Pretending to be Normal Read online

  Typically, my teachers took it upon themselves to analyze this pedantic behavior of mine and I’m told their fondest memories of me included adjectives like obstinate, disobedient and everyone’s favorite, mentally retarded. Because my parents were learning how to talk to me, it never occurred to them that I was not following other people’s directions. They knew how to get my attention, usually by allowing me the freedom to find my own way of expressing my interests. If I wanted to chew the same piece of gum for days on end, that was fine. If I wanted to shape my mouth into the letters they were forming while I spoke, that was okay If I insisted on reading my books out loud that was okay too, even if we were in the library They knew I had my own way of doing things, and they didn’t interfere with my methods so long as the effort was genuine and the result positive. I had control over my learning environment at home and because I was so academically gifted, my parents saw no reason to interfere with a good thing. But at school, the rules changed. Suddenly, I was expected to comply with agendas and schedules that were stifling and illogical.

  During my first year of school, the teacher assigned each of us a special number. This number was supposed to be our special number and every time she called our number we were to answer, as if she had called us by name. To my way of thinking, this was a meaningless idea. Naturally, I refused to comply. The teacher called my parents and told them as much. My parents agreed with me that this was a silly issue and they insisted the teacher use my name from then on out.

  That same year, we were required to take naps each day. I vividly remember my teacher announcing, «Children, find your mats and take your nap». I refused. Again, the teacher called my parents. Again, my parents made their way to the school.

  «Liane, why won’t you take your nap?» my parents wondered of me.

  «Because, I can’t».

  «You see!» the teacher said smugly.

  «Why can’t you take your nap?» my parents continued.

  «Because I don’t have a mat».

  «You most certainly do have a mat. There it is in your cubby», the teacher replied.

  «I do not have a mat».

  «You see what I mean?» the teacher asked my parents. «she is an obstinate child».

  «Why do you say you don’t have a mat?» the folks asked, not giving up on me.

  «That is not a mat. That is a rug», I honestly and accurately replied.

  «So it is», said my father. «Will you take a nap on your rug?»

  «If she tells me to», I said matter-of-factly.

  «Tell her to take her nap on her rug», my father said as my parents turned to take me home. I think even then, I was grateful to be vindicated. I wasn’t trying to be difficult, I was trying to do the right thing. The trouble was, the teacher assumed I understood language like other children did. I did not.

  Most children thrive on chaos and noise. Children in school were always running and shouting and moving. They were always busy, always mixing things up, never content to play quietly or by themselves. I liked to play at the kitchen center in our kindergarten room. In fact, I rarely wanted to play anywhere else, another «problem» of mine that caused my teacher great distress. If I wasn’t playing with the kitchen toys, I was reading. Reading was relaxing and it was something I could do very well by the time I was three years old. Should I say, it looked like I could read. Actually, I could call out most of the words printed in my books. I could not typically comprehend the material if it was written above a first grade level. Nonetheless, I did find solace in the dark print so neatly typed on the white pages. I enjoyed the rhythmic pattern and the flow that moved the eye from left to right, from top to bottom. I welcomed the routine that insisted I stop for periods and break for commas and new paragraphs. I loved the way most words played on my tongue. I loved the way they caused different parts of my mouth to move. But if I did come across a word that hurt my ears, typically words with too many hyper-nasal sounds, I would not say them aloud. Similarly, I would refuse words that looked ugly by virtue of being too lopsided or too cumbersome or too unusual in their phonetics. I don’t recall being very attracted to picture books, probably because these required I attach meaning to what I saw. Word books did not require this of me. Word books allowed me to take what I needed and then move on.

  By around eight years old, I had become a very proficient comprehender as well as word caller. So long as the material was of a factual nature. Fiction was more difficult for me for it forced my thoughts to go beyond the literal. I preferred biographies and eventually made my way through every biography we had in our library, despite the librarian’s repeated request that I check out something new and different. I liked reading about real live people and their real life experiences. It didn’t matter if it was a story about Babe Ruth or Harry Truman or Harriet Tubman. I wasn’t attracted to baseball or government or social issues so much as I was attracted to the reality of the words I was reading. Even today, as I find those same biographies on the shelves of libraries, I return to that old comfortable place in my mind where those words meant so much to me.

  Unlike most children, I hated active outings, particularly outings to new places, so completely that I used to become physically ill just thinking about making the visit. My mother remembers dreading birthday parties and trips to amusement parks and parades and visits to grandma’s house, principally because I was certain to throw up just as we were on our way to the event. We can laugh about this now, but we both know it was anything but funny at the time. Neither of us understood why I seemed to find life so difficult. Every child wanted to go to birthday parties or to visit grandma. Every child, so it seemed, but me. Sleep overs too, were impossible for me, even though I tried and tried to actually make one work. They never did and each time my father would come to get me and take me home.

