What I See

I've been told my eyes dart around when I talk to people, never lingering on their nose or eyes or wherever you're supposed to look, but flicking up, to the side, out the window, watching passers-by, reading signs, watching out. "Look at people when they talk to you," my mother tells me. "Why do you stare out the window in the car instead of looking at me? You have to look at people."

Well, I do. They're just never the right people. Imagine you're talking to someone. You're standing in the middle of the grocery store gabbing away, having just run into some long-lost friend using the mystical power of Face Recognition. What do you see?

I won't tell you, because I don't know. But here's what I see:

There's a traffic jam in the parking lot, and several employees in bright orange vests are directing traffic. I wish I had a bright orange vest. It would be fun to direct traffic. My favorite cereal is on sale–two for one. A bag dispenser in the produce section is almost out. There's that friendly employee, restocking the chips. He's always doing that. How many chips can people eat? A cart is coming down the aisle, a flickering overhead light reflected in its metal. An angry driver leans on his horn outside. The express lane sign says "10 items or fewer", which is good because "10 items or less" is grammatically incorrect. The produce guy has a big knife for cutting the brown ends off celery. Someone's spending a fortune on groceries in lane 4. Is Mother making a disapproving face at me?

Oh, wait. I'm supposed to look at the person talking to me.

Here's what I see now:

A brown spot has taken up residence on their cheek. Am I looking in the right place? People's noses are boring. Am I staring? Is Mother still making a disapproving face? I try to remember some detail of the shape of their nose, their eyes, their chin– it slips away as soon as my eyes do. I look past them at the traffic directors. Can they tell? Probably. I pull my eyes back to their thoroughly ordinary-looking nose. The need to look around–to know exactly where I am and what surrounds me–grows until it's almost painful. I remind myself that successful engineers have good social skills. There are no spiky crushers on the grocery store ceiling. Spiky crushers do not exist, except in video games. There are other things that fall on you from the ceiling, that paranoid part of me argues, the part that tells me to get behind something when a car drives by, in case they're looking for someone to shoot at. (I really have no idea where that part came from. Nobody has ever been shot at while walking up our street.) I hear a cart creaking behind me. If I turn around to look, Mother will make a disapproving face. In the car, she'll tell me again: "You have to look at people when they talk." And I'll look out the window and admire the scenery, and watch for rogue garbage trucks*, and tell her I'll try.

And I am trying. I'm getting better at looking at people, though I don't think it's improving my face recognition skills, or providing any useful social insights. I try because I've been told that flicking your eyes around–furtive eye movement, when you want a negative connotation–makes you look dishonest. Because I want to be a spacecraft engineer, and nobody will hire someone who twists around to look behind them at every noise. Because maybe if I look at people's faces, eventually I'll start picking out the little details that apparently tell you how they're feeling. But looking at people is hard, especially when there's so many other, more interesting things to look at. So if one day you meet someone whose eyes dart around, looking everywhere but at your face, don't think "They're not paying attention." Maybe they are. Maybe you've run into someone like me, who looks at everything, not just your face.

*I have a problem with garbage trucks. When I was little my room faced an alley across our street where, every Wednesday at some ungodly hour of the morning, a huge garbage truck would come charging along, looking as if it was about to crash through my window until it turned onto the street proper. I have less of a problem with recycling and yardwaste trucks, but they're all too big and noisy.

Tactical Squawking

I was preparing dinner when I heard the noise. I would write it here, but you see, it was the sort of sound it's impossible to spell. Imagine several very ill hawks attempting to sing in a choir, with a dying car engine as accompaniment. As you can imagine, it was a very disturbing noise, both due to its awfulness (is that a word?) and its unexpectedness.

The noise continued in sporadic bursts from my brother's room, where he usually sits quietly at his computer (quietly being the key word here), working on digital art or battling his friends in Team Fortress 2.

I chopped up a bell pepper. QUAAARRWWK!* went the noise, echoing down the stairs.

"What's he doing now?" my mom sighed over the carrot she was grating.

"I don't know! He's so weird!"

KRAAAAEERK! The salad spinner vibrated from the force of the sound (or maybe I'm just being melodramatic). I sliced the radishes with more violence than strictly necessary, venting my exasperation on innocent root vegetables. AEERRRK!  A timer went off, drowning out the next few screeches. Then, just when I thought he'd stopped: ZZZWEEE! EEEEAWK! QUAAAAWH!

We looked at each other, my mom and I. And even though I'm not very good with the social stuff, I knew an unspoken question hung between us. I even knew what it was: What the heck is that ungodly racket?

KKREEEEEAH! I stalked into my brother's room.

"What are you doing?" He was playing a video game; I don't know which one. It was the kind where you run around and shoot people before they shoot you; an online one, with voice-chat.

ZWAAARK! "I'm distracting the other team!" he explained, screeching again. The other players stopped, forgetting to shoot. He smashed their heads with a frying pan.

"Aren't you also distracting your own team?"

"No, they know what I'm doing."

