. The girl on the "date" was just a friend of the bullies who went to another school,  an actress playing the part of a fictional character. The prank went on for six months until Jesse found out the truth.

Although many kids with Asperger's-- including Jesse when he was younger-- easily fall for pranks, many also don't. As I've said, I was hypervigilant during my school years. But as I've also said, I sometimes played along because I didn't know what else to do. I now wonder if the stereotype of gullibility really is based on a pervasive characteristic and that I'm the exception to this, or if the people who write these books assume that some of the kids who play along, as I did, are actually gullible. It's worth asking. It could be that people are interpreting the thought processes of Aspies from very superficial behaviors.

After all, it was only recently that popular psychology overturned the myth about people with Asperger's lacking empathy.

"Why do You Keep Dredging this Stuff Up?"

I had a really hard time making friends when I was in high school. My only friends were the ones I went to Camp Negev with, except for my then-best friend, Melanie. But that was until I met Jenna. I met Jenna (not her real name) in the fall of 1997, age 17, at one of Melanie's parties. Jenna and I hit it off immediately. We quickly got into a discussion about the absurdity of enforced gender roles. I recall that she said, "If a guy came in here in a pretty dress my only reaction would be to ask him where he got it." We exchanged contact information. We called each other and chatted on the then-new AOL Instant Messenger all the time.

I couldn't see Jenna very much, however. She lived in Northeast Philadelphia and I lived about an hour away in the suburbs. I didn't have my driver's license (I didn't feel ready to drive yet) and neither did Jenna (I forget why she didn't). The friends she saw on a regular basis were the ones she went to school with and who could come to her house and pick her up. I only got to see her at parties or the occasional sleepover. It didn't help that her father was a control freak, just like Melanie's mother, albeit in a different way. Melanie's mother was a control freak in that she wouldn't let Melanie get combat boots because they were "too masculine" (my mother got me a pair for my 18th birthday!), told her she couldn't refer to a crazy person as a "nutcase" as it was "too sexual" (oddly enough, "nutball" was okay), and that she wouldn't let her date black people. Yes, you heard me correctly. Melanie's mother more or less groomed Melanie into becoming just like her. Today she is living with her husband, kids, and her parents in the small Northeast Philadelphia house that she grew up in. She also cut me off and didn't invite me to the wedding, and I'm sure her mother had a lot, if not everything, to do with that.

Jenna's father was different. He was an alcoholic who had a drug-addicted girlfriend. Jenna's parents were divorced, and she had to live with her father because he was paying the tuition for her private school. Jenna's father rarely let Jenna go anywhere or do anything. No, this was not a case of a concerned father trying to quash his daughter's teenage rebellion. This wasn't even a case of a father trying to guide his daughter. In fact, he didn't guide her at all, and Jenna wasn't rebelling any more than any other teenager. This was, I think, a case of a "do as I say, not as I do" mentality. Not that Jenna was drinking or doing drugs. She absolutely wasn't. Like me, she was completely anti-drugs, especially since she saw what alcoholism and drug abuse could do to people.

In early 1998, on one of the rare instances that Jenna was able to spend time with me, she spent the night at my house. We were up until 3:00 in the morning talking intensely about what I now know is called evolutionary psychology. That is, I had come to the conclusion that everything we do, directly or indirectly, is based upon the instinct to reproduce-- even if the person doesn't consciously want children. And as a teenager experiencing an existential crisis, I naively thought that this was a new, revolutionary theory. Someone should have gently guided me towards books like The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and, of course On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. I frantically paced my room, wildly gesticulating, and saying things like, "This is obviously why there are enforced gender roles! This is why bullying happens! It's all based on the ultimate goal-- to reproduce!" I began to realize that this was why I was paying the price for being different and having a hard time making friends. How about The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris and (the not-yet published) The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker?

I then confided in Jenna one of the things that led me to thinking about this sort of thing-- the  previous summer on a group trip to Israel in which I had an obsessive crush on Chuck, one of my counselors. I was embarrassed about how I'd handled it. I muttered something about how the instinct to reproduce had overtaken me even though I hadn't tried to be anything more than friends with Chuck. If I remember correctly, this was the first time I'd ever told anybody that story. For months I had kept it under wraps as I came to the realization that I'd handled this crush badly by following Chuck everywhere. It was a huge confession for me: "I, Julie, am obsessive when I get crushes on people."  I told Jenna this embarrassing story because I knew I could. I knew she'd listen. I knew she'd understand. And she did. In many ways, Jenna understood me better than many people I knew, including my friends from camp. And even though Melanie was my "official" best friend, I knew deep down Jenna and I had a lot more in common. Both of us had intellectual sides, both of us questioned reality. And Jenna affirmed me in a way that many other people didn't.

I lost touch with Jenna about ten years ago. We didn't have a fallout; life just happened. I think she was still living with her asshole father in Philadelphia the last time I talked to her, either in 2004 or 2005, and wasn't able to leave the city, let alone to go to New York, where I was then living. We did occasionally talk online at the time, however. On and off over the years since she stopped coming onto AOL Instant Messenger I tried to find her. I eventually came to the conclusion that if she was on Facebook it was under a pseudonym. So I did some heavy searching (and believe me, it wasn't easy, but I have my ways) and tracked down her snail-mail address. She lives on the other side of the country (I'm not going to mention where, to further protect her privacy). I sent her a postcard with my contact information on it. I had no doubt that if she got the postcard she would contact me. I didn't think for a second that she would pull the same elitist stunt that Melanie did.

And I was right. Within minutes of getting the postcard, Jenna friend requested me on Facebook and texted me on my cell phone. It turned out she was using a different name, but not as a pseudonym. She actually is in the process of getting a legal name change, partially because she doesn't want her father to find her. Jenna told me that she's seeing a therapist about her father, and has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It didn't surprise me in the slightest. What was also interesting is that Jenna had tried to find me a couple years ago on Facebook, but at the time I had my Facebook set so that nobody could look me up!

Reestablishing contact with Jenna brought back a few painful memories that involved my mother. This morning when my parents called me I mentioned that I had tracked down Jenna. Surprisingly, neither of them remembered who she was. I tried to remind them-- I'd met her through Melanie. That she was into bands like Pearl Jam. That she had wanted to play the guitar. Oh, and she had been interested in Wicca. And that's where the painful memory surfaced.

In the fall of 1998, after I'd known her for a year, Jenna was dabbling with Wicca. I had made the mistake of mentioning this to my mother, and while she was cooking breakfast. Mom slammed down the pan she was holding and said, "Well, then you'd better stay away from her!" Shocked and confused, I asked why. "Wicca is witchcraft!" Yes? And? Does anybody really believe in witches? I tried to deescalate the situation by joking, "Yeah, Jenna's going to cast a spell on me" and "Jenna's going to sell my soul to Satan." But that didn't work. Mom and I got into a huge fight. I remember trying harder than usual to stay calm but Mom kept cutting me off and telling me that I was wrong. Dad came in and diffused the situation. I think he was a little concerned, but I don't think he thought it was a huge deal like Mom did (and ultimately they didn't make me stay away from Jenna). Mom had also commented, "I hate to tell you, but Jenna lives on the fringe." And that really hurt. It really hurt because Mom had kept nagging me to find friends outside of camp, and when I did, she didn't approve of the one I had found, the one who really understood me. And I didn't think and still don't think Jenna lived "on the fringe". And actually, Dad had liked her. That meant a lot to me because Dad invariably saw right through the "friends" who ended up hurting and betraying me, long before they hurt and betrayed me. I recall that he had even commented that Melanie was a fair-weather friend (and it turns out he was right) but that Jenna was "genuine". I think Mom liked Jenna too, but for some reason she was wary of her from day one, and she often commented on it, not just during the Wicca episode. I also recall telling my parents about Jenna's father being a jerk and Mom kept thinking that Jenna's father was just trying to guide his daughter, quash teenage rebellion or something. She seemed skeptical when I told her about the kind of person her father was, including his alcoholism and his drug-addled girlfriend. It also hurt because when I had friends who didn't understand me and did hurt me, Mom often urged me to give them another chance.

I brought this up on the phone this morning. As I said, to my frustration, my parents don't remember Jenna, and Mom certainly doesn't remember the comments she made about her. But I mentioned the comments and Mom said, "You have to put yourself in my situation. You always seemed to be drawn to the bizarre and I was wary of everything." The word "bizarre" struck a chord with me, I guess because it sounds so loaded, so judgmental, so negative. Well, yeah, isn't it obvious that someone who's a little unusual would have more in common with someone else who's a little unusual? And Jenna was anything but bizarre. She had her head on straight, and she was very down to Earth. Dad said to me, "This was a long time ago. Why do you keep dredging these things up from so long ago and saying 'You did this to me' and 'You did that to me'?"

