The Flying of the Freak Flags

145

Maybe. It depends on whether or not you grew up middle class, I think. They apply the Asperger’s label well (maybe too liberally? is that politically incorrect of me to say so?) in middle class school systems, but if you were from the sticks or the ghetto, it could have been school-to-prison pipeline for you. Then again, if you would have gotten stuck in the school-to-prison pipeline, you would have even without the label.

Yeah. I could read at age 2 but was still nonverbal at age 8. There was no place for me, and there probably still isn’t. The concept of doubly-exceptional is still shockingly new. The costs of being put in the wrong bucket are also far too steep.

The educational system is designed to produce workers but not foster the love of learning, unfortunately. I learned to do that on my own, and visited museums, read a lot, listened to classical music (and jazz, and experimental, and then eventually everything). My parents encouraged me at first, but then I took things a little too far for them.

I walk around talking to myself and flapping my hands. I look absolutely insane when I’m doing that. I don’t care.

My house is cluttered with literally thousands of books, most of which are in English. I usually read a book every couple days, and over time they have accumulated.

Not this guy, I hope:

harold-bornstein-21.jpeg640×640 50.7 KB

4 Likes
146

Yeah, when my dad told me that he went to the redwings store, I had to mentally work out that he purchased boots before I could say anything.

14 Likes
147

What did the lesbian vampire say to the other lesbian vampire?

See you next month!

9 Likes
148

If you have Red Tails, please contact your physician.

8 Likes
149

That crayfish story breaks my heart. I think everyone has a moment like it, even if they don’t remember it; so hearing someone else’s moment is painful in a very particular way…

13 Likes
150

The seven-year-old son of a (middle-class) friend of mine was recently diagnosed as aspberger, and they told her to give him a medication regimen (which they aren’t giving him). The thing is, the reason for his diagnosis: he’s way too creative and won’t stop being creative. His parents used to manage a LARP camp, so he grew up around weirdos in silly costumes telling stories, and the kid is just naturally bursting with creative weirdness, imagining dragons and monsters, telling stories about wizards and knights, and just being non stop exuberant. Apparently that’ll get you an autism-spectrum diagnosis.

12 Likes
151

The bartender says, “By the way, I have to ask, why do you want a cup of hot water?”

And Dracula pulls out a tampon and says, “Tea time!”

5 Likes
152

I love games for the actual play. I’m not interested in winning, and often I’m annoyed by the social interaction too. My favourite boardgame of all time is Agricola, but I just like making a farm.

I’m male bodied by by index finger is noticeably longer than my ring finger. I thought that was normal until I was in my early 20s.

(regarding x’s that look like two meeting curved lines) Mathematicians do it. It differentiates x’s from ×’s, though that hardly explains it since mathematicians nearly never use times signs.

I don’t think adults got how cruel it was to tell children they have a lot of potential.

So I said I’d add a little more if the thread took off, and here we are at 150+ posts (admittedly 2% vampire/menstruation jokes). One thing I said is that it was strange for me to start this thread because I have trouble participating: I know I’m weird but it’s very hard for me to explain what it is that’s so weird about me without getting into some internal mindscape stuff I can’t explain. But I have a few anecdotes about how other people noticed I was weird:

  1. I’ve recently turned my back on being male, but I’m sure male bodied, and have certainly never had a period. Despite this, multiple women have approached me for advice on feminine hygiene products (cups and re-usable pads). (For clarity, I have never been involved in a related field of study or work and have no credentials). I was helpful each time.
  2. Similarly, as a man, in university the student women’s center insisted I represent them in a [locally] televised debate.
  3. I’ve had three people, when in the process of coming out about one thing or another (gay, poly, trans) contact me to come out to me as a kind of “chaser” to coming out to other close friends or family and all of them used the same variant of this phrase (with quoted part exactly the same for all): Coming out to everyone was exhausting to I decide to tell you “because I knew you wouldn’t care.”
  4. I’ve also been the first person that a number of acquaintances came out to (or alternatively, I’ve had people who had no interest in coming out come out to just me); people I didn’t even really know that well. They’d end up talking to me and just start telling me about these big changes in their lives and how they saw themselves. In two cases people I really didn’t know well talked to me about parts of their lives they kept secret because somehow they thought I already knew.

I feel like a blank slate some days. I feel like there is no me but rather just this multifaceted reflection of other people. Sometimes I don’t know what my authentic feelings or responses would be, so I can only think in terms of how other people would react to various ways I could act or emotions I could express. Sometimes that makes me feel like I’m a terrible, manipulative asshole, even though I’m largely trying to make choices that help.

I think back on experiences I’ve had in my life, and the extent to which people were willing to talk to me about weird things about themselves, to share things they were ashamed of, to assume I’d be okay with things that they didn’t think other people were okay with, and I feel like a lot of people have seen that weird reflective emptiness that is me, even if they didn’t know what they were seeing.

And on a less ineffable note, I’m super psyched for AGDQ. Tune in at Twitch - there is something for everyone.

9 Likes
153

I am right there with you. I love board games, but I often dread playing them with my groups of friends, because nearly all of them are either ultra-competitive winning-is-all-that-matters folks or “I’m here to drink beer and bitch about work and… oh, is it my turn? what do I do in this game, again?” types.

That’s tolerable for short fun simple games. When we’ve been playing Firefly (which is excellent) for five hours, I’d rather jump out a third-floor window. I don’t care about winning, I just want to be engaged in the gameplay and storytelling.