  I hated leaving my home. It made sense to me. I knew where my books were. I could depend on my dog to follow my orders. I could run my fingers along the ridges our yellow plates made as they stood in their neat stacks in our square pantry. I could stuff things down our laundry shoot, over and over again. I could slide up and down our hardwood hall. I could line up my stuffed animals and talk to them without having to bother with needless interruptions. I could hide under my bed if I needed to.

  Many a time, my actions brought my parents and me to the hospital. I loved to chew crunchy things, even if they were poisonous. When I was finished with my little tin foil table settings, I used to chew them until they crackled their way into a tight, neat ball. I shaved the sand from Emory boards with my front teeth. I took great delight in grinding the striking strip of a match book between my back teeth. I chewed sugar packets whole, loving the way the grainy sweet sugar overcame the bitter paper packet. I ate school paste and play dough and paraffin. I might have avoided the trips to the hospital if I had stopped my grazing there. Unfortunately, I also enjoyed toilet bowl sanitizing bars and moth balls. My parents tell me people at the hospital began to suspect them of child abuse. I suspect they must have grown accustomed to my idiosyncracies.

  As much as I loved to chew scratchy and gritty textures, I often found it impossible even to touch some objects. I hated stiff things, satiny things, scratchy things, things that fit me too tightly. Thinking about them, imagining them, visualizing them… any time my thoughts found them, goose bumps and chills and a general sense of unease would follow. I routinely stripped off everything I had on even if we were in a public place.

  I constantly threw my shoes away, often as we were driving in the car. I guess I thought that would get rid of the nasty things forever! I ripped the tags right out of my clothing even though I knew I would get in trouble for the hole that was left in the tag’s place. I think I was almost five years old before I was persuaded to wear anything other than my favorite pair of blue nubby polyester shorts.

  I also found many noises and bright lights nearly impossible to bear. High frequencies and brassy, tin sounds clawed my nerves. Whistles, party noisemakers, flut
es and trumpets and any close relative of those sounds disarmed my calm and made my world very uninviting. Bright lights, mid-day sun, reflected lights, strobe lights, flickering lights, fluorescent lights; each seemed to sear my eyes. Together, the sharp sounds and the bright lights were more than enough to overload my senses. My head would feel tight, my stomach would churn, and my pulse would run my heart ragged until I found a safety zone.

  I found solace underwater. I loved the sensation that came from floating with the water. I was liquid, tranquil, smooth; I was hushed. The water was solid and strong. It held me safe in its black, awesome darkness and it offered me quiet — pure and effortless quiet. Entire mornings would pass me by while I swam underwater for great periods of time, pushing my lungs to hold on to the quiet and the dark until they forced me to find air.

  Though my pool was my favorite safety zone, I had others. I often found comfort among the strong arms of a great maple tree we had in our back yard. In the tree, I could watch everything around me without having to interact. I could take part in the world as an observer. I was an avid observer. I was enthralled with the nuances of people’s actions. In fact, I often found it desirable to become the other person. Not that I consciously set out to do that, rather it came as something I simply did. As if I had no choice in the matter. My mother tells me I was very good at capturing the essence and persona of people. At times, I literally copied someone’s look and their actions. For instance, if a schoolmate began wearing glasses, I would sneak my aunt’s so that I too could wear glasses, even though they nearly blinded me. If someone broke their arm, I would come home and complain my own arm was broken, until my mother finally cast it in flour paste.

  But often, I would engage in far more assimilating behaviors. I was uncanny in my ability to copy accents, vocal inflections, facial expressions, hand movements, gaits, and tiny gestures. It was as if I became the person I was emulating. I don’t know how I choose who to copy, but I do know they were always someone I found pretty, though not necessarily pretty in the usual sense. I don’t think I paid much attention to the overall appearance of the person. I remember being attracted to pieces of people’s faces. I might have liked the color of the eyes, the texture of the hair or the straightness of the teeth. But it was the nose that really held my interest. Straight, linear, «classic» noses appealed to my sense of balance. Button noses, turned-up noses, crooked noses, and especially short and smooshy noses, sent me staring in dismay. I wanted to rush to their face and remold their nose. I would give no thought to the bones and the cartilage that lie just beneath the surface of the nose. To me, the form was pliable and stretchable. And because of those thoughts, I found no reason why anyone’s nose should deviate from the linear.