Completely forgetting to yell at him, or even tell him to shut up, I walked into the kitchen and metaphorically died laughing, though not before explaining the awful racket was actually a form of sonic warfare. My mother was not amused, but she didn't see it the way I did: while we were downstairs thinking what is that bozo doing? he was upstairs devising an innovative new strategy.

So the moral of this story is: The mentally different do a lot of things which make absolutely no sense to neurotypicals. When someone does something weird or annoying, before you yell at them, find out their reasoning. Also, don't use voice-chat or my brother might screech in your ear.

Epilogue: It has now been a week since the invention of Tactical Squawking. It is no longer funny. In fact, it's becoming annoying. But considering that's its purpose, I'm not going to complain (though if it keeps up, I might have to change my mind).

*Would you look at that, I managed to spell it after all.

On Personal Shoppers, Disruptive Patterning, and Bad Music at the Mall

I do not like shopping. Well, that's not entirely true. I like grocery shopping, and going to the Apple store. I do not like shopping for clothes. The mall is a terrible place, mostly because all the stores seem locked in competition for the Worst and Loudest Music Award. Almost everything is hideous, and of the stuff that isn't, almost nothing fits. (I am shaped somewhat like a short, tailless Mewtwo.) My brother likes shopping even less, to the point where we have to bribe him with food to get him to cooperate. So on our latest shopping expedition (December 27th, after the crowds are gone) I became his unofficial personal shopper. My mother shops for me sometimes, but she doesn't understand my brother, who won't care if his clothes are microfiber as long as they're soft, and hates anything plaid because it's confusing to look at.* (Mother thinks plaid is cute. I disagree.) So in the interest of avoiding second and third shopping excursions, I made it my job to feel everything for softness, discourage the purchase of ugly plaid things and choose colors (red, orange, gray and navy are good.)

I am not perfect. We're going shopping again today, to return half our purchases for being "too scratchy". But interestingly enough, the things Mother picked out are going back; the shirts with scratchy seams, the shorts with a scratchy waistband she thought would be better than the thick, soft one. I really should have pointed those out and avoided a second shopping trip. Maybe I could be a personal shopper…but only for my brother, and to avoid prolonging our shopping expeditions, because I decided long ago not to work in any industry that involves long discussions with customers.

There's a business idea in here somewhere. Specially trained personal shoppers to buy clothes for the autistic and otherwise mall-averse? Good idea, but it sounds a bit expensive. A store specializing entirely in soft and fluffy things? That might already exist. A quiet mall with soundproofing instead of speakers? Now there's a good idea. If anyone reading this is a mall manager, consider that free business advice.

*Plaid, checks, some stripes and other black-and-white patterns can range from confusing to painful to look at. I consider them disruptive patterns, like the stripes of a zebra which confuse lions trying to pick one zebra out of a herd.

404 Server Error

404 server error: The file or directory you requested could not be found. It may have been moved or deleted.
    I've been practicing my computer voice, and I must say it's improved a lot. I've learned to slow at the end – de - let - ed…– and to add rANdom pitCH chANgeS in the middle of words. Of course, I'm also practicing my r's…see, it's educational! And useful! And…
"STOP PERSEVERATING!!" My dad does not appreciate this new skill. He's irritated; why, exactly, I have no idea. So I switch to my other favorite error, which may or may not exist:
Error: An error occurred, but the error message could not be retrieved due to another error.
    Cue endless repetitions as I figure out which syllables to incorrectly emphasize; where to change pitch; where to slow down. My mother thinks it's cute – not me, but the actual error, which I found on the Internet. My dad thinks I should stop perseverating. I think it's educational.
    First of all, computers are very precise in their language, so I'm learning to enunciate. I'm adding emphasis to my words – true, it's in the wrong places – but that's easy to fix. I've been told I speak in a monotone, so this might be useful.
Second, I've learned most of the 400 and 500 series of server errors, and what causes some of them. 500– internal server error. 402– payment required 405– method not allowed. Which leads me to methods, and servers, and now I'm distracted…again!
Third, and most importantly, I'm learning to listen. Apparently neurotypicals can pick up on all kinds of things from the way people talk. I don't think I can, but maybe I just need to listen. I listen very carefully to GLaDOS and Siri (who, incidentally, is also a bit evil) and our GPS, not to discern some extra meaning from their words, but to mimic them. Not quite the same, I know, but isn't that the first step? If I don't learn this, I'll never get the rest.
See, Daddy? Now, let's hope he's stopped complaining…
404 sERver errOr: The fiLe or direcTORy yoU requESted couLD not bE FOund. IT may haVe BEen mOved oR de-le - ted…
"STOP IT! NO  MORE PERSEVERATING!"