Why? Why do I bring these things up? Why indeed! Why is it that this past Christmas I brought up with my mother Melanie's little stunt where she cut me off and didn't invite me to the wedding and Sergio's little stunt where he ignored the package I sent him after telling me he looked forward to getting it? After all, both of these things happened in 2008, seven years ago. Why is it that I recently wrote a blog post about obsessive crushes that I had had almost two decades ago? And why did it take me about sixteen years to move past the way Mom continually screamed at me, at age 11, about the kinds of bizarre Addams Family cartoons I was drawing? And why did I bring up the way Mom talked about Jenna when I was a teenager?

Because I felt like I never got closure for these things. That's a large part of why I blog. It's the best way I can articulate and make people understand what it's like to be me. It's hard to get that across in a conversation. You have to write it out. You have to tell people and force them to read it. Mom didn't understand the obsessive crushes I went through because I didn't talk to her about them. "So much was kept from me", she said, after reading my latest blog post on the subject. I had kept these things from her because I knew they would freak her out. On the occasion when I did try to tell her, she just shut me down. It was a no-win situation. Now, here we are, almost two decades after this issue started, discussing the situation. It's long overdue. This is how I get closure. And I have to get closure. No matter how much time has passed since something emotionally painful has happened, I need to get closure in order to move past it. And I don't think this is nearly as uncommon as one would think-- sometimes people are in therapy trying to get closure on things that happened to them several decades ago. For me that closure involves confronting my parents with the way they inadvertently hurt me while thinking they were helping me. It involves informing them they were wrong about certain situations when I knew exactly what I was looking at. But sometimes I feel I can't even confront them about it as they just cut me off, saying, "We didn't know" or "We were trying to help" or "Kids don't come with instruction manuals." But the thing is, I really do need to talk about it. I wish they'd understand that.

And the other thing is that despite knowing logically that I was right about many of these things where my parents were wrong, I still find myself doubting my own perception, and a lot of it has to do with the intensity of the way Mom reacted to me over the years. When Dad was concerned about me, it was usually a discussion that ensued. With Mom, it was almost always a fight, with the implication being that I had no idea what I was talking about and she did because she was Older and Therefore Wiser and that I should just listen to her unquestioningly. Because of the intensity of the way Mom had reacted to me in the past, I found myself wondering what her reaction to my finding Jenna was going to be. And I found myself wondering if Mom had been right about Jenna while I had been wrong. Why, I wondered, did I still have the same perception of Jenna that I did seventeen-and-a-half years ago when we first met? Is this immaturity on my part? Naivety? My Asperger's blocking the correct view of reality?

Same deal with the other situations: I still feel the same way about how I handled my crush on Omri as I did seventeen years ago, that I handled it well until towards the end of the summer. I still don't think there was anything wrong with my sending a package to Sergio seven years ago. And I still think there was nothing wrong with me, twenty-three years ago, at age 11, drawing bizarre Addams Family cartoons as long as I didn't draw them in school (which I didn't). It's the idea that my perception on these issues hasn't changed much. Does that mean that I was right? Or does that mean I'm just some immature little twerp with Asperger's who "doesn't get it"? This is why I bring these things up. I admit that I do sound a bit confrontational and aggressive when I address these issues, and also sometimes like I'm making a joke out of it, but that's partially because finally being able to do so is awkward and new for me. It's awkward and new for me to finally be able to talk about these weighty issues with my parents after avoiding these subjects for decades, feeling that they were taboo on so many levels. It's been a few years since my parents really started "to get it" but a few years versus a few decades? Yes, it's still new. So yes, Dad, this is why I "keep dredging this stuff up". It's not fun for me, but I need some closure, and dredging these things up is how I'll get closure.

As for Jenna, I will say this: She and Melanie both came from controlling backgrounds, albeit controlling in different ways. The difference is that Jenna got out and Melanie didn't. What that tells me is that Jenna has a firmer sense of self than Melanie. And a neurotypical person having such a strong sense of self is a rare commodity these days. She should be commended for it.

Jenna is calling me in about an hour so we can finally talk on the phone for the first time in years. I still remember that long, intense conversation we had seventeen years ago until 3:00 AM. I have a feeling we're going to have a conversation of similar length and intensity. That's what good friends do.