  My parents tell me they were often confused not so much by my ability to copy others, but rather by my desire to do so. They thought I was giving in to peer pressure or wanting to be someone I was not. This was not the case during that time in my life. Until I was somewhere around ten years old, I held myself separate from others. I never really compared who I was to who they were. It didn’t dawn on me to see myself as a fellow third grader or as a member of a team. I felt almost like I was invisible. I was conscious of the fact that other people could see me and hear me and talk to me, but still I thought I was removed from their domain. I didn’t contemplate that they ostracized me; rather, I chose to shut them out. I could stare at them all I liked, never thinking this might annoy them. I could take in parts of who they were and never worry that I was a copy cat, never worry I had lost me. I always knew right where I was.

  If I did begin to lose me, I knew how to get me back. Under my bed, I had a wonderfully symmetrical alcove made from the form of my headboard. The alcove was no more than three feet wide by two feet deep, and in it I could always find myself. Whenever things became too fuzzy or too loud or too distracting; whenever I began to feel as though I would come unraveled, I knew I could crawl into my alcove and crunch up into it until I felt as square and symmetrical as it. I could squeeze my knees and pull my thoughts back into my bones so they could end their flight through my blood and rest for awhile. I could plug my ears shut with my index fingers and grit my teeth and clamp my eyes closed and drift about in the stillness of it all. Then, when I was ready, I would open my eyes and there I would be, all safe and sound.

  By the time I was approaching my second year in school, I had developed several public appearance coping strategies. Unlike some children who find success through a well crafted offensive, I preferred to retreat and rely on a quiet defence. If things grew too uncomfortable or confusing for me, I simply drew back and seethed. I’m certain there was nothing charming about my behavior, but I do know it brought a more positive connotation than raging did. Not that I didn’t have temper tantrums. I did, and apparently quite often if my babysitting aunts tell the truth. According to them, I could turn on a dime from being a calm, collected and rather quiet child, to one that seemed filled with the energy of a roaring tornado. One moment would find me calmly working on a project — typically building houses and towns out of paper or cardboard boxes — and the next I would be stomping the hard work into piles of scraps. My aunts were never certain why I flew into a rage; I never told them my reasons. I suspect I flipped the moment my sensory system became overloaded. I don’t think I knew how to diffuse myself when I was caught between something I really wanted to do and the problem that came from my sensory integration dysfunction. I imagine I just held on as long as I could and then, unable to realize when enough was enough, I let loose with rage and tantrums.

  I’m not certain why I never allowed myself to tantrum in public, but I do have an inkling of an idea that might offer an explanation. I remember watching other children as they threw fits. It was horrible to watch them, to see their little bodies twist into odd contortions and their face turn red and sometimes purple, just as their lips made their way to blue. They were no longer children. Right before my eyes, they became molten, hot and savage. Maybe my horrified association with that behavior became a catalyst for self-control. Maybe I just knew that so long as I kept my rage at home, I would not be in jeopardy of becoming that misshapen creature from the grocery store.

  I realize my early childhood might sound cheerless, even strangely foreign, but it wasn’t. Not to me. Images came to me like motion pictures on the screen and I enjoyed the sensation that came from thinking life was something set forth for me to enjoy at my leisure. I could jump in when I felt like it, slip away if that fit, or sit back and observe as a wandering passerby would. It never dawned on me that other children were reasoning with the world far differently than I was. It never dawned on my parents either. I think my peers knew I was different, but they were far too young and unsophisticated to care much either way. I knew how to find safety and warmth when I was a little girl. I often wished, as I grew older, to return to that time and place. I often wish that now.

  Looking back, I can easily see why my parents, my psychiatrist and my pediatrician dismissed my actions as precocious or creative alternatives to the norm. Thoughts of anything related to autism would have been the farthest thing from their consciousness. Children with autism lived in a world of their own. They often hurt themselves, shrieked, raged and never spoke. They were institutionalized, with no hope for a better tomorrow. So everyone believed. Thoughts of a simple learning disability would also have been far from their thoughts. I was gifted. Gifted children did not have learning disabilities forty years ago. So too did they believe.

  Now that my parents understand AS, they are able to describe my childhood with the help of an entirely new perspective; one that makes the choices I made then, as well as the choices I make as an adult, seem far more focused and clear, perhaps even more correct, given the way I perceive the world. Today, when we discuss yesterday, there are many «ah ha» experiences. Lots of «So that’s why…» discussions. Some «We just assumed…» conversations. There is no guilt, no blaming, no wondering about «what ifs». Today,
there is harmony. There is order. There is cohesiveness.

  2

  The Gap Widens and Wondering Why

  My reflection is clear in the center,

  wrinkled near the edges,

  ragged on the outside.

  I can force myself to see only the clear,

  I can focus my eyes on the middle,

  the essence,

  the point from which clarity comes.

  I can mix-match my memories with the breeze of my whisper

  and smooth out the edges,

  if I need to,

  if I want to,