starting the dx ball rolling... if you were handed this...
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toboo
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: 3 Apr 2008
Age: 51
Gender: Female
Posts: 61
Location: chi-town burbs
30 Apr 2008, 2:56 am
getting pre-evaluation stuff together. plus keeping notes just for myself.
my husband happens to have the same doctor and he mentioned me, and apparently the doc just thinks it's SAD. (and that may be part of it, i'm sure, but...)
if you were handed this list, would you think the person had AS.
Quote:
* i had almost constant ear infections as a child.
* i had the hardest time with last names as a child. where i grew up it was 99.9% italian, and i could never quite hear or remember people's last names and often had no clue who was being spoken about. i needed to see their names written before i could figure it out.
* i need to have to volume very high on movies in order to understand what they are saying.
* i often talk too loudly and don't notice it.
* i grew up on long island, my mom is from queens, my dad from brooklyn, both of them and my brother all have thick NY accents, i don't have one at all. i've often said that i must have learned to talk from sesame street. funny how that example is used in Tony Attwoods book.
* i get distracted by the sounds of the trains about a mile away when i'm watching baseball games and such, but normally i don't notice them. and it drives me nuts!! !! no one else hears them. i didn't realize it was the trains.
* i've been acused of having olfactory hallucinations by my MIL. i often smell things no one else does. i breathe through my mouth a lot to avoid smells.
* i can't stand noise. i can't stand noisy restaurants or bars or clubs. i often just sit and watch people instead of participating in such an outing. tv as background noise kills me.
* i'm very uncomfortable in flourescent light. going into a WalMart literally makes me sick to my stomach, i can't stand being in there.
* i confuse left and right, still, but not as badly as before i started driving. but the other day i felt like i was driving on the wrong side of the road.
* * massages hurt like hell. i've kept trying them, thinking i must be missing something. but, everytime, it just HURTS.
* i drop things constantly. i'm always saying that my fingers don't work. i drop my keys 2-3 times a day.
* i'm clumsy as heck. pete has forbidden me to ever go skiing because he fears for my life.
* i have more trouble than i should skating or riding a bike or handling a ball, etc...
* i bump into things, walls, doors, etc.. all the time.
* i'm naturally nocturnal
* i have a horrible sense of time
* i can either be very early or very late, but never ever "on-time"
* * i have not been nearly as upset as i should have been when i miscarried or my grandmothers died or my parents got divorced or when my mom has dealt with her various surgeries and illnesses or even when pete was in the hospital. i had one of my residents when i wan an RA at wash u scream at me, "don't you ever get angry??????" well, not really. my emotions are very muted.
* i sing all the time
* when i'm not signing i'm quoting movies or TV.
* when i'm making pasta i'll say, "pasta la vista, baby!" several times. i will turn anything into a song or movie quote. i get lots of strange looks. especially when i burst out singing, "i can see clearly now, my brain is gone..."
* i talk to my cats all the time, often imitating their sounds
* * i repeat the last words of people - especially my kids - without thinking. but i think it helped them learn to talk.
* i have a soundtrack going in my head constantly, and it often gets stuck. i'll sing the same line from a song over and over. i've gotten comments on it.
* i type using a different keyboard layout - dvorak.
* i doodle excessively. i can't not doodle in a lecture, game playing, or other similar situation.
* i pick my lip, stare at my nails, or need to keep my hand pressed between my thighs or tucked under my breasts. (though i try not to in public.) i used to have to have my hand stuck on my head. people used to ask what was wrong and if i had a headache. but i usually didn't even know it was there until they pointed it out.
* i have always had difficulties making friends. like since i was three. i remember being an outcast in pre-school, and kindergarten, and 1st grade. by 2nd grade it was pretty hopeless.
* i sat by myself at a completely empty lunch table every day for three years when i was in jr. high. i found out later that the other kids thought i wanted it that way. it never occured to me to just go ask if i could sit with them.
* i was the most goody goody goody ever!! !! my brother once yelled at my parents, "it's NOT fair, she never WANTS to do anything wrong!"
* i would tattle and insist that people do things the "right" way.
* i hated lunch and recess and dreaded them every single day. i would rejoice when we would have to have silent lunch or recess would be canceled because there was too much noise. once in highschool i arranged my schedule so i wouldn't have lunch even though it meant taking swimming twice.
* i would bring a book out to recess and hide somewhere by myself to avoid bullies or just avoid being left out. i found out later that this was interpreted as me thinking i was too good for everyone else. who knew?
* teasing bothered me immensely and left me very conflicted. i couldn't understand how people that seemed so nice and were well liked could do something so cruel and heartless. and at some point it did occur to me to maybe tease back, but the thought of doing that abhorent to me. why would i do something to someone that upset me so much? so i was very confused when after my senior year someone pointed out that "all we wanted was for you to do it back to us."
* summer camp was the worst, though. at least at school, i knew everyone because it was the same kids every year, and i knew where i was at. at camp i didn't talk to anyone and just tried to avoid being picked on. it didn't help that i was (am) very slow, so i was always the last person to change for swimming, and to get to the locker room, and to change back, so i was the last one to lunch, so there was nowhere for me to sit, etc...
* it was so frustrating and confounding. i was told by adults how smart and good i was, but at the same time i felt so stupid and clueless and convinced that i must be an awful person since no body liked me or wanted to be my friend. and, of course, i felt so silly that i never thought to mention it to anyone. i knew somehow that this was something that even the not-so-smart people got and i didn't and i was too embarrassed to be that stupid. and, since i felt that what i thought and how i felt was obvious to everyone around me, i took their inaction to mean that i was stupid, it was just my problem, and that i was on my own.
* * i assume people know how i feel and so don't feel the need to express it. (i didn't realize this until i read it.) i assume that a please or thank you is implied. i didn't use either till around high school. then i went overboard. i was a receptionist and i would have to page people when they had a call and i would always say, "so-and-so, you have a call on line 1, thank you." they called me the thank you girl.
* if someone asks me about myself and i answer, i think that a reciprical question is implied and then i'm confused when the person doesn't respond with their answer to the same question but then goes on to ask another one. then i wrongly assume that they are very interested in me and get confused when they get bored or walk away. (of course i always remember this after the fact.)
* my close group of friends from college are all computer science or engineering majors. i'm pretty sure that a few of them are more socially inept than i am.
* i get tired from too much talking or socializing. i feel like an outsider even at a gathering a people i know and am friends with.
* i often try to sit in the middle of the table at a large gathering at a restaurant, thinking that will force the conversation to include me, but it doesn't, it just flows on by me like i'm a rock in a stream.
* and i can't keep up with conversations including more than 3 or so people. and even worse..
* a group i hung around with in high school (i wouldn't call them friends of mine, but they were friends with each other) would, for fun, sit around and spontaneously come up with british characters that they would pretend to be and then just start having conversations with these outlandish accents and taking on these identities. i couldn't process the conversation or think of something to say fast enough at all. i literally just sat there, mute.
* i don't know how to join into an existing conversation. at the parties i've always forced myself to go to i'll kind of just walk up to two people talking and just stand there, listening in and then trying to figure out something to say, and figure out the right time to say it, and that usually never happens, so then i just walk away.
* i've unintentionally broken confidences, not realizing that some fact wasn't meant to be shared.
* i say things not knowing they could hurt. i once, in college, called my boyfriend to remind him of a mutual friend's birthday, then later i called the friend to say happy birthday, she said that mark had just called, so i just said, oh, yeah, i just called and reminded him. apparently that upset her greatly, i found out later.
* i do things that i think people will like or find helpful only to be confused and hurt when they are rejected and the person's feelings have been hurt.
* so because of that, i'll often wait until my help is asked for, so then people think i think i'm above doing work and helping out. but it's that i don't want to intrude or do something wrong.
* i'm too blunt and often hurt people's feelings without intending to. (and i'll then be up all night playing it all out in my head trying to understand it.)
* * my dad's now wife thought i didn't like her because i didn't aknowledge her or try to talk to her, etc... i was surprised to hear it. (i remembered this after reading about someone else doing the same.) i only talk to people if i have a reason to. if i think of it, i may go up and start a conversation with someone, but i almost never think of it.
* i always forget to introduce people. well, not forget, it doesn't occur to me to do so.
* i often imitate the voice, mannerisms, etc of whomever i'm talking to.
* i don't do well keeping eye contact - but it's not severe. i will look this way and that during a conversation if i don't know the person well or i'm just not comfortable with the chit-chat.
* my political views are definitely not mainstream. i'm a libertarian
* i don't get chit chat, small talk, thank you cards, obligatory gifts, and many other social niceties.
* i don't do well with either complements or criticism.
* i've always had more male friends than female friends.
* i was never into teen boy stars like kirk cameron. there was one day when everyone was suddenly my best friend. i guess i had told someone that i was going to see west side story at westbury music fair. and, well, THEY knew that Jack Wagner was to be starring as Tony and they were jealous and envious as heck, especially since i had 4th row seats. i had no idea who he was. my parents and i were shocked to find the place full of teenaged girls.
* i wasn't into popular music. i listened to the carpenters, barry manilow, roger whitacker, anne murray, and glen campbell as a child. and showtunes. i didn't know anything about popular music till maybe 8th or 9th grade, but even then i could only tolerate the lighter stuff. i would try to listen to WDRE which was the cool station so that i would have something to talk about, but i couldn't stand the music for any length of time, it hurt.
* * i always get stuck on the details. the example used in one quiz was observing the fonts or layout of a piece of text while ignoring the content. ya think? i don't notice the cute kid, i only see the technical details of the picture. which had led to many hurt feelings on my mommy board. must remember to see the cute kid and comment on how cute the kid is and not harp on the technical faults of the picture.
* i'm definitely an observer, not a participator.
* (yes, i tend to be self-absorbed.)
* i'm the resident "know-it-all"
* i usually need to bring conversations back to me or something i know about it. i remember after my freshman year at college the only way i could contribute to a conversation with my friends was to talk about something similar that happened at "wash u." which was interpreted as me thinking my school and i were better, etc... and it wasn't appreciated at all. but i couldn't figure out what i was doing wrong. but i can see it now.
* my two favorite toys in the world were my legos and my little professor.
* my main use for stuffed animals was to arrange them in a specific order on the floor of my closet on top of a bunch of blankets, also in a specific order.
* as for collections - i once had 5 years of TV guides in my closet. and, every october and april i would scour the TV guide looking for the lost or gained hour in the programming. i got a bug in my butt and sought out and bought every book in the reader series that i had used as a child in school. i still have most of my stuffed animals. i have every greeting card i've ever received. i have all my jr. high and high school report cards.... and notebooks. (i'd have the grade school stuff if my mom didn't throw it out.)
* i get obsessed easily and must read everything, know everything, be perfect at each new obsession. photography, cake decorating, reading Harry Potter books, playing piano, breast feeding, child birth, etc....
* i mean most people stayed up all night to read the 7th harry potter book. that's normal. i don't think most people spent the next two months reading through all the books in order constantly, whenever they got the chance, staying up til 3,4,5am doing it, etc..
this is the big thing i need help with:
* executive dysfunction - now that i've read about it, it's me to a T.
* the more i want to do something, the more i can't.
* i get bogged down in pre-reqs - things that need to be done before i can begin a task.
* crisis mode or a very strict deadline will allow me to break out of it but only at the last possible moment.
* i can keep my kids alive and fed and taken care of pretty well mainly because they demand it. but beyond that, it's hopeless. laundry, dishes, cooking, meal planning, house projects, etc... hopeless.
* when i was young i would close my eyes as i would try to go to sleep. and then i'd want to open them. and i couldn't make myself open them. so much so that i'd start to panic that i couldn't open my eyes. and i would say to myself, "stupid, just open your damn eyes!" but i wouldn't. or i couldn't. and this would go on for oh, 10 minutes or so, which in that kind of situation may as well be an eternity.
* i almost ruined our credit over a $60 credit card bill when i refused to open the monthly statement emails.
* i've often used the term "inertia" to describe how it feels, long before i read about autistic or aspie inertia.
so how did i end up valedictorian if i couldn't make myself do anything? good question.
* i had a freakishly good memory. i could read answers off of a picture of the text book pages in my head. if i saw it, i knew it. math and science were my strong points. social studies was memorizing facts, not much analysis. english was always my weakest class, but again, the teachers mostly wanted regurgitation of the exact text that we had read, not in depth character studies or literary comparisons or anything that would have required me to understand what i had read on a deep enough level to have an opinion about it.
* most of the lectures were supplementary to the textbooks and not super necessary. i usually slept through them or did other class work.
* in middle school it almost caused problems. but for some reason, grades on projects either didn't count for much, or my teachers dropped the low grade. i remember the disastrous (wow, that's really how you spell disastrous?) fourth grade invention project. i put together a doll made from tissues, q-tips, toilet paper, and cotton balls and claimed that it was for the bathroom to make personal care items more attractive. i think i spent 20 minutes on it before bed time. i was so embarrassed by it. the kids all laughed at it.
* in sixth grade i lied and said that my grandfather died because i was so desperate about not having some project done. and i know my parents were told about that. but nothing ever came of it, and i went onto 7th grade where things got ridiculously easy.
* high school did not involve many projects or anything that took long term planning. i did my homework during the next class so it was done before i left school. if you ask my parents or brother they will tell you that they never saw me doing school work, just reading books or drawing or painting. i loved art class.
* but i always disappointed my teachers when it came to math fair or science fair projects. i failed miserably at the brookhaven bridge building competition and never did a westinghouse project. my teachers were confused and annoyed about that. they couldn't understand why their best student never did that stuff. but i knew to avoid projects like the plague. i got sick to my stomach just thinking about projects.
* classes that were not honors or advanced i had little patience for and i didn't hide it. i made those teachers quite mad by acing their tests without being in class or paying attention or participating in discussions.
* but none of it required me to work or actively do anything or keep track of much. it just sort of happened. which didn't help with my popularity at all.
* spelling was never good though. i remember getting my scores on the cat tests one year. everthing was 98th or 99th percentile except for spelling, that was 75th.
* and i still remember the stupid vocabulary words. a baloo is a bear. wuzzle means to mix. a yonker is a young man. a teapoy is a three legged table.
* i had the hardest time with last names as a child. where i grew up it was 99.9% italian, and i could never quite hear or remember people's last names and often had no clue who was being spoken about. i needed to see their names written before i could figure it out.
* i need to have to volume very high on movies in order to understand what they are saying.
* i often talk too loudly and don't notice it.
* i grew up on long island, my mom is from queens, my dad from brooklyn, both of them and my brother all have thick NY accents, i don't have one at all. i've often said that i must have learned to talk from sesame street. funny how that example is used in Tony Attwoods book.
* i get distracted by the sounds of the trains about a mile away when i'm watching baseball games and such, but normally i don't notice them. and it drives me nuts!! !! no one else hears them. i didn't realize it was the trains.
* i've been acused of having olfactory hallucinations by my MIL. i often smell things no one else does. i breathe through my mouth a lot to avoid smells.
* i can't stand noise. i can't stand noisy restaurants or bars or clubs. i often just sit and watch people instead of participating in such an outing. tv as background noise kills me.
* i'm very uncomfortable in flourescent light. going into a WalMart literally makes me sick to my stomach, i can't stand being in there.
* i confuse left and right, still, but not as badly as before i started driving. but the other day i felt like i was driving on the wrong side of the road.
* * massages hurt like hell. i've kept trying them, thinking i must be missing something. but, everytime, it just HURTS.
* i drop things constantly. i'm always saying that my fingers don't work. i drop my keys 2-3 times a day.
* i'm clumsy as heck. pete has forbidden me to ever go skiing because he fears for my life.
* i have more trouble than i should skating or riding a bike or handling a ball, etc...
* i bump into things, walls, doors, etc.. all the time.
* i'm naturally nocturnal
* i have a horrible sense of time
* i can either be very early or very late, but never ever "on-time"
* * i have not been nearly as upset as i should have been when i miscarried or my grandmothers died or my parents got divorced or when my mom has dealt with her various surgeries and illnesses or even when pete was in the hospital. i had one of my residents when i wan an RA at wash u scream at me, "don't you ever get angry??????" well, not really. my emotions are very muted.
* i sing all the time
* when i'm not signing i'm quoting movies or TV.
* when i'm making pasta i'll say, "pasta la vista, baby!" several times. i will turn anything into a song or movie quote. i get lots of strange looks. especially when i burst out singing, "i can see clearly now, my brain is gone..."
* i talk to my cats all the time, often imitating their sounds
* * i repeat the last words of people - especially my kids - without thinking. but i think it helped them learn to talk.
* i have a soundtrack going in my head constantly, and it often gets stuck. i'll sing the same line from a song over and over. i've gotten comments on it.
* i type using a different keyboard layout - dvorak.
* i doodle excessively. i can't not doodle in a lecture, game playing, or other similar situation.
* i pick my lip, stare at my nails, or need to keep my hand pressed between my thighs or tucked under my breasts. (though i try not to in public.) i used to have to have my hand stuck on my head. people used to ask what was wrong and if i had a headache. but i usually didn't even know it was there until they pointed it out.
* i have always had difficulties making friends. like since i was three. i remember being an outcast in pre-school, and kindergarten, and 1st grade. by 2nd grade it was pretty hopeless.
* i sat by myself at a completely empty lunch table every day for three years when i was in jr. high. i found out later that the other kids thought i wanted it that way. it never occured to me to just go ask if i could sit with them.
* i was the most goody goody goody ever!! !! my brother once yelled at my parents, "it's NOT fair, she never WANTS to do anything wrong!"
* i would tattle and insist that people do things the "right" way.
* i hated lunch and recess and dreaded them every single day. i would rejoice when we would have to have silent lunch or recess would be canceled because there was too much noise. once in highschool i arranged my schedule so i wouldn't have lunch even though it meant taking swimming twice.
* i would bring a book out to recess and hide somewhere by myself to avoid bullies or just avoid being left out. i found out later that this was interpreted as me thinking i was too good for everyone else. who knew?
* teasing bothered me immensely and left me very conflicted. i couldn't understand how people that seemed so nice and were well liked could do something so cruel and heartless. and at some point it did occur to me to maybe tease back, but the thought of doing that abhorent to me. why would i do something to someone that upset me so much? so i was very confused when after my senior year someone pointed out that "all we wanted was for you to do it back to us."
* summer camp was the worst, though. at least at school, i knew everyone because it was the same kids every year, and i knew where i was at. at camp i didn't talk to anyone and just tried to avoid being picked on. it didn't help that i was (am) very slow, so i was always the last person to change for swimming, and to get to the locker room, and to change back, so i was the last one to lunch, so there was nowhere for me to sit, etc...
* it was so frustrating and confounding. i was told by adults how smart and good i was, but at the same time i felt so stupid and clueless and convinced that i must be an awful person since no body liked me or wanted to be my friend. and, of course, i felt so silly that i never thought to mention it to anyone. i knew somehow that this was something that even the not-so-smart people got and i didn't and i was too embarrassed to be that stupid. and, since i felt that what i thought and how i felt was obvious to everyone around me, i took their inaction to mean that i was stupid, it was just my problem, and that i was on my own.
* * i assume people know how i feel and so don't feel the need to express it. (i didn't realize this until i read it.) i assume that a please or thank you is implied. i didn't use either till around high school. then i went overboard. i was a receptionist and i would have to page people when they had a call and i would always say, "so-and-so, you have a call on line 1, thank you." they called me the thank you girl.
* if someone asks me about myself and i answer, i think that a reciprical question is implied and then i'm confused when the person doesn't respond with their answer to the same question but then goes on to ask another one. then i wrongly assume that they are very interested in me and get confused when they get bored or walk away. (of course i always remember this after the fact.)
* my close group of friends from college are all computer science or engineering majors. i'm pretty sure that a few of them are more socially inept than i am.
* i get tired from too much talking or socializing. i feel like an outsider even at a gathering a people i know and am friends with.
