In a recent post I ended by saying that I was feeling too damned good and optimistic to write my initial post idea about something I call The Monster. But of course the Monster had a reason to come back. He came back to visit today and now I'm enraged, and I can't get to the gym yet to burn him off.
What is the Monster? The Monster is a state of mind I get into when I find out I've done something wrong, or when I'm convinced that I've done something wrong. Last night my friend and I went to see a transgender musician/speaker. In between songs, I turned to my friend and whispered-- or I thought I whispered-- things like, "Oh, this one's my favorite" or "This is what I was telling you about earlier." I had no idea that anything was wrong.
Meanwhile, during the Q and A, I asked the musician/speaker about something that I've heard about-- that occasionally there are people who identify as one gender in childhood and then it changes in adulthood. I don't mean someone who came out in adulthood or someone who didn't know what to call themselves until adulthood. I mean someone whose gender identity honestly changed. And occasionally I have heard, too, about people who've identified as transgender in childhood and then changed in adulthood. I asked him if there has been any research on it. After the Q and A, it occurred to me that I possibly made him feel uncomfortable with that question, that it could be misconstrued as me implying that transgender people should suck it up and "outgrow it". I mean, it's not too unreasonable of a fear, especially since last August some people accused me of silencing rape victims with this blog post. So after the show was over, I went to the musician/speaker and told him that I hoped my question hadn't offended him. He assured me that it hadn't. Well, good.
OK, so I had taken that possibility into account, but of course I couldn't get through a social event without pissing people off. No. It never happens. The Universe won't let it happen. My friend told me today that when I commented between songs, I wasn't whispering and the whole fucking auditorium could hear me. She said that she heard people making annoyed noises. Of course it was a cue that I missed. It scares me because it makes me wonder just how out of touch with reality I am, that I'm the classic unreliable narrator.
Oh, but she was trying to help you by pointing it out to you. First of all, my friend also has Asperger's. More importantly, this isn't an isolated incident. This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME I'M IN A SOCIAL SITUATION WITH PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW. Every time I learn to keep something else in check, something unexpected comes up that I ended up screwing up on. People think I'm being serious when I'm joking, people think I'm angry when I'm not, and all around people misinterpret one thing after another about me.
As I alluded to above, a blog post I wrote was interpreted by people in a Meetup group that I was silencing rape victims. Another group (my sign language Meetup group) kicked me out. Why? They said that I was voicing too much when what I was doing was saying things to myself for clarification in my attempt to learn sign language. For example, "Oh, oh, okay. 'Dog,' got it." This apparently made the deaf people there feel unsafe. Then the straw that broke the camel's back happened one night when I ordered a large dessert and in the spirit of community tried to share it. They felt that I was forcing it on them and it made them feel alienated because I was the only one who ordered it. Four people left early because of me. But of course I had no clue that this was why they were leaving. It didn't even cross my mind.
The day after this past Thanksgiving, I went out to breakfast with my family and extended family. My cousin, with whom I'm close, announced that she was pregnant. Her aunt hadn't arrived yet, and she told us not to say anything and let her make the announcement again when her aunt came. I didn't hear her say that. So when my cousin announced her pregnancy again, I was confused. I turned to my cousin's aunt and said, "What, you didn't know? She announced it before you got here." In other words, I thought she had already known I and didn't get why my cousin was announcing it again. My cousin put her head in her hands, shook her head, and said, "Oh, God, Julie." Embarrassed over my stupidity-- I'm lucky my cousin's aunt didn't feel offended over this-- I walked out of the restaurant to cool down. I knew if I continued to sit there that I would shake and fight back tears. These misspoken words are, of course, the kind of thing that could get me fired if it happened in a job staff meeting. And I knew it. Getting kicked out of the sign language Meetup was still fresh in my mind, so this incident hit me pretty hard.
When I hear yet another bit of feedback after another fuck up, I'm not hearing "constructive criticism" or even an occasional "Don't do this". I'm hearing, "Here's yet another mistake you made." And after decades of this never-ending nitpicking from others, I just feel unbridled rage. Operant conditioning. Amygdala hijacking. That's what the Monster is: He's a intense fight or flight response that I reflexively get when I've done something wrong. My heart races, my fists clench, and I feel intense pins and needles in my face, probably from the sudden surge of adrenaline. It's anger: Anger at myself for annoying, offending, hurting, and scaring people. Anger that I have this intensely negative effect on so many people, that I'm a burden to them, that I habitually cause people distress. He comes to life in my head after I leave a situation thinking that things went well only to find out that I pissed everybody off. He comes to life after I offend people with a few misspoken words. I go into these situations reminding myself things like, "Remember, don't tell raunchy jokes" (I don't anyway unless I'm with people I know well), "Remember, phrase that question in a tactful way", and so forth. But there's always something I fail to take into account because it didn't occur to me to take it into account.
And, as you know from the opening to this blog post, often I assume I've done something wrong when I actually haven't. But if that happens it's often alongside something else upsetting people, something that it would never occur to me to think twice about. I just can't predict what's going to fly and what isn't. There was recently a situation involving someone I am in occasional correspondence with. I don't know him well, but he knows a bit about me from my blog posts, and has been very kind and helpful. That said, I would hate to make trouble for him in any way. I can't get into what the exact situation was, but the short version is that I was afraid I'd hurt him in some way based on something I had said to someone else whom we both know. I emailed him and told him that I was worried that I had done something horrible. He assured me that I hadn't done anything wrong and seemed genuinely puzzled as to why I was worried. He's been very compassionate towards me, so of course I know rationally that if I had done something wrong that a civil discussion-- not yelling, screaming, shunning, blocking, etc.-- would have ensued. But that's the exception, not the rule in my life.
And it's hard to think rationally when the Monster is in my brain, telling me in no uncertain terms that I have done something wrong. In this recent case, it was almost like watching a movie, all these possible scenarios of what the outcome could be running through my head. I wouldn't go so far as to say I heard literal voices, but there is a nagging voice of sorts in my head when this happens. And I'm sorry to say, it's usually the voices of my parents, Mom especially. They only really started to get what it was like to be me about 6 years ago, and before that I heard endless feedback about fuckups in social situations that sometimes included phrases like, "That's abnormal", or "What's wrong with you?" or "I can't believe you said/did that", "I'm wondering where I've failed as a parent.", "You never take advice," "You don't know how to interact with people", "You make people uncomfortable", or any number of phrases that start with the word "You". After decades of conditioning, it's hard to shrug that off.
Today I'm just very angry. Tomorrow I'm going with the same friend I saw yesterday to see a production of Hamlet at Wellesley. That's how the subject of my talking came up. OK, fine, I won't talk during the show.
But don't be surprised if I'm back here tomorrow reporting another social mistake that I made.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Mundane Things That I Find Funny
Thanks for coming! I am gradually moving my blog to Substack! You can find this post here!
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
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.
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.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
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.
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.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
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!
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!
Saturday, February 28, 2015
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.
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.
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