Hi-
First off, I'm 23 and my wife is 22. We are a young recently married couple, very nerdy and really really awesome. (:
Also there are some awesome links I had in this article to the articles and radio shows I mentioned, but I have to remove them because the forum rules wont allow links in the first post to prevent spammers (makes sense). The New Yorker article sited is free and online and available by searching "Tim Page Parallel Play" and the "Radio West" prodcast is available on itunes podcasts for free, titled "Parallel Play".
I heard a fantastic program on NPR and KUER's (Salt Lake City's affiliate) "Radio West" hosted by Doug Fabrizio about Aspergers two nights ago. The Interviewee was Tim Page, Pulitzer-prize winning music critic for the Washington Post, and a self described (and professionally diagnosed) "Aspie". The program is called "Parallel Play," as is Tim Page's 2007 article published in the New Yorker, for which the interview was held (it was a re-broadcast).
I had heard a tiny bit about AS and understood it as a mild autism where some conversational context might be lost on the person with AS or something to that effect. This was one of the first times my jaw had actually dropped in my life, as Tim Page went on and on describing his experience in so many of the exact same words and phrases that my lovely wife always uses to describe hers.
I was in the car and upon getting home downloaded the podcast available on Itunes for free. My wife was blazing through some new Ravel piece, I think it was his taccotta that day (it takes here like 3 days to get these pieces to my recital level- and she has taken about 4 lessons in the last 5 years). We listened together to the podcast and she was really excited about it.
I'll try to sum her feelings up: she said she felt like she was somewhat vindicated in being herself, despite the fact that she had always been ridiculed by peers and her abusive mother - her mother always (still does) tells her she "tries to be weird" and that if she would stop being interested in such "weird" things, or stop telling stories about her cat out of context, or try to dress like the popular kids or whatever that people might not think she was so "weird". My wife has explained many times to me -in self-aware and emotional, pained conversations- that she doesn't understand "what makes people interested in each other, attracted to each other, or how they relate to each other." I always thought (and she did to) that it was probably because her mom forcefully home-schooled her despite letting her brother go to school- so basically she hadn't had a chance to learn some basic social skills in that Hell that elementary, junior high, and high school. She hated her mom for homeschooling her because she also thought that home schooling may have held her back socially and that if she had just been allowed to go to school she could be "normal". She wanted to be social and "normal" but has never been able to comprehend social situations.
(as a sidenote, my dear inlaws were independent fundamentalist baptists (have chilled out a bit lately into southern baptists -whom they used to consider far too liberal), many of the people in their circles homeschooled kids just to keep them away from the "world," Corporal punishment was extremely encouraged by their church, and she had a pretty hard time just surviving in the home because of her mom's borderline personality disorder and her fathers overly intrusive and violent prone personality -he happened to be a police officer with all the cynicism and suspicion and short fuses to go with it. Obviously my wife has a strained relationship with her parents- the only real difference between then and now is the many many miles between us and them, and we love all of those miles. the distance makes for a very sustainable relationship.)
I know this is long.
I write long posts.
I also know many of you don't want to waste time responding thinking I'll never be back, hit and run, but I can assure you I am an active participant in several online forums and will definitely be in this one if my wife and I find it fun or helpful. So please do respond.
my main purpose in writing here is to help begin a search for more information about Aspergers in women, and about the benefits of getting my wife officially screened for the syndrome. She and I both are extremely inclined to want to get her diagnosed because of the sense of wholeness she has felt over the past two days just recognizing that so many of her odd (lovely) quirks are shared among a community who shares many of her other feelings and interests. The diagnosis would legitimize our feelings that she is an aspie.
good to meet you folks-
-Ferretboy
ps. I am ferret boy because my wife calls me Ferret as often as she calls me my real name. She likes to pretend we are both animals- she is a squirrel and I am a ferret, and we are both about 2 years old. luckily she thinks ferrets are cute. haha.
21 Dec 2008, 5:13 pm
