Why the Golden Rule Can Suck It

Being an obedient rule-follower by nature has gotten me into trouble. That darned Golden Rule. I’ve always followed it. I’ve often wished I hadn’t. Ultimately, I decided that as an Aspie, my Golden Rule is this: Do NOT do onto others as you wish they would do unto you. Below are my reasons why:

Breaking up over the phone. Apparently people don’t like this. Me? I’d take it over a face-to-face dump any day. The last thing I want to worry about while getting the axe is an audience. Scratch that. The last thing I want worry about is trying to maintain conversation immediately after getting said axe. Hanging up right after the news is out allows us both to mourn in peace. A text dump is even better yet. To all you former suitors left stunned and bewildered with the dead air of a disconnected phone call in your ear – I did it for you.

Thank you cards. Seriously, do neurotypical people actually like these? Receiving a hand-written letter in the mail is the best thing ever. Immediately finding out it’s a sucky thank you card? The worst. I would never inflict this disappointment upon you. Not sending you a thank you card is my way of saying thanks.

The handshake. Please, Americans – either do it all the time or don’t do it all.  This confusing sometimes hand-shaking thing is for the birds. To those of you who have enjoyed my thoughtful gesture of dropping eye contact and shoving my hands in my pockets upon meeting you, you’re welcome! I spared you the ambiguity and unease.

Reacting to your news about the death of a loved one with an amusing anecdote about myself. Many would say this is where I display my brazen lack of empathy. But nothing could be more empathetic! Because in my mind, there is no torture greater than having to feel in front of someone. The more profound the feeling, the more privacy I need. So, as your whole life falls to pieces and I prattle on about that balloon animal I tried to make that ended up looking like a penis, please don’t feel alone. I’m comforting you.

Have any Golden Rule attempts blown up in your face? Please share below!

What I Really Do (Aspie Style)

So I’ve seen these things floating around Facebook lately and I just had to make one for Asperger’s. And by Asperger’s, I mean me. I know we’re all different. Enjoy.

Asperger’s and Paris Hilton

So I saw Paris Hilton’s new music video today. If you want, you can view it here, but frankly, I think it would be healthier for you to suck on some whippets. My brain probably would have received those better. Because in its determined Aspie way, it is now revving without reprieve, trying to make sense of this girl’s record deal. All I’m getting is a divide by zero error.

This got me thinking about Asperger’s.

Every now and then, I tell people I’m Aspie just to see what they’ll do. It’s always weird. If I don’t get the horrified No you don’t!, I get the stupefied blinking, followed by an abrupt change of subject. No doubt, Asperger’s is not yet received well by the general public.

So all this begs the question: If a brain like this can score not just record deals, but also a guest-speaking gig at Harvard University:

Our beloved Paris Hilton. Image provided by Tomas de Aquino.

And a brain like this can land the 16^th slot in Time magazine’s readers’ top 100 most influential people list:

Celebrity blogger and all-around ass hole, Perez Hilton. Image provided by Tom Reynolds.

And a brain like this can get a shout-out from the president of the United States of America:

Snooki. Image provided by Erin Kelly.

Then why are we still stigmatizing a brain like this?*

Image provided by César Blanco

*To be clear – I am not saying I’m an Einstein. But many experts believe he was Aspie.

My Weirdest Aspie Traits

Looking back on life after an Asperger’s diagnosis is like watching the Sixth Sense after you find out the twist. It all feels a little contrived. To find your quirkiest idiosyncrasies bulleted in a textbook can leave you feeling lackluster, which is especially traumatizing when your primary defense against fitting in nowhere is: Well, at least I have luster. 

To best illustrate this for you, I provide you with a list of my weirdest traits, which as it turns out, are less idiosyncratic than symptomatic:

Piling:  I sleep under a mountain of pillows. Plus I put one between my knees. I hug another. And I smash two against my face. I used to call this snuggling. Now it’s called piling.

My bed

Songs on The List: The List is comprised of songs that burrow their way into my brain and live there for days. They’ve been known to nauseate me. To make me a little…unhinged. I can’t give you examples because the typing of their names is enough to lock me in catchy tune hell, but they’re basically anything you would hear at the bank. Rod Stewert. Huey Lewis and the News. 20th century Madonna. You get the idea. I’ve had leave grocery stores because of songs on The List. I’ve almost had to leave my husband for singing them. My family used to call this part of me cute. Now we call it perseverative thinking.

