Parking the Car

Like many with Aspergers, I have a strong aversion to parties. Always have, except that when I was younger I realised that without going to parties I’d have no friends and this was, apparently, a bad thing. So, particularly at Christmas, I used to make an effort to go out and socialise.
Alcohol used to help – immensely actually – but when I learnt to drive I realised that I quite liked the freedom to leave when I wanted to, instead of when the designated driver had sobered up. This was usually well into the next morning.
Of course, driving to a party, especially at Christmas, left you open to requests for lifts. I said yes to everybody as that seemed the easiest thing to do, but then regularly found up to a dozen people at a time trying to squeeze into my tiny hatchback.
Driving to one particular Christmas party, I had the usual half dozen passengers all prattling away in the car as I struggled to find the Village Hall where that night’s festivities would be held. This stressed me – more than usual, that is – and I almost missed the entrance to the place, as we hurtled past in a daze of sociability.
I say hurtle but this isn’t strictly true. A half dozen people weighs down a car of that size and it was struggling to move out of third gear all evening. Nevertheless, what I did next was still ill advised.
Noticing the entrance to the Village Hall Car Park rapidly approaching on the right-hand side (and wanting desperately to arrive, leave the people-infested car, and get the evening over with), I swung the wheel hard right. The tyres dug into the asphalt and we lurched towards the entrance.
Except that, unbeknown to me, it wasn’t actually the entrance at all. The real entrance was around the corner on a side road. What I was careering towards was a gap in the row of parked cars that encircled the Village Hall. That wouldn’t have been too bad except that the parking area was sunk from the height of the road by two foot or so, with a concealed vertical drop leading down to it.
Even with the weight of seven people inside, the car launched itself over the drop and sailed into the space beyond. It was then that I discovered something else. When your car has all four tyres in the air, the brakes don’t work, no matter how hard you press. Still, at least my half dozen passengers were now silent.
After a rather graceful arc, my car landed with a sickening crunch and the tyres instantly locked. After an impressive screech and lots of blue smoke we juddered to a halt a good three inches before hitting the brick wall of the Village Hall.
At least we had stopped and, to my delight, the car was still working. With the continuing silence from my passengers I could at last relax and concentrate on selecting a parking space. Realising there was one behind me – the gap I had just flown through - I put the car smoothly into reverse gear and glided backwards.
Safely parked, I looked around at my still silent and now pale-faced passengers, some rubbing their bruised heads, and some looking as if they might throw up at any moment. I smiled demurely and, for some reason that now seems totally superfluous, added: ‘We’ve arrived’.

Singing the Song of Leaving or Something Like It

I once travelled to the far reaches of Norway, high above the Arctic Circle. A place where reindeer outnumber people 1000 to one. It suited me fine.
One evening, my travelling companion (we’ll call her Debbie since that’s her name), and I paid a visit to a group of people who were native to the area. It was, of course, entirely unavoidable.
We drove for what-felt-like the entire day to get there, mostly listening to some tribal music - the only CD Debbie had in the car. It consisted of various singers wailing and screaming as if they were simultaneously experiencing multiple orgasms whilst having their fingernails ripped out. There was also some drumming. Actually, on about the hundredth listen it sounded slightly less objectionable and I started to wail along with it. The opening track was the best as the screams of pain built into a frenzied cacophony that sounded like a dozen cats being tortured to death. I got quite good at imitating that.
We finally arrived and the evening was…interesting, as we sat in a tent rather than a house. There were quite a few guests and, as the evening wore on, a few decided to leave. I couldn’t blame them.
As they were gathering themselves to go, Debbie – and Lord only knows why – offered to sing them a song of leaving. She turned to me and said ‘We know one, don’t we Mike?’
We do? I couldn’t think of any leaving song we knew. Leaving song?
Actually, Debbie was right. We had been taught a leaving song some time back, which was so pathetically obvious that I had quite forgotten. It comprises singing, in a very soft voice, ‘Away, away, away’, over and over whilst looking sad to see the people depart. The words were fine but I found it difficult to look sad. People leaving is the best part of the evening.
Anyway, I had quite forgotten about the ridiculous leaving song. The obvious thing to do was to say ‘No, I don’t remember the song’ and ask Debbie what she meant. But in the kafuffle of people preparing to go, and being inadvertently put on the spot, that sort of logic completely escapes me. All I could think of was the wailing song from the car. So I sung that.
Debbie began singing her soft ‘aways’ whilst I launched into full-on tortured howling mode. I quickly got into the sound and started waving my arms around as I hollered out the screeching sounds of pain. I then started to sway to the rhythm and, since it seemed appropriate at the time, began to beat the earthen floor to accompany my strangled cries of agony. All the while, Debbie carried on her barely-voiced ‘aways’. Not that anyone could hear her with the racket I was making. I was oblivious.
All too soon, I became aware that everyone was staring at me. ‘Good grief’, I thought, ‘they must think I’m good’. So I gave them a fitting finale, throwing my arms in the air, whilst wailing at the top of my lungs, and bringing the whole thing to a rapturous and ear-splittingly thunderous finish. The least I expected was applause. Heck, a bouquet wouldn’t have been out of the question. Instead, the tent was deathly silent.
The people who wanted to leave sidled out of the door without taking their eyes off me.
The host then lent towards me. ‘Thank you’ he said, ‘thank you…very much’. And, in all honesty, I actually thought he meant it.

