Autism

Fashion

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As an adult I am often complemented for my clothes. I have nice work clothes. I like them. But I always have to explain, that if I look nice or not, is not my doing. My wife is my fashion expert. She chooses my work clothes for me, each day, she even buys them for me, and there is a very good reason for this.

Fashion and I don’t understand each other. I have always had issues with what to wear. What goes where, etc. Nowadays I joke about it, but when I was young, it was a serious problem. Below are some short memories I have about myself and clothes.

I remember having the letters R and L on the top of my shoes. I think I needed them until high-school. I could not determine left shoes from right shoes. They looked the same to me. They mostly felt the same to me.and I could not understand why it was important to put them on the “correct” foot until I was about 15 years old.

There was a day that I woke up, and had to dress myself. I looked at my shirt drawer, and I got really confused. What type of day was it going to be? I was 8 years old I think, but just in case, I started putting shirts on by what I might need. I ended up taking all of my shirts out of the drawer and putting them on over top of each other. I was shocked when I was told by my mom, to go change into 1 shirt, and I was left with the same original problem. My brother helped me finally choose a shirt that day.

One year in elementary, Grade 1 I think. (It may have been grade 4 or 5) We had our photo day at school, and had to dress up. I was given this nice brown corduroy suit jacket and pants. I wore a tie, and I felt so respectable that day. It made me feel so good to be dressed up like that. So I decided i would keep wearing it, everyday. I think I made it to 1 week before other kids teasing finally got through and I stopped wearing it.

In High school, and well into my mid twenties, i wore a fedora. (from around 1993~2004). I had a few fedoras for different clothes. I had a black one that I had bolted hard drive parts to, giving it a steam-punk~ish look. I had a brown one I wore with my leather jacket in winter. I had a grey one I would wear casually. Keep in mind this was before a few boy bands began to bring back the hat. My thought pattern was the Fedora, and similar hats were gentleman hats. They were worn in a gentler time by gentlemen. I still have some fedoras now, but many of them have been misplaced.

When I started teaching, I often wore brightly colored, silk screened Hawaiian style shirts with superheroes on them to work. I would show up to my school with my shirts wide open, and a t-shirt underneath. I would partner these with khaki or black cargo pants. I liked the feel of the shirts, I liked the bright colors as they relaxed me, and had no concept that I was the only teacher dressed unprofessionally. I blame the language barrier, or cultural barriers. The Korean school I worked at just didn’t know how to broach the subject.

Now I’m not saying I have no say in what I wear. But my wife helps me be more aware. For example, when my old school would have spirit week, I was adamant that I needed clothes of the different house colors. Many schools over here have adopted the British House system. (See Harry Potter if you don’t know). What I had was goofy t-shirts. While some of the staff took it and ran with it, by wearing wigs, funny ties, feather boas, and other outlandish things. I couldn’t do that. See I may have bad fashion sense, but I can’t make myself wear outlandish things either. They feel unauthentic, and overwhelming, and I just can’t do it for more than an hour. My wife helped me find some really nice sliky work shirts for every color of the rainbow so that I could still participate.

Even costumes for like halloween. I need to wear something authentic. I often dress as Sherlock Holmes, or Pirates, or knights. I won’t wear the fake blood, or wigs, or anything like that. I do still need help with costumes though.

I remember once when I was a child, I went trick or treating as Wonder Woman. And now a young boy doing so may be more acceptable. I had no idea that it wasn’t at that time. My brothers were Superman and Batman, so i was Wonder Woman.

In High school, I had a friend who was a bit goth. He liked black trench coats, and to talk about vampires. So I dressed up as him for halloween. He told me flat out it was dis respectful. He was larger than me, and I had stuffed my waist with a pillow to fill out, but It never occurred to me that it would be upsetting. I was sure he would like it.

I once made a Gold Ranger Costume for Halloween in Highschool. The original Gold Ranger from Power Rangers Zeo. I had a wooden Power Staff my Step-father had helped me build. I had made the tight fitting costume and chest shield, even the helmet. I was Grade 11. Power Rangers was still considered a Kids show. I got a lot of compliments on the costume, not realizing until later, that I was showing my classmates that i watched “Kids Shows” instead of Age appropriate things like “Friends” or “Seinfeld” which I, to this day, do not understand.

I still have trouble with “Special Event” clothes. Clothes that sit in my closet, that I never get to wear because they are for special events. I have a few full business suits, that No longer fit, because I outgrew them before I could wear them a second time. I have shirts, casual and business, that are in the same boat. But I respect that my wife understands these things better than me. and so they sit waiting for that special event.

Needless to say, with all my difficulties with clothes, I am much happier just relaxing at home, where I can stay in my pajamas, or lounge in my indoor clothes, clothes that nobody needs to see, and can look as mismatched as my thoughts.

Of Pilots, Racism, and Feet in Mouth.

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One of the difficulties with Autism is communication. It is defined as a Communication disorder. Some would argue it is a Communication Dis-alignment. We communicate fairly well with out own, but when we have to enter the world of Neurotypicals (Regular Brained people), it can sometimes be difficult. Even those of us who have trained ourselves to follow the social norms, we slip up. We misread the situation, or we don’t express ourselves clearly enough.

This morning, I slipped up.

I was on LinkedIn. Linked is is supposed to be a business Social Media. Where you can meet people and companies in the same field as you. You can use it to find work, and read blogs about your field of specialty.

It is not.

This morning, I was on LinkedIn, and I saw a post. The post I believe was supposed to be empowering. It stated “If I get on a plane and see a Black pilot, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief knowing the person in charge is capable of overcoming many obsticles to achieve their goals.”

Beautiful. I agree. Overcoming obstacles is a good thing to be able to do at 30,000 feet.

So I commented. and I screwed up. My logic at the time was clear in my mind. If the person is doing a great job (At whatever they are doing), then why does skin color, or ethnicity matter?
I also do not remember seeing the Pilots when gettin gon flights in the last decade…

I felt I was clear. Let them do their job, whether they be Black, Yellow, Red, or White.

I did apologize for misreading the situation. But I’m still not really convinced I did…

I had forgotten that this was a whole thing. And later someone posted about Affirmative Action.

Now, I have been out of the Continent for a long time, but here is what I have gathered was the intention of Affirmative Action: Look at credentials, and experience when hiring people. Don’t look at race, gender, or other things not connected to the job.

In China here it is a whole strange thing. We have men doing jobs here that I would not expect, and feel a bit uncomfortable with here. For example, I have met so many men who sell women’s underwear. Not just happen to be at the store, but who’s job is to Hawk them. Stand in the street call people out, look at them and find the right size, and style for them.

And Why shouldn’t they be able to do this, or any other job? My old western upbringing tells me warning bells should be ringing, but nobody else bats an eye. So I have to think about what is actually preventing this? Not his knowledge of fabrics, sales techniques, and style.

But the Pilot post drew me back to a few days ago.
The title is misleading. But the body of the text explains that an Ethnically Non-Chinese Pilot, flying in Chinese Domestic Airline, was forced to Emergency land at an airport that was not the destination (Beijing).

The Policy in Emergency Landings states they must make the announcements in English first, then in Chinese. I believe this is so that it is recorded in English on the black box, but I don’t know. He did this, but the complaints quickly turned to his piloting ability.

The insinuation to me was that Chinese Pilots can land in any weather, bad or good, so why give us the unqualified foreign pilot?

The Airline, did back the pilot up, and defended the decision, which was not his to make in the first place.

So my point that I was trying to make, and apparently failed to on Linked in is this: Good people come from all walks of life. All races. All Genders. All Heritages. All Sexualities.

To find a good worker, you look at their resume, not their skin color.

If you wish to read the full article on the Pilot in China, it is here

Wrong

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Buy it now on Amazon.

I have found myself talking a lot lately about what my childhood was like in some aspects. Parents of my students, My teaching team, students in my Newspaper club, all seem to want to know about my past. I have been upfront with my teaching team about my autism. To my students I just admit to being different. My own daughter told them about my balance issues, and me falling down the stairs often.

Coloring in Black

When I was a child, I would be given a coloring page by a teacher and given the instructions to “Color it.” While my classmates would share and trade the colored crayons with each other, all trying to make the most beautiful piece of art they could, I would take 1.

Usually Black.

Then I would get lost in the action of filling in all the spaces of the page. It did not occur to me that each of the spaces might require a different color. I would just zone out, forget about the world, and be focused, hyperfocused if you will, on the act of filling in these spaces.

My teachers used to report that there was something wrong with me. My picture that had started with a building, or a pretty pony, was now pitch black, with no traces of the original picture. It was all clearly colored, not scribbled on, but they didn’t seem to understand. There must be something wrong.

I was just happy I had colored it. I followed the instructions. I did not understand why this caused such commotion. The other children couldn’t even color in the lines, and were haphazardly colored with a lot of white space shown. But their pictures were considered beautiful. Mine was clearly colored in the lines, and no white spaces left. It just cost the whole black crayon, or most of it.

Nobody explained this to me. Not even as I grew up. I was an adult when I figured this out on my own.

Coloring still soothes me to this day.

Living with Dad

When I was quite young, I moved in with my father and stepmother. It was a new town and a new school. It was a small town, with a small town school. Differences are not understood, or appreciated in small towns. I used to get off the school bus so overwhelmed by the other kids, that I would have shut downs.

