n.b.- Unless I know you personally, I intend this pseudonym to be completely non-porous. Not for the protection of myself, but for that of my family and friends.
History/Diagnostics/Symptoms
I don’t remember when I learned to read, but I clearly remember being able to read text upside down by first grade.
It was noticed early that I had some kind of problem getting schoolwork done. In those early years, I remember school system consultants being brought in to figure out what was wrong with me. It was as though they were testing me for signs of retardation or something. They apparently concluded that I was just bored; the first-grade teacher had told my family that I would probably struggle until college, when I would be able to select my own studies.
At the age of 26, my mother told me that the school system had used my “case” in its deliberations of why it needed a program for gifted students. Needless to say it really pissed me off to realize the system had then just let me continue falling through the cracks anyway.
The testing/evaluations had taken place in the 1970s, before Asperger’s was well known in the academic or diagnostic literature. So in recent months, I brought this up with my mother again. I wanted to find the school system’s records and see what the test protocols were and what the specialists had thought at the time. She was very cooperative, but neither the school system or the local behavioral counseling center (I had ended up there too…) keeps records past ten years.
I don’t remember details of interaction with other kids, just a general understanding of being unlike them and rather shoddy at sports. I do remember my father once telling me that I “shared his curse” of being a non-conformist.
As far as I can tell I have no dietary or body-chemistry issues. Quite the opposite- unless I eat just candy, the type or ‘quality’ of food seems to make no difference to me. Also I don’t think I show the stress-behaviors that seem to be included in all the diagnostic references.
At the age of 16 I self tested as INTJ using the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (a relative of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). I was given an actual MBTI at the age of 23 (for purposes of slotting different personality types into study groups) and was scored as INTJ. I must have done this test 4 or 5 times over the years, more or less under random influences, and always scored the same way. According to some sources, Aspies often score as one of the INT- types.
I self tested as Daywalker (105 out of 200) on Aspie-quiz, but I have a certain dislike of Aspie-quiz and the theory that stands behind it. That should be a separate topic.
Environmental influence
If I ever was readily diagnosable with Asperger’s, I might not be now. A lot of my life-experiences could be called therapeutic.
Military training, for example, is not just about the performance of tasks. In fact, most military tasks can be learned out of a book. What cannot be learned from books is how to interact with a group of people, understand their interests and roles, and work toward a common purpose with them. The military specializes in this. Training, at the initial-entry level at least, is largely about making the trainees fit into a culture. In a way it’s a great environment for someone with minimal understanding of social cues, because the social cues are highly scripted and codified in writing. If you somehow don’t get it, the instructors have amazingly detailed ways of making sure that you do get it. It’s all a very experiential form of learning, or if you wish it could be called a somewhat rough-handed type of behavior-modification therapy. Stress-behaviors and odd personal movements don’t last.
During my advanced training, I happened upon a book called Manwatching by Desmond Morris. It’s a zoologist’s well-illustrated account of how people are observed to behave, regardless of their own beliefs and descriptions about how they behave. It was as though the proverbial extraterrestrial anthropologist had lost his field notebook somewhere, and I had found it. I devoured it. Much of my knowledge base on nonverbal communications was internalized from this book. It’s a gold mine.
Three years after finishing my armed service, I began martial arts study. I had played football in junior high school, rather badly, but I hadn’t liked it or understood why others did. Studying a fighting art changed everything for me. It changed how my mind related to my nervous system and body. I understood immediately that when people enjoy a sport, it must be because of feelings like the ones I had when finding mastery over my movements in the art. Something about the systematic nature appeals to me; even within the context of martial arts, I find highly scripted arts like serrada easier to understand than simpler, more freewheeling arts like boxing.
This type of study has made me more calm, not more brutal. Training is a humbling experience, from the standpoints of learning some of your own workings and the shock of realizing what the techniques can do. It sort of grooms your nervous system and gives you an improved understanding of what can hurt you and what can’t. Before the art I, like some people, had occasional dreams of being chased. Within a few months they had stopped altogether and they have never come back, even during years when my training lapsed.
HI my name is KAMPILAN
I don’t know if this is the best of reasons or the worst of reasons, but I stumbled upon the term “Asperger’s” after I fell for someone that’s been diagnosed with it. Something about her made immediate sense to me, but I had never guessed there was a name for that something. Actually, what I stumbled upon was some blog articles she had written on her own history. That’s where my study of Asperger’s begins.
My purpose here is to build my personal knowledge base of its characteristics and of how to relate to those who share them, whether in ways great or small.
For most of my life, I have tried to observe the First Commandment of being a mutant; Find The Others. Yet despite a lot of experiential evidence to the contrary, I have long had a philosophical commitment to the idea that I’m not fundamentally different from other people. The differences must be intellectual, social or political, or so I have always reasoned.
Over the years I have attempted to find the others in a number of ways, ranging from political to subcultural to academic to occupational, and have usually found myself to be an outlier or misfit even among misfits. Now that I’m learning about neurodiversity, it seems to make all of the above pieces fit. Being different in a fundamental, molecular way would explain a lot.
For what it’s worth, my preferred theory of autism-spectrum phenomena is that they are varied states of cognitive neoteny. I find this most persuasive because neotenous development is part of what differentiates us from the ape cousins in the first place.
At the present time I don’t self-identify as an Aspie. Not out of any distaste, but because I would rather leave that to people that have been formally diagnosed and perhaps show more classic symptoms. I don’t have any immediate intent to seek diagnosis, since I don’t think I require trained intervention. Society’s counseling resources are limited, and I would rather see them used by people who, in various ways, have not been as lucky as I have. There is a well-developed literature on the Myers-Briggs types, and I think I know the ins and outs of being an INTJ. So that’s how I self-identify.
And to tell you the truth, on most days I think the only thing unusual about me is an extreme dislike of the stupidity, dishonesty, and violence that the larger society seems to take for granted.
go figure.
Kampilan
ps-
just to be sure I have not wasted your time completely, here is my recipe for gluten-free, casein-free super-cornbread:
1 C cornmeal
1/4 C flaxseed meal
1/4 C garbanzo flour
1 egg
½ t salt
½ t baking soda
mix with water, put in a dish and microwave on medium power for 20 minutes.
09 Dec 2007, 11:34 pm
and will have to go buy some. 
