Bill Gates Opens Up About Deciding to 'Explicitly' Mention Autism in Memoir, and Why Only in the Epilogue
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Asked in an interview with PEOPLE what the most personal and revealing moment of his memoir was, Bill Gates doesn't hesitate.
Speaking about Source Code, released this month, the Microsoft co-founder says it was "the question of whether to say explicitly that I probably would've been diagnosed as on the spectrum" had he been growing up today.
"It's just being honest," he says, explaining that it also made sense to him to include that at the very end of his book (which covers the early years of his life), because growing up "those words didn't come up."
As he notes in the epilogue, when he was a child "the fact that some people's brains process information differently from others wasn't widely understood" — and "the term 'neurodivergent' wouldn't be coined until the 1990s."
"I do think when I got to college, the term ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] came up and people started to be prescribed medicine for that," Gates, 69, says. "I never was, but I probably would've been diagnosed with that as well."
But since that wasn't experience, the question of neurodivergence didn't come up until years later.
"It's only as an adult that in a few cases people ask me that question," Gates shares, adding that after the question was posed, he "had to reflect and say, 'Yes.' "
Still, dad Bill Sr. and mom Mary managed to give him the "precise blend of support and pressure I needed," something which Gates knows made him a "lucky kid."
"They gave me room to grow emotionally, and they created opportunities for me to develop my social skills," he writes in Source Code.
And while he may wish that those skills had "come sooner," Gates writes that he "wouldn't trade the brain I was given for anything."
peaking with PEOPLE, Gates says that his candor helps contextualize some of his childhood stories for readers — including the time he turned in a 177-page report on the state of Delaware.
"I think in a way, unless I'd said that you might've thought — oh, sure, he wrote a little bit longer report or sure he was fidgety at his desk," he says. "But it was extreme enough, like 200 pages versus 10 pages and going off to read at long periods of time and not wanting to be interrupted and trying to make sense of things more than most other kids."
While his social skills may have been slow to develop, Gates did go on to form "very deep friendships" with people he felt similarities with, including Paul Allen, who shared his love for learning, computers and software, and with whom he'd eventually co-found Microsoft.
All in all, Gates feels fortunate for the way everything played out.
"If somebody said, 'Here's a pill that your social skills will be better, but you won't be able to concentrate so much,' I would not go back and take that pill," he tells PEOPLE. "I've had the most amazing and interesting and fulfilling life."
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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman