Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian With Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers (11 page)

“Good thing we had seat belts,” we said together. Amazingly, our doors still opened, and we stepped out into the road. Our car was cracking and ticking as the metal cooled, but it wasn’t on fire and seemed stable. We were a little shaky, but we walked all right and gathered speed and
functionality as we moved. The destruction became more apparent as we stepped forward. The hood was folded up into the windshield, and everything beneath it was compressed and pushed back several feet. Where had the engine gone? It took a moment to realize it was now jammed under the floor. Clearly, my vehicle was a goner. We walked toward the car that hit us, wondering what we’d find.

The attacking vehicle had been so totally destroyed that I could not even tell what make it was until I walked all around and read
SUBARU
on the deck lid. We were both stunned from the impact, but we figured the people in the Subaru were probably worse off, so we’d hurried to check on them.

It took just a few seconds to reach the passenger side of the car, and when we did, the rider was obviously beyond help. He had been killed on impact, impaled by torn metal. It was an ugly scene. Blood dripped from the passenger door sill and pooled on the ground beneath the car. The whole right front was sheared off, from the grille to the passenger seat. Shards of glass and torn metal, empty liquor bottles, loose papers, and a bloody college notebook littered the road. The scene was lit with headlamps from the stopped traffic. Their shadows and glare made the scene even more macabre.

We could see right into the car, because there was not a single piece of glass left in place, and what we saw wasn’t pretty. There was no one in the driver’s seat, but a weak moan led us to the operator, folded into some wreckage where the backseat used to be.

Jim and I pulled as hard as we could to lever the twisted door out of the way, and we bent the seat frame aside to extract the driver. He was somewhat mutilated from shattered glass and steel, but he had all his parts, which was more than could be said for his passenger. We worked fast, because the front of the car was still leaking gasoline and oil onto the road, and we knew it could catch fire at any moment. If it did, the driver would surely die, because he couldn’t move on his own.

Some people would be overcome by emotion at a scene like that. The wreckage, the noise, the blood. Not me. I saw a problem to be solved. There was a wrecked car in the road, and a wounded guy trapped inside with a dead guy next to him. It didn’t take two seconds to realize there was nothing we could do for the passenger, but the driver was in immediate peril, and we got him out and safe right away.

We tied a shirt around his arm to stop the bleeding, and got him seated at the curb fifty feet from the crash. To my disgust, the driver began talking. He started mumbling, “I wasn’t driving. I was in the backseat.” Over and over, like he was rehearsing the lines he would tell the cops. I could smell the liquor on him from three feet away. I didn’t say anything, but I was revolted.

With the driver secured, we both turned to directing traffic around the accident. By the time the police arrived, the situation was under control. One of the cops walked over to the car, encountered the dead passenger, and threw up on the hood. By then the crash scene was full of people, gawking and milling around.

The ambulance arrived and took the driver to the hospital. He was cut up and had a few broken bones, but he made a full recovery. The medics said our home-brew tourniquet saved him from going into shock with his arm sliced open. We got in a wrecker and left with my car on the back. I got another shirt when I got home.

In that situation, my Aspergian nature allowed me to remain calm and unemotional. When I saw blood and wreckage, I did not “see” emotion. Instead, I simply saw problems to be solved and I jumped right in. That was the best possible thing I could have done. Situations like that are best handled by a calm, logical person who keeps his wits about him. Some people would say I was cold and unemotional, but I think I showed great empathy by taking the steps to get the driver out of danger and to secure the scene. What more could anyone have asked, empathetic or otherwise?

I helped because it felt like the right thing to do. The
people in the Subaru had hit me and ruined my car; they were totally at fault and drunk to boot. However, I put that concern aside, because I immediately realized that their lives were more important than my car. I didn’t ask anything of the person at the scene, and I willingly and immediately placed myself at risk to save him. I didn’t have to do that; neither did Jim. What would you call that if not real empathy?

I’ve often thought that Asperger people may be well suited to work as emergency responders for that reason. We may seem gruff and even uncaring, but our logical minds see the problems and the solutions fast, and our lack of emotional sensitivity protects us from the horrors of car crashes and fires. Asperger people can do well as military medics or emergency room doctors for the same reason. Those are a few examples of important careers people like me are suited for by virtue of a trait that’s regarded as disabling much of the time.

W
hen you walk into a room and change the channel on the television without asking, you can bet that whoever was there before you will have something to say about it. “Hey, what about me! I was watching that!” I’ve heard complaints like that more often than I can count: first from my parents, then from my little brother, and finally from my friends, and even strangers at parties. I haven’t been able to change my ways, though. When I walk into a room, if the “wrong” show is playing, I change the channel.

Usually, I’m so focused that I don’t even notice someone else is in the room. What could I be so focused on as I walk to the television? you might ask. All I can say is, I’m lost in my own thoughts, as I usually am. I can walk into a room, look a person straight in the face, and change the channel. It’s like I don’t even see him. Traffic cops say, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” when writing tickets, and that’s true. But all too often, I am ignorant of how my actions affect other people, and in this situation, I am often even oblivious
of them. That’s gotten me in lots of trouble over the years, and has made it very difficult to make friends.

(There’s also the issue of what’s being watched. I’ve always had a lot of trouble understanding who in his right mind would want to watch the shopping channel when there’s a show about trains, the Alaska pipeline, or the Port of Los Angeles on. The way I see it, I am doing those people a favor by introducing them to something that’s really educational and worth watching.)

I don’t think altercations over the television make me a bad person, but people tend to interpret my actions as egocentric or self-centered. Can that really be what I’m like? At first I didn’t think so. But the more I was called self-centered, the more I began to worry.

I listed the most common complaints I heard from others:

Accusatory questions like those told me that people found me terribly inconsiderate, to say the least. I knew I
wasn’t trying to be. I was surprised to learn, however, that people seemed to think that I had a duty or an obligation to consider their feelings before I did something.
Could that be true?
But every person thinks of himself first, so everyone is self-centered to a degree. That’s why people get annoyed. I get in
their
space or interfere with
their
idea of how an interaction should play out.

At first, the knowledge that everyone is self-centered led me to dismiss the allegations against me. But the more I learned about myself and Asperger’s, the clearer it became that self-centeredness was not the problem; it was merely the symptom.

I decided to learn more about what being self-centered means to nypicals. With that knowledge I could examine my own behavior and consider my next move.

I asked several of my nypical friends what being self-centered meant, and they all said essentially the same thing: A self-centered person is someone who gets ahead at the expense of others.

When I heard that, I challenged my friends. “Do I seem to get ahead at other people’s expense?” All my friends agreed—I didn’t do that.

Their answer highlighted an important point. Self-centeredness means something different for Aspergians and nypicals. Self-centered nypicals are fully aware of others. They have their plans and goals, and they seek to exploit those around them for their own gain. If someone did that to me, I’d be annoyed, too.

That runs totally counter to the way I think. When I walk into the room and change the channel, I am not intentionally imposing my will on others. Rather, I am oblivious of the other people. I do not realize they are there, and with that realization lacking, there is nothing to stop me from changing the channel.

Why don’t I notice? I’ve thought about that, and I think the answers are first, I often concentrate deeply, and when that happens, I’m oblivious to lots of things. Second, even if I do notice people, I often don’t get their connection to something like the TV. Perhaps it’s a body-language thing; perhaps it’s just too abstract. If I do notice others or just “get it,” and that happens sometimes, I leave the TV alone.

Outside the TV room, I’m essentially a loner, so my plans pretty much involve me and me alone. Once I get outside the circle of my family and close friends, it does not occur to me to include other people in most situations. If other people are included in my plans, it’s because they are cooperating with me, not because I am exploiting them in a predatory way.

I realize that I often get into trouble when I implement my solitary plans and someone else unwittingly gets in
my way. To that person, I look like the nypical who’s trying to take advantage, when in reality I didn’t even know he or she was there. It doesn’t help to try explaining myself, because not knowing someone was there can be just as much of an insult as deliberately taking advantage. That’s been a hard problem for me, because it goes right to my Aspergian social weakness.

It seems that nypicals are more aware of their surroundings, especially in a social sense. I’ve already talked about how I miss subtle expressions in other people. This issue of self-centeredness makes me realize that sometimes I don’t even notice the other person at all! It must be awful to be totally ignored by someone else when he is standing right next to you. And I don’t even know I’m doing it.

I wanted friends, and I didn’t want people to perceive me as something I’m not, so I resolved to develop a workaround for that deficiency.

I’ve made a lot of headway with that in recent years. Nypicals may take in a roomful of people by instinct, but I can achieve a pretty decent result by using good old focus and concentration, just as I do with reading people’s emotions. When I walk into a room, I now make a point of
looking at and noting every person. Sometimes I’ll say something. Other times a quick glance is all it takes. That simple step of establishing a connection to others is crucial. It reduces the chance that I’ll do something wrong out of ignorance, and it opens the door for people to greet me or otherwise draw me into their circle.

I suspect that the importance of initial connection is the reason nypicals evolved the hand-shaking ceremony. By shaking hands with everyone when you enter a room, you make a connection to them and avoid the “I never noticed you” problem. I never did that before, preferring to slink into a room quietly and stand in a corner. Now I embrace the handshake routine wholeheartedly, and it really works. I might get a few more diseases from all the skin contact, but hey, that’s what hand washing is for.

Simply making myself aware of others has remarkably improved in my social life. People accept me much faster now that I ignore them less. The change is dramatic.

This process is a secret of my success, one that helped turn me from a self-centered loner into a pleasant eccentric with a number of friends. To me, that’s pretty good progress. And the cost has not been great. I can still watch those television shows; I just ask first now. Sometimes the people say yes, and sometimes they squeal and I switch the channel anyway. But even when I do that, it’s okay, because somehow it’s not insulting anymore, now that I acknowledge the people around me. The only problem I’ve found with focusing on the other people in a room is that
it’s mentally exhausting. Nypical party animals may go till three in the morning on instinct; I’m worn out by ten. But I’ll take fewer hours and more friends any day.

It’s a constant source of amazement to me, how important something like simple social acknowledgment can be to others, while being totally invisible to me all these years.

I
’m blessed with excellent language skills. My vocabulary, grammar, and diction have always been far above average for my age. Yet all through grammar school, when it came to using those wonderful skills to win friends and influence people, I fell flat on my face. Luckily, that situation improved as I got older. One key to success proved to be acquiring some wisdom. Language came to me naturally, with no apparent effort. Wisdom, on the other hand, was really tough to obtain.