Songs on the other list:  This list is the opposite of The List. These songs are welcome–nay, encouraged–to burrow their way into my brain. To ensure they do just that, I play them on repeat. A lot. If you want to see my old college roommates beg for death, play them Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “Walk on the Ocean.” Who knew they were onto something when they said, “Turn it off already! This is not normal.” If you need further proof, you may refer to my current iTunes library, where you will see that I’ve played most songs about 25 times. But “Distant Sures” by the Cave Singers? 1,142. Nobody within earshot ever called this trait cute. More like insufferable. We now call this perseverating, too.

Water games: Perhaps the aversion to water games isn’t unheard of, but I think the intensity of mine may fall a bit outside the curve. If you splash me, I will cry. If you throw me in a body of water, I will slash your fucking tires.

I’m not kidding.

What we used to refer to as my can of whoop-ass is now called a sensory issue.

Playing with my ankles while standing: I’ll never forget the first time I realized I do this. I was Work Kirsten, which is to say I was the personable, brown-nosing version of myself who wears Ann Taylor skirts and heels. I was with a tough crowd–all superiors. You may be surprised to learn I felt nervous. What started as a pretend itch quickly evolved into minutes-long, full-on groping of the tarsus in a wobbly flamingo pose, most likely with a brazen display of crotch. What am I doing? I wondered. And when, for the love of God, am I going stop? Well Kirsten, you were stimming. And you will never stop.

What are your quirky traits? Aspie or not, share the in the comments section below! (I promise I won’t give them clinical labels that diminish your luster).

Aspie Mom Becomes 1st Grade Math Snob

Here we go again. More math drama. I think I’ve made it pretty clear that first grade math story problems are not my favorite and I had planned to never bring the subject up again. But then this came along:

Let’s take a minute to discuss what I find to be some key issues:

1. I see that “3 numbers” is circled. Presumably this was done to highlight a concept that Little Yoda missed. To that, I say: Three tens are three numbers.
2. I also see that skip counting is modeled in red ink. That’s nice. However, the directions do not indicate that one must show skip counting to answer this question appropriately. In fact, my understanding is that one must answer the question “Did Ann skip count by 2s, 5s, or 10s?”
3. Can we not assume that if Yoda illustrates that 10+10+10=30, then he understands the concept that Ann is counting by tens to get to thirty?
4. Since Little Yoda finds this math problem to be so mind-numbing that he has to toss in some third-grade division to entertain himself (while simultaneously adding strength to his argument that Ann is counting by tens), is it too much to ask that we assume he’s got the math down and we not mark up his paper?

Here’s the thing. I understand that having Asperger’s increases my risk of developing narcissistic defenses. I accept that such defenses could be driving my condescending attitude toward this asinine math problem. And maybe I’m being a bit snobby when I say that my kid consistently blows first grade math out of the water. But it drives me bonkers when he comes home with his pages all marked up, thus decreasing his confidence in what God very well may have intended to be his gift. Am I alone in this?

P.S. It’s worth noting that Yoda’s teacher is awesome and would mark this answer correct if I had the balls to say all this to her face. This post is not about her, but is instead about displacing a lifetime’s worth of frustration on this one measly problem.

Epic Aspie Feminist Fail

So I had a meeting at Little Yoda’s school with some guy that makes me call him doctor, even though he’s not one.* I’m a little nervous to talk to Mr. Doctor because I’ve heard over and over that schools tend to write mothers off as anxious and/or hysterical. Couple this with the fact that I can’t string a sentence together in a formal meeting without becoming anxious and/or hysterical and I’m a little doomed.

To establish authority, I rely on my other strengths, which are pretty much limited to obsessively collecting data and categorizing it. Because we’re going to discuss Yoda’s attendance, I gather up every last one of his medical records, email them to Mr. Doctor, then put the hard copies in a binder (because no one fucks with a woman with a binder). “I will not be treated like a crazy person,” I say as I three-hole punch with fervor. “I will be treated with respect.”