8 Likes
154

My friends who play games are all extreme math nerds and winning is a big thing. I actually love strategizing and discussing which lines were winning lines after the game, but too often this happens during the game and you get an “alpha gamer” who basically tells everyone else what their best play is each turn. I love high level game play and deep strategizing, but I kind of admire them as a art. I’m happy someone else is doing that and that I can experience it but don’t care to replicate it myself.

1 Like
155

Could there be other reasons he got the diagnosis, outside of his creativity? I mean, I’d guess if the parents voluntarily took him to be tested, they were concerned about something. Of course, if they didn’t volunteer him for it (like the school forced it on them), then I can see that being the case (he was too “disruptive” in class, that sort of thing).

I have a friend who’s son is probably on the spectrum (never tested, but he’s always had trouble with things like not understanding non-verbal communications), and she’s basically helped him figure out how to navigate interactions with other individuals.

2 Likes
156

I would much rather play a game that’s close and tense than one that’s a blowout in either direction. I find winning by a lot to be as little fun as getting trounced.

Both my ring fingers are longer than my index fingers. My left ring finger is the same length as my left middle finger.

It can be done in one down-up-down motion without lifting the chalk from the chalkboard. I kinda like it.

I use it all the time:

I also use it for the dimensionality of a matrix or tensor (an [m × n] matrix, for example).

Potential is a hell of a drug. When we’re born, we have the ability to become anything we want. Then, over time, we improve ourselves in some areas while neglecting other areas, and the set of things we can become diminishes over time. Eventually, we become what we’ve become because we’ve exhausted all other options.

Of course, it is possible to change one’s career path, assuming one doesn’t mind being the old guy in class that everyone thinks is the professor at first but turns out to be just another average undergrad. Also assuming one doesn’t mind having to put in the same work all over again to learn something from scratch… definitely a challenge, but something that’s only tolerable if it’s a labor of love or necessity, and practically intolerable if it’s done for vanity.

Also, natural ability gets you nowhere. Nobody’s entitled to be great at something, it’s all about the hard work and practice paying off, plus a little luck. Kids who get told about their potential tend to get lazy unless they realize this.

Instead of hammering on about potential, I think this advice works better: if you have a goal for yourself, do what it takes to make that goal a reality; if you don’t, do what it takes to keep as many options open as possible.

C’mon guys, we can do better than that!

What has wings, sits in the dark, and drinks blood?
A maxi pad.

7 Likes
157

Knowing that kid, I’m guessing he had a real problem with sitting still in a classroom setting, didn’t really understand boundaries or social interactions, nor the distinction between fantasy and reality, sometimes. I can see him being a real challenge for a teacher just trying to do a lesson on arithmetic when he’s going on about kobolds in the hallway.

I think his parents and a school therapist have been working with him on that sort of thing and it’s helped a lot. Their issue was the school literally framing it to them as “your kid is autism-spectrum because his creativity is getting in the way of learning, so we recommend medication to tamp that down a bit.”

5 Likes
158

Might be (somewhat) regionally affected, too- there’s interesting data about how the diagnosis rates of various things aren’t evenly distributed- some physical locations have much higher rates than others.

1 Like
159

How common is it for neurotypical kids to have meltdowns? It doesn’t seem to be exclusively an autistic thing, but both our kids have times when it’s just an emotional or sensory overload and they cry for a few minutes. It’s not directed at all – if it was triggered by us not giving them something, they will happily give us a hug while they get over it and won’t show any symptoms of rage. When my daughter finishes crying, it’s like a light switch: absolute despair or raw emotion, then within half a second she starts talking completely normally, even cheerfully about something else. It’s creepy, and it keeps happening without any sign that the initial meltdown was fake or manipulative. My son has a more natural transition period before he’s back to his normal self.

3 Likes
160

I’m another one with that same experience. In fact I “failed out” of the gifted program one year because they had my birthdate wrong (January 1 instead of late November of that year) and calculated based on the wrong age.

6 Likes
161

Yeah, sounds like it’s a bit problematic then. I hate that the first line of defense (especially in public schools, which I assume this kid is in) is medicating it away. It sounds like he just needs an environment that will foster and work with his creativity rather than simply try to tamp it down. They should try a montessori or a Waldorf school if they can find a good one or they can afford it. I’ve known kids with the same sort of boundaries or sitting for long periods of time issues, and the ability for them to not have to sit for long period of times and to work at what they want (within boundaries) worked for them. Many montessori teachers will work the kids interests into their math lessons, for example.

I hope it all works out for him and his sense of wonder and adventure isn’t completely gutted by his experiences in school.

162

You’ll look at them much more positively now, amirite? :wink:

2 Likes
163

I was going to say “never” and then I thought, “Well, except for cross products.”

I don’t think it’s so much that they get lazy, I think it’s more like they get afraid. If you learn that putting in effort is valuable, then you have an inexhaustible source of value to contribute. If you learn that having potential has value, then you maintain your value by continuing to have potential which means doing nothing at all. Everything is a chance to fail, nothing is really a chance to succeed.

164

No idea. All kids are different, right? My daughter’s big things was dealing with change. When she went to school at 3, she cried for the first week every day. Once she got used to what she was going to be doing, she settled in and loved her time in school (still does). She’s pretty neurotypical, I’d guess (though she’s never been tested). She still is pretty set in her ways, but she handles new things and changes much better than she used to (but she’s 14 now, so she bloody well better!).

5 Likes