The other day my friend Amy brought me her bicycle to work on. This is a very reasonable thing for Amy to do as I work at a bicycle shop and much of my work revolves around service. It only got a little confusing for me because once she was in the store and saw me she called out, “Come give me some sugar!”
This confused me because I am socially awkward, a condition that I blame on autism. No doctor has officially diagnosed me with autism but a bit over a decade ago Dr. “O” said our older son Kevin had a mild case of Asperger’s syndrome. For those of you unfamiliar with Asperger’s it is in the autism spectrum but lands squarely in the high functioning arena, so what she said was my son had a light case of autism light. While this was nothing to laugh at nor take lightly, she told us it was also nothing to fear but rather something that he will have to accommodate through-out his life. During her examination of Kevin and her questioning of my wife and me she also made it clear that it was likely that I too fell into the Asperger’s range of autism. (BTW- Asperger’s is no longer consider separate from autism, it is simply in the highly functioning range.) Dr. O’s diagnosis of Kevin came as no surprise to me as I have worked with elementary aged children as a teacher in Special Education classes; I even predicted the Asperger’s to a fellow teacher before Kevin was examined.
For people like me life is a huge, fascinating puzzle. Social cues that most folks take for granted frequently leave me stumped and frequently have me thinking twice about everyday events that most folks take in stride. So it was when Amy called out what was to her an everyday request for a warm and cordial greeting. I am not shy about explaining to folks why I am frequently so awkward when we first meet because while I have few social inhibitions I do require more time than most people do to get the lay of the land. Once I understand the rules of the game I am up for most anything and I believe my mind, like that of most everyone else, is a fascinating and perplexing mess that is an entertaining place to explore and frolic. The problem here was that I had inadvertently made the situation murky because Amy was one of my “Theatre Friends.”
In addition to work, family, triathlons and writing I enjoy acting in community theatre. I met Amy when she crewed backstage for a production I was in a few years ago. Theatre people tend to be quirky, gregarious folks and once I am ensconced in a production and working with cast and crew to create a production of value and beauty I feel as at ease and vitalized as I am ever likely to be. This was the Keith that Amy knew and she had never seen me confronted with a social situation that left me momentarily immobilized before.
I walked out of the shop area and into the showroom to hug and greet her and as I did I whispered in her ear, “You don’t know that I’m a little autistic and how socially difficult this is for me, do you?”
Amy, being an educator and sensitive to the needs of others immediately thought that I, like many autistic people, was touch averse. I assured her that I was not in any way touch averse but that it was simply a case of my brain having to change tracks from work mode to social mode and that this is sometimes a slightly painful shift for me to make mid-stream. I leaned in a and whispered, “It is as though I am constantly a stranger in a foreign country trying to make sense of the natives as they rub blue mud into their navels- it is not always easy for me.”
This analogy was not lost on Dr. Amy as we have enjoyed many a far ranging, eclectic and free flowing conversation both in person and in writing; she understood the problem, she just didn’t know that I was both effected and affected by same. What most people don’t understand is how separate the different aspects of social, intellectual, emotional, physical and myriad other aspects of everyday life are and that at times they are highly non-integrated and distinct in my world. When I am in one thought process it is a painful tearing away from that mode to change gears and reach a slightly different perspective. It is not that my mid cannot change gears, for it most certainly can, it is just that I sometimes have to negotiate with myself in order to achieve what for most folks would be a subconscious transition from one thought mode to another. I get it, it just takes a second.
So if you deal with autistic folks on a regular basis, and believe me when I say that you do, don’t discount their odd reactions as being rude nor unintelligible. If you give us a second to sort through the maze of social cues that most folks take for granted you will likely find someone of value and charm underneath, just as we have to sift through the detritus of everyday situations to interact with you. We all have our own way of looking at the world and each can grow by understanding the value of that which differs from ourself.