For the first time in weeks, I get up early enough to style my hair. I put on make up. And for about 15 minutes I’m even wearing heels, but ultimately decide I look levelheaded enough without them.

I am confident when I arrive at Mr. Doctor’s office. I shake his hand with minimal Aspergery false starts. As he makes himself comfortable in his ergonomic Sharper Image throne, I sit down in a first-grade desk chair, open my binder and establish dominance thus. Bring it, I think.

And he does. He stares into my eyes (yikes!). Already my leg starts to jiggle. “So we have a lot of anxiety in the family,” he says.

We do. And it’s primarily mine. But how does he know this and why is it relevant? As my mind reels, I forget to maintain eye contact. I have a thumb-war with myself. I sweat profusely. After a long, awkward pause, filled only with the sounds of my stimming I finally ask, “Huh?”

He grabs a stack of paper from his desk. “Anxiety, OCD, Asperger’s…”

Right. Now I’m messing up the hair I worked so hard to wash and blow dry because I can’t keep my fingers from running nervously through it. Seriously. How does this jerk-off know this? “Uh…huh?”

We go on in this incredibly awkward way for much longer than my social and coping skills can handle. I’m a nervous wreck by the time he finally reveals how he came upon these truths: in my hypervigilance to look sane and organized, I accidentally sent him my medical records along with Yoda’s.

So much for hiding my crazy!

*OK, fine. Technically he is a doctor. But I embarrassed myself and now he’s the recipient of my temper tantrum.

Battle Hymn of the Aspie Mom

We are French and we're better than you.

It appears ethnocentrism is now to parenting books what vampires are to young adult fiction. After Tiger mom, my inner Aspie was so enraged that I almost lost faith in humanity for making the author rich. So, when Why French Parents Are Superior was published in the Wall Street Journal, I was ready for war. I would leave a weasely little anonymous comment so enlightening that I would single-handedly reverse the tidal wave of PR buzz and would damage the book sales thus.

Unfortunately, French mom lady’s essay was relatively logical and I kind of liked her. First of all, she’s American so already I’m less defensive. She’s self-deprecating, there’s no blurred line between her advice and child abuse, and unlike most general parenting tips, hers were actually Aspie friendly. A few aligned with my worldview and the ones that didn’t were good discussion points at least:

Nugget #1. The French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive.

I’m not sure I can accomplish anything without becoming obsessive and can see the benefits of getting that in check. I’ll think about that one. Obsessively.

Nugget # 2.  French toddlers were sitting contentedly in their high chairs… eating fish and even vegetables.

I like this line, except it’s sure to incite a comment shit-storm that goes something like, “In my day, we ate what we got or went hungry.” Picky eating is a red flag for sensory issues, mineral deficiencies, OCD, food allergies and umpteen other things that can’t be fixed by going to bed hungry.

Sure, there’s the chance that a picky kid is just a little jerk, but we can we all agree to not default to that?

Nugget #3. “Discipline [in France]”… is a narrow, seldom-used notion that deals with punishment. Whereas “educating”… is something they imagined themselves to be doing all the time.

Any Aspie will tell you punishment blows. I’m not talking about professionally advised negative reinforcement. I’m talking about “You shut your mouth or your grounded!” Education? Bring it.

Nugget #4. French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old.

OK, this sentence can fuck off. I demand to know whether French pediatricians instill the fear of God in parents with regards to stomach-sleeping.

Nugget #5. American kids don’t have firm boundaries… anything goes.

As an Aspie rule-follower, I’m inept without boundaries and fully support implementing them. But, not every American parent is screwing this up. Methinks the author is projecting (as evidenced by the fact that she allows her toddler to run dangerously toward a deep body of water).

It seems this author may have fallen prey to marketing when slapping a title on the essay and tossing in some hyperbole. Who can blame her. A lot of people clicked. But regardless of how the media wants to spin it, this thing is not going to turn into another Tiger Mom debate. It’s just not mean enough. In fact, the only heartless thing this author does is make her kids wear cheesy berets for the photo shoot.

In the end, I felt too balanced to leave a nasty, anonymous comment, and I might even read the book. I’ll save my rage for something else. Like Dance Moms.