Once I apparently got off the bus and smacked another kid in the head with my metal lunch box. I don’t remember doing this, but I remember getting off the bus, and then I was suddenly in the principal’s office, not knowing what had happened. I was of course lectured about this. To this day, I don’t know who I hit, or if they were the cause of the shut down, or if they just happen to be too close, when I lashed out.

I had been told, of course that when I was really young I would lash out at my brothers, like an animal. I don’t have memories of this either. But I do remember promising to never let the monster out again. I hated myself for many years, and would come home from school and lock myself away just so that I could calm down and make sure nobody else got hurt.

My dad, and stepmom were unprepared for this, and they began looking for solutions. My condition was not well known back then. They believed something was wrong with me, and looked for ways to ‘cure’ me. I remember hearing something about electric shock therapy being considered. My mother took me back to her house before they decided.

Recess

Elementary was not an easy time. While other children would run and play with their friends, I would purposely walk laps around the school, or the school yard, depending on which school I was at. I would mostly look at the ground and focus on the walk. This was another method I had devised to keep the monster from escaping. But even when I was not overwhelmed, I kept it up. Routine is very important, and it would seem strange not to walk around in loops.

I made friends with the parent volunteers that would walk around the school for student safety. Teachers in those days did not monitor the playground. Parents did. Teachers stayed indoors, and I believe, enjoyed the little time they had without the children.

The Skateboard Incident

I had a skateboard. I liked it, and would ride on it around my house. One time I had to go to the corner store to get something for my stepdad. I rode my skateboard. I ran into some of my classmates, who had never seen me on my board. They asked me, in a very rude way, if I was a skater.

I have a skateboard, I ride my skateboard, thus by my logic, I am a skater. I was completely oblivious to the fact that there was, and still is, a whole subculture of people called “skaters.” So I said yes. They then began demanding that I do some tricks for them to prove it. I had never heard of these terms. One was called an “Ollie.” When I didn’t know what they were talking about they called me a “poser.” I did not know this term either, but the way they said it hurt. That was the last time I rode my skateboard. It sat in the corner of my room for years.

I didn’t know what I had done to make them angry or upset with me. All I knew was something about that board made people dislike me. So I stopped.

There were other things I stopped for the same reason. I stopped admitting I liked wrestling, but didn’t want to wrestle, that made people angry. I stopped bringing toys to school for show and tell, because I had the wrong toys. I stopped talking about books because I took twice as long as everyone else to read, and apparently that is bad. I even tried my hand at poetry once, but that almost got me beat up.

I was told by my mother that I would be a smart child, but that also seemed to make people upset with me, so I settled for the average grades. Not too high, people didn’t like that. Not too low, Mom wouldn’t like that. So I would just do enough, then doodle in my book. Which I could then fill in the doodles to calm myself.led an “Ollie.” When I didn’t know what they were talking about they called me a “poser.” I did not know this term either, but the way they said it hurt. That was the last time I rode my skateboard. It sat in the corner of my room for years.

I didn’t know what I had done to make them angry or upset with me. All I knew was something about that board made people dislike me. So I stopped.

There were other things I stopped for the same reason. I stopped admitting I liked wrestling, but didn’t want to wrestle, that made people angry. I stopped bringing toys to school for show and tell, because I had the wrong toys. I stopped talking about books because I took twice as long as everyone else to read, and apparently that is bad. I even tried my hand at poetry once, but that almost got me beat up.

I was told by my mother that I would be a smart child, but that also seemed to make people upset with me, so I settled for the average grades. Not too high, people didn’t like that. Not too low, Mom wouldn’t like that. So I would just do enough, then doodle in my book. Which I could then fill in the doodles to calm myself.

Now

If someone had told me back then that filling a page in black crayon wasn’t wrong, just different, I think I would have believed in myself a little more. That’s what I hope to give my students. I have been at schools that ignore the odd kids. I have been at schools that outright ostracize them. I have been at school where they want to help the “spectrum kids,” but the leadership doesn’t understand them, and doesn’t accept advice from teachers that do.

When parents or colleagues ask me what my childhood was like, I often hesitate. Do I tell them the truth; that difference was treated as wrong? Or do I tell them what I wish had been true?

It’s even more heartbreaking when the parents, also ignore, refuse to acknowledge, or help their kids. I have met parents who want others to “fix their kid” and won’t hear that they, as adults, need to learn how to work with their child. How dare someone tell them that their kid needs them to step up and learn something new. Shame on us for wanting to help the child survive their family.

I still try to have difficult conversations with families and school leadership about these things. And I know we all can make a difference. I know we can make the world a place where a little boy or girl is not afraid to be themselves, and enjoy the things they do. Where they will never feel like what they are is wrong.