Since learning about Asperger's, I have read just about every personal account I can find with regard to Asperger's. While I found all of them interesting, I can't think of one that I would have called warm or engaging - until I read John Elder Robison's memoir Look Me In The Eye: My Life With Asperger's.
The older brother of bestselling author Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors, A Wolf At The Table), Mr. Robison tells a story that is at once heartbreaking, inspiring and funny. Those who have read his brother's books will have a basic understanding of his early family life - alcoholic father, schizophrenic and delusional mother...a background that would have been difficult for any average person, let alone an Aspergian (to use his term for those with Asperger's.)
Look Me In The Eye is a highly entertaining, crazy ride through a life that has led him from being an isolated physically abused young man, to a engineer developing trick guitars and special effects for KISS, to a corporate gig developing electronic toys for Milton Bradley, to executive positions at corporations such as Simplex Grinnell, to his current occupation - entrepreneur (JE Robison Service). Mr. Robison's life is a testament to the fact that a life with Asperger's can be as rich as anyone else's - despite the challenges.
I laughed along with his early forays into the social world:
"I particularly wanted to make friends with a girl named Chuckie. She seemed to like trucks and trains, just like me. I know we must have a lot in common.
At recess, I walked over to Chuckie and patted her head. My mother had shown me how to pet my poodle on the head to make friends with him. And my mother petted me sometimes, too, especially when I coudln't sleep. So far as I could tell, petting worked. All the dogs my mother told me to pet ahd wagged their tails. They liked it. I figured Chuckie would like it, too.
SMACK! She hit me!
Startled, I ran away. That didn't work, I said to myself. Maybe I have to pet her a little longer to make friends. I can pet her with a stick so she can't smack me. "
Reading like a collection of essays, as well as a memoir, Robison comments on Asperger's, brotherhood, parenthood, the working world, and society in general. On names, he writes:
"I was introducing a lawyer friend and his wife to some other people and I said, 'This is George and his wife, Barbara. They're Montagoonian attorneys.' To me, that was perfectly sensible, but George looked like he'd just been mortally insulted...It was a puzzle to me. What else could someone from Montague be, but a Montagoonian?"
Not to be forgotten is that Look Me In The Eye is a memoir of Robison's life with Asperger's - it's part of the fabric of his life. Most arresting for me were two conclusions he'd reached about his own life - because recently I can come to very similar realizations about my own life. It's very interesting to hear them echoed by another Aspergian.
His conclusions: One - early childhood social successes were crucial to his development, and two - learning to "act normal" has a tangible cost.
On the importance of early social development he writes:
"Looking back on my childhood, I think the ages of four to seven were critical for my social development. That was when I cried and hurt because I could not make friends.
At those times, I could have withdrawn further from people so that I would not get hurt, but I didn't. Fortunately, I had enough satisfactory exchanges with intelligent grown ups - my family and their friends at college - to keep me wanting to interact.
I can easily imagine a child who did not have any satisfactory exchanges withdrawing from people entirely and a kid who withdrew at the age of five might be very hard to coax out later."
I have often thought much the same thing - I have a cousin whom I also suspect has Asperger's. We're close in age - but unlike me, he has few major relationships, no job, and lives at home with his parents. He's highly talented in mechanics - there's little he doesn't know about the workings of a car, but he's never been able to keep a job due to his social deficits. Looking at the surface, his family life was more stable than mine - and intellectually, I don't think that we're far apart. So I find myself wondering - what's the difference?
My hypothesis? He went through the "typical" US school experience - undiagnosed, and without the extra supports I got by chance. Although I went through mainstream schools, I had many talented teachers who were able to find a way around my idiosyncrasies. Most important - when it became clear that I was struggling to keep up with my peers socially, my much-beloved Kindergarten teacher recommended that my parents enter me in an innovative day care program that was gaining a reputation locally.
Very different from the typical "babysitter" - the couple that ran it had very specific ideas about child development and a strategy that worked perfectly for me. They provided an extremely structured environment that did not allow me to withdraw. Group activities were the focus, and there was zero tolerance for teasing or bullying. From the moment I got out of school, and finished my homework, I was doing something that required social interaction - whether it was playing "HORSE", playing Marco Polo on the jungle gym, building forts, playing ball games, or playing bartering games. The effect of it was powerful, and community-building so that it extended to my school life as well. The children that I spent my after school time with became my friends at school, too. Because the groups were mixed age, it meant that I also had older "friends" on the playground to look out for me. My immersion in social activities was intensive, but I had the support to feel safe - an experience rare for many Aspergians, who quickly learn to equate social experiences with failure, pain, teasing and embarrasment.
I believe, for me, that my participation in this program provided me the "satisfactory exchanges" in early childhood that Robison mentions. And I too, have had very often the thought that had I not had these early successes, I would likely have retreated irretrevably into myself...and might be in the same boat that my cousin is in...living way under my potential. And when I think about this, I am deeply grateful, and sometimes moved to tears. They will never know the contribution they made to my life.
About the trade-offs of "Becoming Normal" - Robison writes:
"Today, my greater insight into my emotional life has allowed me to express it, both verbally and on paper. But there was a trade-off for the increased emotional intelligence. I look at circuits I designed twenty years ago, and it's as if someone else did them."
I have experienced this, too. In recent years, as I've hit my social peak (which admittedly is far from the "normal" peak), I've found myself being very frustrated at my inability to harness the talents I once pulled out of my hat with little effort. My art isn't quite as striking or detailed. I'm not quite as quick in learning a new foreign language, or a new computer language. Some of what was once was easy for me, is now almost unthinkable. I just don't have the depth of focus to do them anymore. That dept of focus required that I let go of the outside world, and withdraw fully within myself. I simply don't do that anymore - I'm not as present in the world as a "normal" person, but I'm nowhere near as remote as I once was.
Robison writes:
"It's been a good trade. Creative genius never helped me make friends, and it certainly didn't make me happy. My life today is immeasureably happier, richer and fuller as a result of my brain's continuing development."