* i often try to sit in the middle of the table at a large gathering at a restaurant, thinking that will force the conversation to include me, but it doesn't, it just flows on by me like i'm a rock in a stream.
* and i can't keep up with conversations including more than 3 or so people. and even worse..
* a group i hung around with in high school (i wouldn't call them friends of mine, but they were friends with each other) would, for fun, sit around and spontaneously come up with british characters that they would pretend to be and then just start having conversations with these outlandish accents and taking on these identities. i couldn't process the conversation or think of something to say fast enough at all. i literally just sat there, mute.
* i don't know how to join into an existing conversation. at the parties i've always forced myself to go to i'll kind of just walk up to two people talking and just stand there, listening in and then trying to figure out something to say, and figure out the right time to say it, and that usually never happens, so then i just walk away.
* i've unintentionally broken confidences, not realizing that some fact wasn't meant to be shared.
* i say things not knowing they could hurt. i once, in college, called my boyfriend to remind him of a mutual friend's birthday, then later i called the friend to say happy birthday, she said that mark had just called, so i just said, oh, yeah, i just called and reminded him. apparently that upset her greatly, i found out later.
* i do things that i think people will like or find helpful only to be confused and hurt when they are rejected and the person's feelings have been hurt.
* so because of that, i'll often wait until my help is asked for, so then people think i think i'm above doing work and helping out. but it's that i don't want to intrude or do something wrong.
* i'm too blunt and often hurt people's feelings without intending to. (and i'll then be up all night playing it all out in my head trying to understand it.)
* * my dad's now wife thought i didn't like her because i didn't aknowledge her or try to talk to her, etc... i was surprised to hear it. (i remembered this after reading about someone else doing the same.) i only talk to people if i have a reason to. if i think of it, i may go up and start a conversation with someone, but i almost never think of it.
* i always forget to introduce people. well, not forget, it doesn't occur to me to do so.
* i often imitate the voice, mannerisms, etc of whomever i'm talking to.
* i don't do well keeping eye contact - but it's not severe. i will look this way and that during a conversation if i don't know the person well or i'm just not comfortable with the chit-chat.
* my political views are definitely not mainstream. i'm a libertarian
* i don't get chit chat, small talk, thank you cards, obligatory gifts, and many other social niceties.
* i don't do well with either complements or criticism.
* i've always had more male friends than female friends.
* i was never into teen boy stars like kirk cameron. there was one day when everyone was suddenly my best friend. i guess i had told someone that i was going to see west side story at westbury music fair. and, well, THEY knew that Jack Wagner was to be starring as Tony and they were jealous and envious as heck, especially since i had 4th row seats. i had no idea who he was. my parents and i were shocked to find the place full of teenaged girls.
* i wasn't into popular music. i listened to the carpenters, barry manilow, roger whitacker, anne murray, and glen campbell as a child. and showtunes. i didn't know anything about popular music till maybe 8th or 9th grade, but even then i could only tolerate the lighter stuff. i would try to listen to WDRE which was the cool station so that i would have something to talk about, but i couldn't stand the music for any length of time, it hurt.
* * i always get stuck on the details. the example used in one quiz was observing the fonts or layout of a piece of text while ignoring the content. ya think? i don't notice the cute kid, i only see the technical details of the picture. which had led to many hurt feelings on my mommy board. must remember to see the cute kid and comment on how cute the kid is and not harp on the technical faults of the picture.
* i'm definitely an observer, not a participator.
* (yes, i tend to be self-absorbed.)
* i'm the resident "know-it-all"
* i usually need to bring conversations back to me or something i know about it. i remember after my freshman year at college the only way i could contribute to a conversation with my friends was to talk about something similar that happened at "wash u." which was interpreted as me thinking my school and i were better, etc... and it wasn't appreciated at all. but i couldn't figure out what i was doing wrong. but i can see it now.
* my two favorite toys in the world were my legos and my little professor.
* my main use for stuffed animals was to arrange them in a specific order on the floor of my closet on top of a bunch of blankets, also in a specific order.