Autism Awareness Month–A Week of Thinking Logically

Happy Autism Awareness Month, everyone! By the end of April, I hope you will be more aware of the mentally different people you may encounter in life. (And yes, I know it's now almost the middle of April, but I had a permissions problem and couldn't log in to post for a while.)
First, let's think about logic. The first thing that comes to my mind is a computer. Computers seem very smart, but are actually very stupid. They can add a thousand numbers in a second, remember a terabyte of data (provided a large enough hard drive), and calculate the fastest route between your house and the grocery store. However, a computer cannot infer meaning from context, compose a well-written sentence or understand an idiom. If a programmer leaves out a comma, the compiler will probably throw a fit over "invalid syntax". But if I wrte lik dis, u stll undrstand!
Now, some autistic people can remember thousands of bits of meaningless data, or square any number in their head. I am not one of them; those people are called savants and are extremely rare. I do, however, think somewhat like a computer. To me, the sentence "Go do your work" is very different from "Go do your schoolwork", though my mother insists they both mean the latter. Upon hearing the former, I started tidying my room, and was scolded for not doing my math.
I don't say "Stay there," I say "Stay within a 5-foot radius of your current location" (this is particularly useful for brothers, who tend to wander off to the video game aisle at Target).
When people ask how my day was, I have to stop and remember; they don't actually want to hear all about it. I prefer concrete language, and well-defined terms; say what you mean. A good test is to ask yourself: "If I ran this through Google Translate, would it still mean what I want it to?"
Neurotypicals, your assignment this week is to think logically. Don't assume anything. You will find a lot of unknowns, but that's to be expected. And remember, you can pretend to be a computer, but a computer can't pretend to be you! (at least, not yet…)

Coming Out of the Closet with Prosopagnosia

Happy 2013!

And, as per my New Year's resolution…I am "coming out of the closet". No, not that way…

I have prosopagnosia.

More colloquially known as 'face blindness' (but I prefer the scientific term), this odd neurological problem can be acquired or congenital. It's exactly what it sounds like; a difficulty in recognizing faces–the "usual way". (I'll get into the "unusual way" later.) I won't go into much detail (because other people can explain it much better, and I don't know that much detail), but this is a problem with a specific area of the brain–yes, there is a dedicated face-recognition part of your brain–and in prosopagnosia, it doesn't work so well. Like autism, this can be thought of as a spectrum disorder. At the top are the "superrecognizers", who are far better than average at remembering and recognizing faces. At the bottom are the most severe prosopagnosics, who may not be able to recognize themselves in the mirror. I am somewhere in the lower middle, closer to the bottom than the top.

Now, I said that about the "unusual way"…because I can recognize people, just with different methods. I remember voices (an almost foolproof method, unless they're not talking), and I find patterns. For example, my speech therapist wears large, ornate necklaces. This is especially good to know because she sometimes switches between curly and straight hair, and seems to have a near-infinite variety of clothing. One of my friends always has her hair in a ponytail. My brother is usually wearing something red (and even if he isn't, I know what all his clothes look like).

The other method is context. At Japanese class, I expect to see the Japanese teacher, and the other college students. I wouldn't expect to see someone from class at the library, and would most likely be perplexed if they greeted me there. It's when things fall out of context that I have problems…who's in this photo? Who is this random lady talking to me at the grocery store? Is that person at our door a solicitor? Or our neighbor?

(My mother, on the other hand, seems to always be encountering friends in the most unexpected places–at the library, while grocery shopping…I don't understand how she does it. Of course, she doesn't understand how I conclude that a couple boys I know look like Justin Bieber…apparently they don't, "and they don't look like twins, either!" Well, that's what she says; I've been using a combination of their names to address them both, since I can't tell them apart.)

Well, you'd think this is a serious problem (and it is, I believe, far worse for those with acquired prosopagnosia), but I have found one advantage to this "disorder". My mother notices faces, emotion and tone of voice. I notice other things, and quite possibly more things, more patterns, because I have to compensate. Like the blind man who can echolocate*, (though I'm far less impressive than him), one thing doesn't work; other things work better.

*I'm not making this up, Google it!

The Mentally Different

I am not "special needs". I am mentally different.

The term "special needs" is, to me, a bit absurd. Taken literally, you could say everyone has special needs. Everyone has some kind of problem. And then there are the negative connotations. Nobody wants to be "special needs", though using the literal definition, everyone is!

The third complaint I have with this word is that it's too generic. "Special needs" lumps the blind with the deaf, with the physically disabled, the mentally disabled, and what I think of as the mentally different. "Special needs" encompasses people in wheelchairs, people with brain injuries, Einstein, sociopaths, and basically anyone who doesn't fit into the definition of normal. It's one of those umbrella terms that simultaneously means almost everything, and therefore almost nothing.

There is only one definition for mentally different.*

The mentally different (according to me), are those on the autism spectrum. Note the lack of positive or negative connotation; we're not the mentally disturbed, or gifted, just different. Everyone has "special needs", and we are no exception. But we also have special abilities. Positive and negative cancel, and we're left with a neutral term; mentally different.**

I am not disabled. I am different.

*Technically, everyone is unique and therefore mentally different (in the literal sense) but don't be a literalist; it can get annoying.

**This term applies especially to those with Asperger's Syndrome or high-functioning autism.