Having Autism in the 80’s was no walk in the park.
If you were lucky like the boy I bullied for half of his teenage life, you may have had someone step in eventually and think, “Hey man, this isn’t right!” and then proceed to spread most of the bully’s [my] remains all over the high school playing field. I didn’t know he had Autism per se, he was just your typical a-typical kid walking around not fully knowing or understanding how to make connections like his peers did.
Me? I was just your normal school bully, lashing out at those weaker than me because I was being crucified in other ways at home. School was an escape from that, not the greatest escape, but one nonetheless. Eventually, I got my comeuppance.
It’s 2019 now. I’m 39 and I look back at some of those days in horror; that me, a perfectly loving and understanding chap could lash out at these kids in the ways that I did. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t go around bullying everyone I saw, there were just one or two people that rubbed me up the wrong way enough so that I would proceed to make their lives miserable.
It’s not something I look back on with pride, but disdain. Still, I can’t change the past and all I can do is recognize that this was a part of who I was back then and no matter what I do I will never be able to change it.
Would it change your perception of me knowing that just a few years ago, after my son’s diagnosis of Autism my wife and family began to strongly suspect I am on the spectrum too? It came as a shock at first really, but after the period of letting the news sink in it sparked off a series of probing questions from me to my wife on the process of her thinking. Turns out my thoughts aren’t natural at all.
Well, my thoughts are, but my way of thinking isn’t. I can only describe what I feel at times is a burning sensation to do something when I have it in my head. The douse-yourself-in-petrol-and-set-it-alight type feeling that you NEED to get whatever it is done. Sometimes I’ve brought myself to the brink of insanity just because of these thoughts. That’s not the only symptom of course; but I don’t want to sit here and list off everything because that’ll bore you and exhaust me.
People on the spectrum weren’t really recognized in the 80’s and beforehand. I’ve met countless people my age and above who are so blissfully unaware that they could, in fact, be on the spectrum. So much so that I suspect a few of my good friends are only an on-the-ball doctor away from diagnosis.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to over-diagnose Autism here because all people can have spectrum tendencies, but of the select group of friends that I socialized with at school and beyond, I truly suspect a few of them may be autistic. We’re only talking maybe four people here and not the entire populous of the world. People generally socialize with similar peer groups or so I have come to believe.
Getting back to the eighties I was one of the lucky ones that had a distinct flair for schoolwork. My memories of school were wildly different than that of some of my friends. I remember quiet classes, obedient children and the eagerness to do well, whereas in some classes the children were swinging from the lights and throwing books at each other.
I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t had seen it with my own eyes.
One day I was asked to take something across the hallway to another teacher, only to be met with what I could only explain as a class full of angry baboons; swinging from handles, lights and throwing everything they could get their hands on. I feel a lot of my friends lived this life as well as a lot of high functioning autistic kids who didn’t have the academic flair as I did. One of my friends was in the bottom sets for everything, but as soon as he escaped school he managed to pursue his dream and he went on to get a degree.
I may have had high functional academic skills, but I lacked in social skills. I’ve written before how I used high popularity social groups to mask my inadequacies. Luckily for me, I was a tall, lean and physically fit young boy so I was easily accepted. These places were the perfect hiding place for someone that was a bit awkward and socially inadequate. I was always easily accepted because I had the boyish good looks to roll with these people, yet was socially inadequate enough not to pose any direct threat to any circle leaders.
We are a generation lost to the wind. If we’re lucky enough to see ourselves in our children and have enough clarity to reflect then perhaps we may just push for a diagnosis. However, most of us thirty year old’s and further go on unaware.
That just maybe those “forces” we feel that always keep us relentlessly far less able than our neighbors are not because of some mystical deity with a hate-hard-on for us as I once thought, but more because of an awareness that we need to accept. A truth about ourselves that we need to come to terms with. That we could be on the spectrum, and that we maybe need to work harder at understanding other people than most.
It was hard to accept at first because I’ve always felt myself. But then again everyone in the world feels normal. I think the biggest challenge for me was understanding that I had to read books and watch people for a long time where those social understandings may come naturally for some. But that doesn’t mean I am disadvantaged.
For instance, I have so much more focus than most people I know – I can work at one problem all day and not move from my chair as I churn through all possible scenarios. Other people have little to no focus.
In some ways autism can be a gift; in other ways, not so much!
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