I can has Asperger?
(With sort-of apologies to I Can Has Cheezburger?, one of the funniest websites around.)
Full speed ahead, Captain Asparagus!
April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day and unless you’ve been living under a sheet of plywood since the 1980s, it’s probably safe to say you’re already “aware” of autism, per se.
But what you may not be aware of is the number of adults with Asperger’s, or so-called “high-functioning autism,” actually living and working among you.
In the last few years, there have been loads of news articles, research breakthroughs, movies (like Adam) and books (like Stieg Larsson’s trilogy), about Asperger’s and autism. But despite all this, most people still have no clear idea what Asperger’s looks like when it’s out and about. They picture Rain Man (who was actually an autistic savant), or a lonely train-spotter on a railway overpass. Or they just say, “How awful.”
Qantas never crashed!
Lucky for you, the intrepid Dr Smiter, who loves nothing more than smashing stereotypes to smithereens, is here to guide you. I happen to know a couple of people who live and work with Asperger’s syndrome, and in honour of Autism Awareness Day, I will tell you a bit about who they are.
A caveat here: as Asperger expert Tony Attwood says, “Once you’ve met one person with Asperger’s, you’ve met, well, one person with Asperger’s.” Not all people with AS will have all the symptoms; there are some core difficulties, namely with communication and social interaction, but the rest is really the luck of the draw, dependent on circumstance, upbringing, age, experience, and a pant-load of other factors that researchers are still investigating. (“Pant-load” is a scientific term meaning “bucket.”)
First up is my friend Chris. If you passed him in the street you wouldn’t look at him twice. Actually, you might – he looks like Woody Allen. He’s absolutely brilliant, although he did poorly in school because, like many kids with Asperger’s, he has trouble with authority figures and with following rules and instructions. However, he taught himself Latin (I’ll give you a moment to digest that) and if you want to know how Julius Caesar would have ordered his supper, or are unsure of the wording of a particular scene in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail,” Chris is your guy.
Beware the Killer Rabbit!
Like Chris, my friend John did poorly in high school – again, the problem with authority, rules and instructions. But he is a whiz with a guitar and taught himself to play so proficiently that he was accepted to the graduate studies program at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He’s travelled all over the world and currently teaches in Asia. He is soft-spoken and thoughtful, full of ideas about Buddhism (he stayed at a monastery in Thailand for a month last year), and when he comes to Toronto his social calendar is so packed that he struggles to slot me in.
Allison is the odd one out, here: Asperger’s is unusual in girls, although researchers are now taking a closer look at the different ways that girls show – or hide — the symptoms. Unlike Chris and John, she did very well in school, and had no trouble with authority – typically, girls seem to be a bit more adept at pretending to fit in. A very strict upbringing helped, something Temple Grandin, arguably the most famous person with autism on Earth, agrees is a must for kids with Asperger’s: knowing the rules and how to interact politely with others helps to provide much-needed structure and lay the foundations for social and eventual work-related interactions.
(Allison asked me not to use her real name or any other identifying information here; she is successful at her job and fears – alas, rightly – that revealing that she has Asperger’s would be a career-killer. She once made the mistake of telling a colleague who now talks to her like she’s retarded; this is just wrong.)
As with Chris and John, you wouldn’t notice Allison in a crowd. It’s only when you get to know the three of them a little more closely that you realize what they have in common. All three are uncomfortable making eye contact and tend to look off to one side, or gaze into the distance, as they listen to someone speak. And for that matter, they probably wouldn’t be in a crowd at all: none of the three is comfortable in a group, preferring to spend time alone. They are conspicuous by their absence from office get-togethers, after-work drinks or lunchtime chatter.
They tend to start sentences with “Did you know…?” and are impatient with small talk, meaning they’re uninterested in, or left out of, the informal networking that goes on in the workplace; they’d rather talk about facts, or socialize based on a shared interest or activity. Sometimes they are mistaken for snobs, know-it-alls or showoffs.
Oh, here it is: Labroides dimidiatus
All three are brilliant; Allison, like many others with AS, belongs to Mensa, whose unofficial motto is “If you’re in Mensa and you don’t have AS, then someone else wrote your test for you.” Talking with them is a bit like shooting the breeze with Dr Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds; their brains are like search engines. Need to know about the breeding habits of wrasses, or whether a number is prime? Just ask Chris, Allison or John. (Another friend of mine works with disadvantaged kids, one of whom has Asperger’s. At their office, people say fondly, “Forget Google – just ask Ryan.”)