* as for collections - i once had 5 years of TV guides in my closet. and, every october and april i would scour the TV guide looking for the lost or gained hour in the programming. i got a bug in my butt and sought out and bought every book in the reader series that i had used as a child in school. i still have most of my stuffed animals. i have every greeting card i've ever received. i have all my jr. high and high school report cards.... and notebooks. (i'd have the grade school stuff if my mom didn't throw it out.)
* i get obsessed easily and must read everything, know everything, be perfect at each new obsession. photography, cake decorating, reading Harry Potter books, playing piano, breast feeding, child birth, etc....
* i mean most people stayed up all night to read the 7th harry potter book. that's normal. i don't think most people spent the next two months reading through all the books in order constantly, whenever they got the chance, staying up til 3,4,5am doing it, etc..
this is the big thing i need help with:
* executive dysfunction - now that i've read about it, it's me to a T.
* the more i want to do something, the more i can't.
* i get bogged down in pre-reqs - things that need to be done before i can begin a task.
* crisis mode or a very strict deadline will allow me to break out of it but only at the last possible moment.
* i can keep my kids alive and fed and taken care of pretty well mainly because they demand it. but beyond that, it's hopeless. laundry, dishes, cooking, meal planning, house projects, etc... hopeless.
* when i was young i would close my eyes as i would try to go to sleep. and then i'd want to open them. and i couldn't make myself open them. so much so that i'd start to panic that i couldn't open my eyes. and i would say to myself, "stupid, just open your damn eyes!" but i wouldn't. or i couldn't. and this would go on for oh, 10 minutes or so, which in that kind of situation may as well be an eternity.
* i almost ruined our credit over a $60 credit card bill when i refused to open the monthly statement emails.
* i've often used the term "inertia" to describe how it feels, long before i read about autistic or aspie inertia.
so how did i end up valedictorian if i couldn't make myself do anything? good question.
* i had a freakishly good memory. i could read answers off of a picture of the text book pages in my head. if i saw it, i knew it. math and science were my strong points. social studies was memorizing facts, not much analysis. english was always my weakest class, but again, the teachers mostly wanted regurgitation of the exact text that we had read, not in depth character studies or literary comparisons or anything that would have required me to understand what i had read on a deep enough level to have an opinion about it.
* most of the lectures were supplementary to the textbooks and not super necessary. i usually slept through them or did other class work.
* in middle school it almost caused problems. but for some reason, grades on projects either didn't count for much, or my teachers dropped the low grade. i remember the disastrous (wow, that's really how you spell disastrous?) fourth grade invention project. i put together a doll made from tissues, q-tips, toilet paper, and cotton balls and claimed that it was for the bathroom to make personal care items more attractive. i think i spent 20 minutes on it before bed time. i was so embarrassed by it. the kids all laughed at it.
* in sixth grade i lied and said that my grandfather died because i was so desperate about not having some project done. and i know my parents were told about that. but nothing ever came of it, and i went onto 7th grade where things got ridiculously easy.
* high school did not involve many projects or anything that took long term planning. i did my homework during the next class so it was done before i left school. if you ask my parents or brother they will tell you that they never saw me doing school work, just reading books or drawing or painting. i loved art class.
* but i always disappointed my teachers when it came to math fair or science fair projects. i failed miserably at the brookhaven bridge building competition and never did a westinghouse project. my teachers were confused and annoyed about that. they couldn't understand why their best student never did that stuff. but i knew to avoid projects like the plague. i got sick to my stomach just thinking about projects.
* classes that were not honors or advanced i had little patience for and i didn't hide it. i made those teachers quite mad by acing their tests without being in class or paying attention or participating in discussions.
* but none of it required me to work or actively do anything or keep track of much. it just sort of happened. which didn't help with my popularity at all.
* spelling was never good though. i remember getting my scores on the cat tests one year. everthing was 98th or 99th percentile except for spelling, that was 75th.
* and i still remember the stupid vocabulary words. a baloo is a bear. wuzzle means to mix. a yonker is a young man. a teapoy is a three legged table.
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Toni
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Veteran
Joined: 29 May 2007
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,359
Location: Spokane, Washington
