A mini bio of my early life (on the wrong planet) [long]

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“Ed's” Aspie Mini-Biography (The Dark Ages through “Enlightenment”)
March 26, 2000
April 17, 2000
January 30, 2002- revised (still needs to be finished!! !)
November 20, 2002- 1st new material in a long time
July 28, 2003- minor adjustments

July 30, 2003- 06:15- re-discovery of 2002 new text!, change of revision format, added lousy chapter part names
September 30, 2003- added a “notes” section at the end (where else). Am using () as I am too tired to remember how to do “endnotes/ footnotes” + subscript/ superscript.
April 08, 2006- found this again b4 forward to K. Made a few minor updates.
March 31, 2007- just a few changes for WrongPlanet.net



Part I- Age Three Through Eighteen (and one-half)

I am 33 years old, interested and trained in Computer Repair (as a career), and am self-diagnosed (update- officially diagnosed by Dr. Bourke- Fall 2000) with Asperger’s syndrome. (I discovered it by accident on September 4, 1999). Since November 2004 I have been a custodian at the local Jr/ Sr. high as this is more relaxing (and much easier to get/ maintain a job).

For all of my life, I was the “different” kid. I was an only child for eleven years, was an early talker, but a late walker. I had no problems relating to my parents as a little child, only when I started nursery school did my parents see a “problem”. I remember being terrified at the age of three and bullied in my first nursery school. Fortunately, my mom pulled me out and was able to put me in a smaller one with some church kids that I knew.

In kindergarten, I balled wanting my mommy every morning that I was dropped off for the first few weeks there in a very rural primary school. Overall, I slowly “adjusted”, but was always “odd” to the teacher. In the first grade, I became best friends with the troublemaker of the class where I was constantly getting yelled at and spanked by the teacher. Finally she called my parents and told them of my lying and behavior and I was given the worst spanking of my life- For the next year, I withdrew deeper into my own world, and no longer had the bully as a friend.

All throughout my early youth, my main forms of entertainment were Radio Shack’s “50 in 1” and “150 in 1” electronics kits. I also tore apart my parent’s radios and tape recorders at the age for four and five. I never was good at sports. My dad tried to force-teach me catch and baseball, but I hated it with a passion and could never catch or hit, as my hand-eye coordination was terrible. To this day, when my dad looks at me with a certain annoyance, I call it the “baseball look”. My first memorable experience with a ball on recess was this damn kickball coming out of nowhere and slamming me in the head. I was always the last kid to get picked for any teams in gym class and was even put in “special ed gym class” with the mentally ret*d kids in 1st grade. I got along with them, but hated the taunting that I got by my phys ed teacher and some of my fellow “normal” classmates in regular gym.

Academically, the teachers saw me as “gifted”, but I could never pass some of the dumb spatial orientation questions and arrangement of odd shaped beads on the enrichment test. The school I went to was very backward and knew nothing of Asperger’s syndrome- as a matter of fact, many of the teachers still spanked (with a ruler, hand, or paddle) into the mid 1980’s in a public American Pennsylvania school!

My saving grace came in the fourth grade when after struggling so hard with sniffing pencils, having my papers just so, but never really getting any assignments done on time: my teacher got me into early Apple II computers. Ironically, I was the last kid in the class to touch the thing- I was afraid and standing in the corner when all of the kids were playing around. Once he helped me overcome my fears, I quickly became the most knowledgeable in the class and was totally addicted. As a matter of fact, my self-esteem was boosted after being suicidal months before. I was getting closer to friends who had become distant, and was happy overall, except for my evil fifth grade teacher who picked on me and disliked me because I couldn’t play baseball and was a nerd. Fortunately, she left when I went into sixth (my 4th through 6th grades switched teachers for each subject- similar to college and high school). Sixth grade was one of my best years as I was no longer oppressed by that teacher, and was becoming rather self-content. I even had a major part in the school play and was close(1) friends with a female whom I really liked and danced my first school dance with. I graduated top of the class from elementary school (except that was debated because I was in the easier reading class, so the grades should have been weighed).

Once I entered my 7th through 12th grade school, my first true nightmare started. I went from a class of 30 to a class of 70+. This was in a larger rural school with most of the kids from my elementary school, but more from a class I didn’t know [plus my close female friend went on to Catholic school .] Most of my closest friends from the year before easily made friends with the new kids, but I just felt isolated and saw 95% of my best friends leave me to more “exciting” ones who were into drugs, sex, alcohol, and partying. While they were doing that, my main forms of entertainment were copying copy-protected Apple II software, and playing many of its fantasy adventure games. Unfortunately, they had the negative effect of totally drawing me deeper and deeper into isolation, and even bringing out more of my rage. My only friends my age at that time were my gaming buddies- and those were few and far between as I lived isolated in the country.

Fortunately, my saving grace at that time was helping to care for my two year old adopted baby brother, Bill, (we adopted him when he was 4 days old). During that time I was a very good friend and babysitter; its real neat how well we get along with being 11 years apart in age. I have several audiotapes of us from that time and am currently converting them to CD’s and mp3’s. If it wasn’t for my brother, I know I never would have survived those two awful years.

In the ninth grade, my parents moved to town (just a 20-minute drive from where I grew up), to a larger school system (but in the same district). At first I was happy to get away from my bad middle school experience, but then I found it awfully hard to make new friends when everyone would always talk about the past “remember when we were at such and such’s doing this and that”- none of those experiences that I knew. Now I kick myself when I look back and saw some people making the effort to reach out, but I was blind to them and let those possible friendships slip away. During that year, I sat at the nerd table in the cafeteria, jamming food down the heater and never really making any close friends. My worst experience that year was my Algebra class where I was put in with a lot of dumb bullies who constantly taunted me, plus the alcoholic teacher had the talent of “un-teaching” any good math skills that I had from before. What really stunk is that he always blamed me for pranks such as putting chalk in the eraser, when it was the other kids who did that and always relished the blame that I got.

The next year, my old middle-high school was forced to consolidate with the town school. For the first month, I was happy again as several of my ex-friends came back to me for advice. That quickly died as I knew nothing about the party scene, and I saw those former friends become best friends with the nefarious football jocks who always gave me grief. Fortunately, I had a good understanding Sunday school teacher (at church) whom was actually cool. During church service, I became one of the best sound people that the church ever had- so that the Pastor’s hell fire and brimstone sermons rarely had that annoying loud P-sound, plus feedback. I also enjoyed making fancy stereo recordings of my mother’s choir performances-, none of which had been done before.

Eleventh grade was my best and least Aspergerish year of high school. I joined the cross-country team and ran rather well, despite my duck feet and misaligned hips. I made several friends during then, but another female (and top women’s runner at the time) who I knew liked me had a degenerate college boyfriend. But at least we had fun [not in that way]. I also switched from a terrible 3rd trumpet player to an excellent Tuba player with a four-octave range who loved being one of the all time best players that my band teacher had. Academically, I finally had some good teachers who challenged my mind, rather than the lame ones of the more recent past. One note here is that my Chemistry teacher whom many of my peers hated became a mentor to me. My high grades in her class, plus her recommendation for Messiah College ([soon?] to be University), got me a true early acceptance (1+ year in advance). I’ll never forget what one of my now druggy former good elementary school friend said when I was accepted- what if you “get stupid”; it didn’t happen, but it was funny. By the way, I really bombed on the SAT’s as I had a mental block as I was forced to take it on my birthday in 7th grade. Fortunately through a Penn State study course for them, I learned about the ACT (an alternate test used in the USA for college/university acceptance). With that, I didn’t have the mental block, plus I loved that it had four parts instead of just the math and English. They were written in a better way that I could understand, plus the science section was a breeze. As a matter of fact, my father who is a brilliant physician says that my science scores matched that of ivy league medical school interns that he was training. The overall score was high enough to even get me a partial scholarship [in]to my future college.



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Notes:

(1) Close? How close? Is this what is typical between m/f at that age? How much did I really know her or about her life? What about her distant friend and cousin? Also it seems that my friends from that era were the ones that would put-up with my home-made games, fixations, etc.

Welcome to Wrong Planet. I'm too tired to read your whole post, but I will tommorow.

Typical, better parents than most, and a girl talked to you?

Welcome, this is computer repair centeral.

CHIRP!

Hi!

Welcome to Wrongplanet!

What an interesting story!

I would like a job in computers as well!

I hope you enjoy posting here!

Welcome to WP!

Thanks for sharing your childhood and school experiences.

welcome to WP!

i like running too but can't really doso cause i have bad knees from RA when i was young.

luckily it went away and i can still run on eliptical machines though they kinda feel weird.

hope you enjoy (the right planet!)