And all three have other quirks that often come with Asperger’s. Some are a plus: like Daniel Tammet, for example, Allison has synesthesia, meaning she sees music, numbers, letters and days of the week in colour. John is gifted in music, and Chris is a language aficionado.
Some are not a plus, and this is where Asperger’s can really knock the stuffing out of those who have it: fear, frustration and anxiety are a constant in both Asperger’s and autism, meaning a person’s “stress-meter” is constantly over in the red.
Take cover, men! Thar she blows!
Hypersensitivity to sounds, lights and textures are a given. As Allison puts it, “imagine being in a small room with a shrieking smoke alarm, a blaring radio, flashing lights, a screaming baby, marbles clattering off the walls, two movies running, fiberglass down your shirt and cold water spraying in your face. Now try ordering your dinner or explaining that flow chart – or chilling out. Welcome to Asperger World.”
And because people with AS tend to have trouble reading body language, facial expressions and subtle social cues, communication can be a minefield. Folks with Asperger’s are often underemployed because they have trouble with the social and interpersonal aspects of a job — they’re the super-brains working in the mailroom, or sorting files. Quite often they have difficulty making or keeping friends, or maintaining a romantic relationship.
But all three agree that their AS has gotten better as they’ve gotten older. The hypersensitivities that made them scream or “stim” as children are less “loud” now. Peer pressure and life experience help fade some of the socially unacceptable behaviours – Allison walked with a strange gait till a friend in grade eight showed her how to place her feet correctly. Anxiety revs up to a roar in puberty (as it does in all adolescents) and then tends to ratchet down again in young adulthood.
Where challenges persist, science and research have stepped up to the plate: anti-anxiety drugs and behaviour therapy, and the understanding of Asperger’s itself, have come a long, long way since John, Allison and Chris were kids.
Regardless, Asperger’s will always be a hard diagnosis to hear, and I would be doing my three friends a grave disservice indeed if I said life with Asperger’s or autism was anything but an ongoing challenge. If your child has just been diagnosed, or if YOU have just been diagnosed, you have a long road ahead of you. But thanks to people like Temple Grandin, Daniel Tammet, John, Chris, Allison, and the thousands of people all over the world doing research into the “who, what, how and why” of autism, there are lights and signposts along the way.
This little light of mine...
And if you have read and understood this post, and clicked on even one of the links below, then you, too, are now one of those lights.
I will leave the last word to Allison:
“Not many people know that I have Asperger’s, and I prefer it that way; it is like a slight limp, or shrapnel. But Asperger’s is an enormous part of who I am; it is the peculiar engine that drives me, and what I work hard not to be driven by. It can be incredibly frustrating—for those of us who have it, and for those of you who don’t understand why we do the things we do.
“Asperger’s is many things, but it is not awful. It is who I am, who I always have been. I cannot imagine my life any other way, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
Additional links & resources:
What is Asperger syndrome? (Asperger Society of Ontario)
Doctors are failing to spot Asperger’s in girls (Guardian, UK)
More than just quirky: girls and Asperger’s (Newsweek)
National Autistic Society (UK) TV ads about autism:
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- Posted in: Writin' and Smitin'
- Tagged: adam, anxiety, Asperger Society of Ontario, Asperger syndrome, Asperger's syndrome, autism, autism awareness day, behaviour, children, communication, criminal minds, daniel tammet, disabilities, drugs, girls, i.q., intelligence, john elder robison, Lisbeth Salander, mathematics, medicine, Mensa, monty python, research, social skills, spencer reid, stieg larsson, stress, synaesthesia, synesthesia, television, temple grandin, the girl who played with fire, tony attwood, women
Reblogged this on Dr. Smiter's Bog… er, Blog and commented:
In honour of World Autism Awareness Day, I’m re-posting this one. Or should I say re-re-posting?
It gets an incredible number of “hits” on my site, and an intriguing number of click-throughs to the PiePalace Asperger Test (at bottom of article). I find this interesting….
Enjoy, and thank you for reading (or re-reading).