Dinner at the Hospital

I was once asked to visit a person in hospital. I wouldn’t normally agree to do such a thing as I am allergic to both people and hospitals but in this case I made an exception. I had three reasons. One, nobody else was going to bother. Two, I worked just around the corner. And three, the person who needed visiting was my father.
I went straight after work one evening.
Hospitals are awful places. For a start there are always a dozen entrances with a multitude of signs, most directing you to places that are identified by completely alien words ending in –ology. I walked up to a likely looking desk and asked where I should go for the eye department, as my father was having an operation on his eye. The receptionist looked at me as if I was mad. I repeated my request slower, pointing at my eye as I did so. She looked oriental so I added a ‘hah’ at the end of my request as I had seen actors do in kung fu movies. It seemed to help. She asked if I meant the ophthalmology ward. Did I?
I was provided with a set of directions that probably exceeded those given to the first Apollo mission to the moon and set off, watching that I didn’t trip over any invalids on the way. It’s odd how they all lurch out of their rooms as I walk past, like extras from One Flew Overt the Cuckoos Nest, with exactly the same vacant expression and drool.
After a dozen rights, half a dozen lefts, a few stairs, and a walk down a corridor that had more than its fair share of the clinically deranged, I made it to the opthy-whatever-it-was ward.
There was a desk with a lit lamp, an open book, and nobody sitting behind it. Great. What was I supposed to do now? I made another kung fu sound to attract attention but it just echoed away into the distance.
I thought of looking in the book. It was a list of patients. I found my father’s name and his room number and then looked for it on the doors. Unfortunately, these all had names…of the consulting doctor. Great help. I decided to work my way down the corridor and to peek into every room until I found the right one. That was interesting.
Eventually, I found my father and went in. The only chair was tucked into the corner, behind the door. I sat there and tried to make the sort of conversation you make with a hospital patient. I checked my watch to see if I had stayed a reasonable period of time and could now leave but, unfortunately, only three and a half minutes had elapsed. Best stay a bit longer.
Just then, the door was flung open, which almost knocked me off my chair and into the stand holding the drip. As I picked myself up, the nurse who had entered said in a big cheery voice that all nurses get taught a nursing school: ‘Have you eaten yet? Do you want any dinner?’
For the life of me, I thought she was speaking to me. It never crossed my mind that it might have been my father she was addressing.
So I answered. ‘No thanks, but I’d love a coffee’.
The room went silent and the nurse let out a strained noise; the sort she probably reserved for the loonies I had passed on the way up. She then looked at my father who said that he hadn’t much appetite but a sandwich would be nice.
The nurse sidled out the door without straightening up the stand for the drip.
It was a few minutes later that she returned with a plate of sandwiches and – this reinforces everything you have ever read about the saintliness of nurses – a coffee for me. Outstanding. And, in my gratitude, I didn’t even point out that I usually have it without milk.

No Rest for the Wicked

I take things literally. Always. Well, nearly always, to be literal.
Like the time Vanessa was chivvying me along and said ‘This isn’t getting the baby bathed’. I stood stock still and looked at her with incredulity. ‘What the hell are you talking about’, I demanded, ‘we don’t even have a bloody baby’.
Vanessa had to explain that it was a saying (meaning that we needed to hurry) and was not meant to be taken literally. I still thought it was a ridiculous thing to say. She has not repeated it.
It reminded me of a time when I was young and my mother hired a cleaner for a few hours a week. Goodness knows why, as my mother didn’t work and was quite capable (well, physically) of cleaning the house herself.
We’ll call the cleaner Mrs Kettle, although that’s not her name in a literal sense (see, I’m catching on).
Mrs Kettle came cheap. That meant she wasn’t the most dextrous cleaner in the world. In fact, in the few years she cleaned for us, she broke almost every possession I owned.
As a child, I liked to collect things and, whilst I accept that the items may have been financially inconsequential (OK – sheer rubbish), they were still mine and I liked them better when they were entire rather than in little pieces. Mrs Kettle had other ideas.
I hated anyone in my room, let alone touching my things, so it was traumatic having Mrs Kettle in there anyway. But returning afterwards to replace all my stuff into exactly the position it was in before her visit was made considerably worse by the inevitable discovery than yet another item had been reduced to rubble through her ministrations.
When I finally left home I used a shoe-box for my packing. From the days of my childhood, I now have only two possessions. One is a bear made of Welsh slate with both ears glued back on and a chipped nose, and the other is a small model of a bull from Crete. The latter is made from cast bronze and even Mrs Kettle found that difficult to disintegrate. All she managed was a dent in its side.
In the end, to avoid the stress of hearing my belongings bouncing off the floor, I took to locking myself away. I claimed that I was busy with homework and it never crossed my mind that there was anything suspicious about being constantly busy with homework, even throughout the school holidays. To be fair, this didn’t bother Mrs Kettle unduly as I wasn’t the most communicative child to begin with. I think the most active she ever saw me was when I vomited over a newly cleaned carpet (long story) but, to my undying admiration, that just got vacuumed up along with everything else.
One day, as I was furtively darting past Mrs Kettle to shut myself in a room that wasn’t on the cleaning roster that day, she asked if I was still busy with homework. Maybe she was making a joke; I wouldn’t have known. I responded with, what I hoped, was a pained grunt that I was. She then said (and I remember her words to this day): ‘Well, there’s no rest for the wicked’.
Wicked. Me? I was deeply offended by this. Admittedly, I had vomited on the carpet that time but this was on account of my mother’s cooking and everyone understood that this was a habitual risk of dining at our house. But it hardly deserved the epithet wicked. I didn’t think I’d ever done anything in my life that anyone could honestly say was wicked. What the hell was Mrs Kettle thinking?
From then on, I avoided Mrs Kettle, even more than I had before. And I don’t think I ever really forgave her for that comment until the day she died. Which is a shame really, as she had a huge impact on my childhood. After all, she single-handily managed to destroy most traces of it.

Taking People at Face Value

Like many people with Aspergers, I tend to take people at face value (although usually without actually looking at their face, obviously).
This means that I judge you as I find you, with absolutely no reference to anything else. This is not all good.
If you make a smart comment to me, then I will assume you are smart. If you make a dumb comment to me, then I will assume you are dumb. This is irrespective of anything that has gone before. If Kermit the Frog quoted Shakespeare I would immediately assume he is cultured, well-read, and completely overlook the fact he is a frog, and a puppet. Similarly, if Einstein said he didn’t know the name of the President, I would assume he was a complete idiot, and completely overlook his contribution to, erm…snazzy equations. Although being dead, I’d probably give him a little more leeway.
So, despite almost 20 years of marriage, Vanessa gets no privileged treatment from me.
Regular readers of this blog will remember that I have recently had a head cold. As soon as I thought I might be going down with it, I emailed Vanessa to tell her. I didn’t make a big thing of it, of course, but if I wasn’t going to pull through, I wanted a record of the cause of my passing.
Vanessa didn’t respond.
Now I will save you from the crushing disappointment that I felt that morning, realising that after almost 20 years of happy marriage, Vanessa had finally decided that she was no longer concerned for my well being and clearly couldn’t give a hoot whether if I lived or died, by telling you that she didn’t actually receive the email. It had vanished into internet stardust, never to be seen again.
That didn’t occur to me. Instead, I started to plan my life as a single person. I realised I would need to move out of the house but as Mabon would still need feeding and walking every day, I reasoned that I couldn’t go far. Maybe I’d buy a caravan and live in the adjacent field. It also left the weekend clear. I decided I’d watch a film.
Within a few minutes, I was sorted. My new life opened up before me.
Then Vanessa emailed. Upon reading its contents, I realised that not only had she ignored the perilous state of my health, she was even pretending that everything was perfectly normal by wittering on about the usual banalities she writes about. She made absolutely no reference to my earlier email at all. Nothing. I might as well have dropped dead in the interim for all she seemed to care.
Before I began to pack my belongings, I emailed back. I asked how she could be so uncaring as to throw years of happiness away at a time when I might be taking my last few breaths on earth.
She responded to explain that she had not received my earlier email. I hadn’t considered that possibility.
That was all right then. No need to buy a caravan after all. She also said that she feared she might be going down with the same illness as me (albeit in the milder form that women seem to get).
I replied in jovial fashion, ending with ‘I hope you haven’t got it too’. Except that I didn’t write exactly that. In error, I left out the ‘haven’t’.
I only noticed a few hours later. Despite being grammatically incorrect, the statement was still pretty damming. I immediately emailed Vanessa and took great pains to explain the mistake, pointing out the incorrect grammar as proof of an error rather than a callous and quite unnecessary statement (well, quite unnecessary now we had things sorted out). I feared that, in the few hours since I had sent the email, she would have already consulted solicitors and that divorce papers were probably on their way.
Vanessa responded. She said that of course she had assumed I had made an error and hadn’t given it another thought. In fact, she always thinks the best of me anyway.
Er…right. Funny that: I’m just the same.

Eye Contact, Or Why Staring is Rude

Vanessa and I have a huge farmhouse table in our kitchen. It’s so long you can catch a bus from one end to the other. When we got it (and Lord knows why we did, as I absolutely hate having anyone eat with us), Vanessa had images of us snuggling up together at one end to eat. Yeah, right.
My preference is for us to sit at either end and, with the centre holding a candelabra, assorted flowers (Vanessa’s idea), and condiments to put a fish shop to shame, we can’t actually see each other when we sit down. (We also light the table with nothing but the candelabra, putting the far ends of the table – where we sit – into deep gloom. Some evenings I’m not even sure what’s on my plate, it’s so dark). That all suits me fine and Vanessa and I have many and varied conversations whilst sitting so far away from each other that we have different post codes for the evening.
You’ll have gathered by now that I don’t necessarily want to look at the person I’m speaking to. Actually, I don’t necessarily want to be in the same room as the person I’m speaking to, but Vanessa has drawn the line at shouting through the walls. It confused the dog.
Most non-human animals don’t stare at each other and, if they do, it means ‘I’m bigger, stronger, and fitter than you are and if you don’t move sharpish I’m going to give you a good pasting’. (It’s called non-verbal communication. See, I’m meant to be hopeless at that but I’ve got this animal staring thing down, no problem.) Not unreasonably, I don’t exactly want all that hassle from Vanessa at the dinner table.
The trouble is, even through staring between humans doesn’t always mean you’re about to lose your teeth, that’s all it means to me. And just to clarify, staring is looking. It doesn’t have to be for long before I feel it like a physical assault.
Apparently, staring at someone with autism stimulates a part of the brain called the amygdala, which controls the fear response. Put simply, staring can frighten the beejezus out of an autistic. Does out of me anyway.
So if I’m talking to you, I’ll do one of two things. If I’m comfortable, I’ll just look away as we talk. It’s polite (to me) and keeps my stress level to a manageable panic. Or, if I’m less sure of you, I’ll obey the rule and lock eyes for the duration of our conversation – a bit like a zombie would do but without the over-the-top menace or rotting flesh, obviously. This can be unsettling I realise but, hey, it’s either all or nothing with me.
I don’t even like magazines with pictures of people that gaze out from the page. I cover them up or draw sunglasses on them to avert their stare. I’m not always the most popular guy in dentist’s waiting rooms as a result of this.
If eyes, as the poets tell us, are the gateway to the soul, then please, keep it covered up. Unless you are sitting at the opposite end of a table so long you become a mere speck in the distance, in which case, you can do what you like. Vanessa could eat dinner naked for all I know, although, just for the record, she probably doesn’t.

Catching a Cold

I have a head cold this week. I caught it at the weekend when I went somewhere that was infested with children. Now I didn’t know it would be infested with children before I went, otherwise I’d have called the pest extermination service and had it dealt with prior to my arrival. As it was, clearly one of the unruly devil spawn had a cold and I was infected with it.
I’m not the sort of man who makes out that every sniffle is rampant nose cancer and I might die of mucul haemorrhaging at any moment, although I don’t entirely discount the possibility. In fact, since I am afflicted with a cough as well as a cold this time, I’m probably far more likely to have lung cancer. Not that I smoke but here in the UK, we have banned smoking from all indoor public places - pubs, restaurants, and a myriad of other locations I would never set foot in willingly - forcing smokers to go outside when they want to light up. This transfers smoke from the sorts of places I don’t visit, to put it outdoors, where I can hardly avoid it. So lung cancer is a distinct possibility now.
Whether it proves fatal or not, having a cold is not fun. Generating enough snot to float a small navy is most certainly not on my good-times list. So it follows that those who spread colds around - like the juvenile Satan that gave this one to me - should be treated as outcasts and, although I don’t necessarily agree with the death penalty, it is difficult to argue against why anyone in a public place with a cold shouldn’t be gunned down on sight. Apparently, this is a minority view.
In fact, in my experience, most people who venture out with any form of illness short of bubonic plague expect to be congratulated for it, as if infecting half the world with their ailment is their gift to humanity. Some people with colds even look at their handkerchiefs when they have blown their noses into them, as if somehow the slime they have ejected from their nasal cavity might have formed into a work of art on the damp scrap of material they hold in their hand. Once, I even had someone show me their revolting discharge, as they thought it was so impressive, and, no, I am sadly not joking.
How many times have I sat next to someone, only to be regaled with how they struggled out of bed, having hacked up half a lung in the process, and dragged themselves to my side spewing out their germs to all and sundry in great surges of spittle. Then they expect me to say how brave they are and how grateful I am that they made the effort when all I really want to do is to shoot them in the head.
If people with colds confined themselves to social isolation, we would quickly eradicate the virus, and winter would be ailment free. We did it with leprosy. If we herded anyone with a cold into groups and moved them offshore for a week or so, and then insisted they rang a bell before they entered a public place for a few weeks thereafter, it should be more than sufficient.
As for me, I’ll continue to drink plenty of fluids, although I’m not sure why as I just pour them into my mouth and they pour straight back out of my nose (and, no, I’m not standing on my head when this happens), and wait for my next Paracetemol fix. Two hours, thirty-nine minutes, and twelve seconds to go. Not that I’m counting.
And then, when I’m recovered, I’m going to buy a job lot of surgical masks, or maybe a gas mask, and wear it every time I go out. Maybe whilst holding a sign that reads ‘No, I’m not impressed that you struggled out of bed to come here and blow snot and spittle across my face. If it were up to me, I’d have you garrotted and buried in quick lime’.
Do excuse me now as I need to blow my nose, again.

How Not to Make Friends and Influence People

Dale Carnegie once wrote a hugely influential book entitled How to Win Friends and Influence People. This technique was not in it.
I have someone who is (or rather, was) trying to befriend me. We’ll call him Friendly Guy or FG for short. Befriending someone with Aspergers is not easy. The rules are a little different. For a start, contact of any form is best avoided. Telephone calls are unwelcome, email an inconvenience, and as for visiting. Don’t even think about it.
So it was with a degree of disbelief that I had a knock on the door one afternoon and found FG standing there, having, apparently, just called round for a visit. Called round for a visit? That doesn’t compute in the Asperger brain. He might as well have napalmed the building, machine-gunned the livestock, and sodomised the dog. It would have been no worse (except perhaps for the dog). Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.
Not wishing to strike an unnecessary melodramatic note by dropping dead of shock, I punched my heart several times to ensure it kept beating.
As it was pouring with rain, FG asked if he could maybe stand somewhere out of the wet. Fair enough, I thought, and missing entirely the implication that he wanted to actually enter my house, I suggested that we stood under an adjacent tree. After all, the rain was marginally less heavy beneath its branches.
I reached for my jacket and wide-brimmed-hat and walked with FG to the tree. It was raining so hard, we were soaked by the time we got to it. FG suggested that maybe he should retrieve his jacket from the car and I agreed that it might be a good idea.
By the time he returned, his clothes were sticking to his body. I watched as rivulets poured across his head and down his neck.
I asked what it was he wanted and he tried to start a conversation. I say tried as it was hard to hear him with the noise of the rain bouncing off the ground around us.
After a few desultory words, he suggested that maybe he should go. Brilliant idea.
But if he only wanted to stay for a few minutes, why did he bother coming in the first place? Was it really worth getting all wet for that?
This new friend business is so darned weird.

Cars That Bounce By Themselves: An Asperger Approach

One of the drawbacks of living in a remote place is that we get cars parked at the top of the track leading down to the house that seem to bounce around, all on their own. I wouldn’t mind except that the occupants of the bouncing car clearly think that our track also doubles as a public tip and they generally leave their rubbish behind. The usual leftover accoutrements to a romantic stay include tissues, condoms, coffee cups, and cigarette packets but we have also found a baby’s bib, which I thought was taking protection a little too far.
So it was with sinking heart that I returned from walking the dog one afternoon (we’ll call him Mabon, since that’s his name) to find another bouncing car enjoying the scenery at the top of our track. Or rather not enjoying the scenery as it was pouring with rain and all the windows had steamed up.
Not wanting to just squeeze past the car without at least making my presence known, I swung open the driver’s door to find said driver in a state of some exertion with a woman straddling his lap. They looked rather surprised to be interrupted so I said a cheery ‘Hello’ to put them at their ease. I then asked if maybe they were waiting for me since they had parked at the top of the track to my house.
The couple clearly considered me completely insane and they mumbled a negative response. Oh, I replied, perhaps it was engine trouble they were having. Apparently it wasn’t.
Just then Mabon bounded up to say hello. Now Mabon is not a small dog. Reaching chest height on most people, he stuck his entire upper body into the car. Given that it was pouring with rain, this caused a small waterfall to run across the interior. At the appearance of Mabon, the woman, as delicately as she was able to under the circumstances, extracted herself for the man’s lap and moved to the passenger side of the car. This had the effect of leaving her partner’s rapidly wilting manhood flapping around like an epileptic sausage inches away from Mabon’s mouth.
With a feeding instinct stretching back to the primeval wolf, Mabon lunged, just as the man covered his now peanut-sized manhood with his partner’s top. The snap of Mabon’s jaws echoed across the valley as his head, fuelled by unstoppable trajectory, came to land in the man’s lap. Now, if you were that close to a dog who had just attempted to bite your dick off, you’d probably be extremely nice and so the man was, giving Mabon a kindly pat and remarking what a good dog he was. The woman, dressing herself on the passenger seat, was silent. Maybe she wasn’t a dog person.
Having now thoroughly flooded the inside of the car and almost emasculated its owner, to say nothing of the initial coitus interruptus, I thought the time had come to depart. Offering a cheery ‘Goodbye’ and remembering to add the usual ‘Nice to have met you’ (such things do not come naturally to an Asperger person so I hope they appreciated the effort) I dragged the now salivating Mabon out of the vehicle and gently closed the door.
Almost at once, I heard the woman’s high-pitched voice berating her partner and, despite the windows still being completely steamed up, the car drove away. I do hope the driver zipped himself up first. And, funnily enough, they have never been back. Shame really, after all the effort I put into getting to know them.

Chatting and Other Pointless Activities

A new survey shows that people chat, on average, for four and a half hours a day. Four and a half hours. Why would anyone want to do that? I barely chat for four and a half minutes a day and that’s with the dog.
I hate chatting and I hate small talk. In fact, if I die and have to go downstairs rather than up, I expect to arrive at an enormous cocktail party where a suitable scary demon will thrust a drink into my hand and whisper ‘go chat…for an eternity’.
Vanessa and I once went to London for the day. When we returned, I realised that, to people other than her, I had said only ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘please’, ‘thank you’, and ‘green tea’. I appreciate that the last two words look a little gratuitous but they were, unfortunately, quite necessary. I also appreciate that admitting this makes me look a little weird. Let me confirm that view.
The first use of the word ‘yes’ came on the train, by the toilet. Trains are curious. The staff continuously try to sell you drinks (or even give them away with an accompanying doily in first class, which was not where we were sitting), then the train throws you around to give your bladder such a pounding that you are desperate to excrete said liquid within moments. Maybe that’s just me, but when you do go to find the toilet (which if you sit at the end of the train, as I do, is shared between two carriages) it’s always busy. Always.
This gives me a dilemma. If I nonchalantly stand a few feet away and gaze out the window there is always some obnoxious smart arse ready to jump the queue and nip in before I realise that the person using the toilet has come out. The alternative is to stand so close to the toilet door that my nose is wedged up against the woodwork. That stops anyone queue jumping but it can rather startle the person coming out.
The morning of our trip, the lobby leading to the toilet was full of the usual characters. A serial killer looking out the window. A woman jiggling a baby on the verge of throwing up – as if that was going to help. And a fat girl drinking coke and pausing occasionally to stuff another quarter pound of sausage meat down her gullet. Wonderful. At least nobody spoke.
The toilet was busy. What a surprise. I waited next to the door but ensured that I was far enough from the serial killer that I wouldn’t get stabbed, far enough from the baby that I wouldn’t get sprayed with vomit, and far enough from the fat girl that when the strain on her mini skirt (in God’s name: why a mini skirt?) finally gave way I wouldn’t drown in rolls of blubber.
Just then, the obnoxious smart arse arrived. Of course he did. I shuffled closer to the door of the toilet. He tried to edge in front of me but I was too quick. He then acted peeved and asked me whether the toilet was engaged. What did he think? That I habitually stood around with the dregs of humanity looking at toilet doors? Idiot. I replied with my first word to a stranger that day: ‘yes’. He then proceeded to ask whether there was someone in there, as if I might have been referring to the toilet’s forthcoming nuptials with my previous answer. I gave a more measured and, I hope, particularly stern ‘yes’ (I hate repeating myself) and carried on looking at the toilet door.
Fortunately, the occupant finished what was rapidly becoming an extended stay in the toilet, and came out. She was met by my malevolent stare and an obnoxious but clearly retarded smart arse trying to barge his way in. I won that little contest and shut the door with a satisfied flourish.
Behind me the tiny room was a mess. I once saw a wildlife documentary about hippos. It said that the big males mark their territory by taking a dump whilst wagging their tails furiously, so as to splatter their excrement in an alarmingly wide radius. It was clear that not only one but probably three male hippos had used the toilet that morning. They had even sprayed the ceiling, which I thought was particularly impressive.
I suppose I should have told someone about it but that would have required the use of words and I had completely exhausted my conversational allowance for the morning with the obnoxious retard. So I returned to my seat where Vanessa asked me if everything was all right. I thought hard for an answer and eventually settled for…’yes’.

My Diagnosis 5: The Result

Those new to autism may not be aware that we have our own way of testing just how autistic we are. It’s called the AQ test and it’s sort of like the Olympics for nerds. You get asked questions like whether you enjoy socialising with friends (presumably without first using mind-numbing drugs that turn you into a drooling zombie), or whether you would talk to someone if he or she was the last person on the planet following a nuclear holocaust. That would be ‘no’ on both counts, obviously.
The Professor went through his own, slightly idiosyncratic, version of the standard AQ test. I wondered if he thought that I had been researching the questions (and the possible answers) beforehand and this was a way of catching me out. Scurrilous accusation but spot on, Professor. I reasoned that I’d rather know before the consultation whether I was likely to get a positive diagnosis or not and this would help me relax through the process. It didn’t but it was worth trying.
So we went through a list of questions where the Professor asked me something, I answered, and he then repeated it back to me. I felt I was talking to a parrot. In this way, we covered a lot of ground.
At the end of it, the Professor mumbled something about Aspergers and quickly moved on to list all my positive attributes, assuring me I was special – at least in terms of needs. Whoa! Slow down there, Professor. My mind was expecting another question at that point, not the diagnosis. If you must change the subject at whiplash speed then at least warn me first, otherwise my mind will expect a question and, when it doesn’t get one, it will revert back to a dormant state. That means I can’t hear what you are saying. Or rather I can hear it but I can’t understand it. So have I got the damn condition or not?
I could have asked him to repeat the diagnosis I suppose but that’s not how I tend to do things. You get one shot with me. If you blow it, you blow it. So the Professor was telling me how great I am and I’m wondering if I have the bloody syndrome or not.
He then posits that a social interaction programme might be helpful. I asked if he meant for him or me. He said that a group of Asperger people meet locally and all stand about looking at their shoes and checking their watches to see if it’s time to leave. Would that be helpful to me? Er…no.
In his later report, the Professor wrote (and here I quote) "I could detect no enthusiasm for this". Enthusiasm? Professor, I couldn’t have been less enthusiastic if you’d recommended that my testicles need massaging once a week by a gorilla. I’ve got Aspergers for goodness sake. A room full of people is like the seventh level of hell to me. Of course I’m not enthusiastic.
But at least that indicated he thought I had Aspergers in the first place. If only he hadn’t dealt with the diagnosis bit so quickly, I might have known for certain. Why he didn’t labour the point and repeat it several times in succession, like any reasonable person would do is beyond me – that’s how I approach my explanations. As it was, I bugged Vanessa for two weeks afterwards, checking that he really did think I had the syndrome and whether, perchance, she’d changed her opinion in the several seconds since I last asked her. The Professor could have spared us both the agony of those two weeks.
In the end, I accepted that I had Aspergers and this is what the Professor was imparting to me in the twenty seconds that I zoned out. He later confirmed it in a written report, stating that I have "Asperger Syndrome without doubt". Those last two words struck a nicely ironic note.
So that’s how I was diagnosed. The whole affair has probably left me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but I think we’ll just let that lie on file. I don’t think I can face another consultation for a very long time. A very long time indeed.　

My Diagnosis 4: The Play School Test

It took a few more tediously boring questions for us to reach the next part of the diagnosis – the Play School test. The Professor again rooted around in his unfeasibly large bag. I swear I heard animal noises coming from its cavernous interior. Probably some poor rhesus monkey the Professor was in the middle of vivisecting to analyse its brain function. I checked the paper he finally removed for brain tissue but there didn’t appear to be any. Monkey must have had it coming later.
The Professor placed the paper on the desk and I strained to try to see what was on it. From my position in the far corner, it was difficult, so the Professor asked if maybe I would like to sit in the chair closest to the desk. I replied that his suggestion was ridiculous since Vanessa was already sitting in that chair and I would look completely stupid if I perched on her knee. The Professor, brilliant mind that he was, suggested that Vanessa might vacate the chair first and then swap places with me. They don’t hand out higher degrees to just anyone you know.
So we swapped chairs and I got to see the paper on the desk. It had a design on it made up of squares and circles, lines and zig-zags, curves and corners, stars and stripes. Looked kind of interesting. The Professor caught me staring and brandished a blank piece of paper and asked if I would copy the design. I looked at him. That’s all? Copy the design? I can do that.
I pulled my new chair closer to the desk and, accepting the proffered pencil, started immediately. I noticed that the Professor and Vanessa were talking quietly between themselves but I was now in the zone and didn’t really hear them. Maybe they were discussing recipes for monkey brain fondue.
It wasn’t long before I had the design copied. It was perfect, of course. The Professor looked at it and told me it was very good. I half expected him to pull out a few toilet rolls and some sticky backed plastic and ask me to construct the Forth Road Bridge but he didn’t. He just returned the papers to his bag, being careful not to disturb the monkey, which had gone strangely quiet at this point.
The Professor then raised a few questions about my childhood. Asked if I was good at sport. Not really, Professor but I did enjoy rugby – and I still like watching it. He responded that it was unusual for someone with Aspergers to be good at a team sport. Now hang on Professor, I didn’t say I was good at rugby, merely that I enjoyed it, and the way I played, it was most definitely not a team sport. But I didn’t say that. Why shatter the illusion?
Just as I was wondering if it would be alright to have my old chair back again, the Professor brandishes a new piece of paper from his bag and asks if I could draw the design again, from memory. Now this was a fiendishly complicated design that might have originated as one of Einstein’s ‘phone doodles but I rose to the challenge in a way that only super-heroes and those with autistic minds know how. Except that I didn’t even need to change into a cape first.
Within a few moments, I flourished the completed drawing. The Professor checked it against the original. Remarkable, he cooed, a true autistic memory. I felt I had hit the jackpot and so immediately jumped up, punched the air, gave high-fives to the Professor and Vanessa, and made whooping noises that sounded like a flock of geese being machine gunned – the sort of sounds Americans make when they’re happy.
Well, actually, I didn’t. I just shrugged, looked at the floor, and sat back into my chair. But I’d like to have celebrated a little bit. It was the first time that my Aspergers seemed to count for something. I’m sure I heard the monkey let out a little whoop. Or perhaps it was farting. Not sure which one would have been more appropriate.

My Diagnosis 3: Reading Faces

After a few questions, the Professor burrowed into a startlingly large bag and brought out a sheaf of papers. They appeared to have faces printed on them. Sort of like the things detectives look through to find the criminal. He held one up. The person on it looked dead. Perhaps they were dead criminals.
The Professor asked what emotion the person was expressing. I had no idea. The Professor dropped a hint. I had no idea. He then gave me two options. I guessed the wrong one. He tried another. I guessed wrong again.
He then flourished a picture of a pretty girl, assuring me that I would definitely get this one right. No, Professor, I won’t. Apparently, she was flirting. There is such a thing as a flirting face? A flirting face? Why was I never told? I have since looked at lots of faces for that illusive flirting face but either people don’t want to flirt with me – entirely possible – or I’m just not getting this whole flirting face thing. Maybe there’s a night-school that teaches it.
The Professor was tiring of the game and asked if I could recognise a smile if I saw it. Did I detect a hint of sarcastic face there Professor? I responded that when people showed teeth, it meant that they were happy and welcoming but that this did not apply to all creatures. Dogs, for example.
I was half expecting him to say that this was actually the dog’s flirty face and they pulled it before trying to dry-hump your leg but he didn’t. Instead, he turned to Vanessa and showed her the faces. She went through each one and declared the emotion so fast it made my head spin.
Now my wife rarely surprises me (well, she does, but not always in a good way) but this was top-notch stuff. How in God’s name does she do it? Flirty face. Check. Devious face. Check. Pineapple rammed up the rear face. Check. Every one. The Professor even pulled out pictures of disembodied eyes. Vanessa got most of them right. I wasn’t even asked and it was my bloody consultation. Bet I’d have got the flirty eyes.
The Professor asked me how people look to me if I cannot read their expression. Mostly bored, actually. Or aggressive. Or sort of aggressive because they’re bored. That’s it. The sum total of what a face means to me. Except showing teeth, but that’s not really a face is it? I mean, my Nana has false teeth and if she whipped them out of the drawer and brandished them at me, it probably wouldn’t count as a smile.
Since I can’t get any information from faces, I don’t tend to bother looking at them. I was once introduced to a room full of people. I remembered each name perfectly and which chair the name went with. Except that, next time I walked in the room, they had all moved round and, although I could remember the names and the original chairs, I didn’t have a clue which name went with which face. I ended up saying a name and then quickly snapping my head to wherever the confirmatory noise came from. I’m sure it made me look entirely sane.
So how do I know what people are thinking? I don’t. I ask Vanessa, she tells me, and I don’t believe her as I have no idea how she could possibly know. Now the secret is revealed, except that I can’t do it. To me, everyone still just looks bored or aggressive and the only way past that is for them to pull a lock-jaw smile when I think they look stupid and will run away from them, very fast.
We carry on with the consultation but I have the unnerving feeling that the Professor keeps pulling flirty faces for the rest of the time we are in there. Professor, I sort of liked it better when you just looked bored. Flirty is not an improvement.

My Diagnosis 2: Arriving

So, the Professor leads us into his consulting room where there is a large desk and two guest chairs arranged in the room. One guest chair is just by the side of the desk and the other is off in the distance in the corner. It is patently obvious which one I should sit in so I immediately go to the chair in the corner whilst Vanessa perches next to the Professor’s desk.
He asks again whether we had a good journey, which proves to me that he has the memory capacity of a goldfish. He then asks why we have come. Ridiculous. He’s a world specialist on Asperger’s Syndrome, we’re sitting in his consulting room, and he asks why we’ve come.
What the hell does he think we’ve come for. I’m not about to ask for his advice on my golf swing am I. Fortunately, Vanessa, who was a lot closer to the memory-impaired and clearly confused old coot than I was, sweetly answered that we thought I might have Asperger’s and we’ve come along to get his opinion. Good answer but I wonder if it will penetrate the Professor’s fog of dementia and be understood. Maybe she should have spoken slower… and louder.
The Professor then looks at me, sat in the corner, on my own. At least, I assume he was looking at me as the sudden eye contact threw me into a panic; way too intense to look at the eyes of someone I had only just met. The Professor was now clearly trying to engage me in conversation by asking about things so banally tedious I genuinely feared that my brain might just stop working altogether. I smiled wanly and wondered how long the consultation would last. Maybe a nurse would come in soon and wheel out the geriatric Professor for his bed bath.
Just as I was calculating whether it would be considered rude to just doze off, Vanessa ventured that I had just written a book about my PhD research. The Professor looks at me again and asks what it’s about.
Now I know when I’m being played but talking about my research is like asking a crack addict if they care for a refresher. OK, Professor, you asked for it. Here’s the twenty minute condensed shorter than short version. But it turns out he’s interested. Not only that but he asks pertinent questions that make sense. He even suggests a reference I hadn’t previously considered, for goodness sake (I might have even written it down if I’d thought to bring anything with me to the consultation; as it is he emailed it to me later). This Professor is clearly brilliant, a top guy, and I am only grateful that I never make snap judgements about anyone.
All too soon, however, the conversation returns to Aspergers and the reason for our visit.

My Diagnosis 1: Getting There

My Aspergers Syndrome started with my diagnosis. Well, all right, it actually started with my birth, but this blog is going to start with my diagnosis as I can’t actually remember my birth.
My wife arranged the appointment with the consultant – that’s usually the only way things happen in our house. Left up to me, I wouldn’t see a soul. By the way, for the proposes of this blog, I’m going to call my wife Vanessa, since that’s her name.
For my diagnosis, Vanessa contacted a retired and now elderly professor, which gave me the slender hope that he might drop dead before the date of the appointment. Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for the professor) that didn’t happen. So, the big day arrived.
Before big occasions, I am not always the epitome of calm. Throwing a fit is my way of saying ‘Whay, we’re going out’. Vanessa generally deals with organisation, time-keeping, what we need to take, putting the animals away, and any other loose ends and I deal with breathing in an orderly manner. Works for us.
Leaving only slightly later than planned, which is a minor miracle considering that I didn’t want to leave at all, we set off to the consulting rooms. Vanessa drove.
Now, when I’m stressed, I can either melt-down into animated hysterics, or withdraw into utter silence. I chose the latter for the duration of the journey. That wasn’t a problem except I was meant to be navigating. