What is Asperger's Syndrome

Asperger's syndrome is an autism spectrum "disability." People with Asperger's syndrome struggle with certain aspects of life that "neurotypicals" (people without Asperger's who are presumably normal) don't struggle with. For example, we don't always understand social cues and frequently we have to be taught things that other people pick up seemingly by osmosis. Also, we don't tend to think inside the boxes that seem to be acceptable to mainstream society. This makes us creative, but some of us also think that personal hygiene is optional (unless someone has taken the time to explain the procedures as well as why this is a good idea).

Sometimes we have experiences that NT's don't have. For instance, one time the sun's light got too loud for me to hear. I was looking into the sun and couldn't hear my friends' voices because of synaesthesia--visual things become sound and vice versa. Synaesthesia has led to some great art, such as Kandinsky's paintings and the poetry of Baudelaire and other French poets of his time.

Also, I have a tendency to hyperfocus. The good news: if I am listening to you, I am not listening to anyone else. You have 100% of my attention. I'm also not paying attention to what I see, so that channel is effectively blocked. This is why I never drive and talk on a cell phone--I know at least some of my limitations. I think NT's by the way, should also not drive and talk at the same time. I've been behind too many people driving erratically.

I know all sorts of stuff because I can quickly learn things that interest me. I would be good at Jeopardy because I know lots of tidbits of knowledge. My only problem is popular culture. Like many Aspies, I am not interested in it, so I could never answer questions about it. Who cares what Britney Spears is up to! I'd rather learn html, thank you very much.

Anytime people start talking about someone with a disability, the immediate reaction among the so-called able-bodied (temporarily able-bodied, in reality), is that a disability is tragic. It's hard to know how to bust this particular paradigm, but let me try.

I have depression, and that is really not fun. With the help of a couple of good doctors, I have found a combination of meds that are working for me. So, I recognize there is a time to work on something. I also have a family member who has difficulty getting a job because no one has helped him find strategies for dealing with Asperger's (long story about why this is so). It would be nice if someone could help him develop enough social skills to make it through an interview because I think he would be a good worker once he did get hired.

At the same time, with the adaptations I use, some of which I have learned before learning I have Asperger's and some of which I am developing as a result of learning this at age 47, Asperger's does not get in the way of my ability to have a good relationship with my husband (not an Aspie, but not NT either) and also my ability to have and maintain a good job.

The advantages of being an Aspie for me: creativity because I am less aware of social rules and traditional ways of thinking, friends across a wide variety of ethnicities and economic classes because positional hierarchies are basically meaningless to me, an ability to understand and appreciate people who are outside the norm for whatever the reason, an ability to think things through from first principles rather than just accept what others tell me, a desire to be honest and to be around honest people, an ability to accept people for who they are because my first tendency is to believe what people have to say about themselves, knowledge of what it feels like to be lonely, an ability to operate in a wide variety of settings because every setting is equally comfortable/uncomfortable, an ability to analyze and create systems (in my case, systems for learning), comfort with technology--I'm not a programmer but I am able to learn how to use technology, the ability to think in music and pictures and not just language, the ability to invent new paradigms and to appreciate new paradigms that other people invent.

Well, that's a pretty good start on the advantages. They far outweigh the disadvantages, particularly since I got this laptop and am having better success at keeping myself organized.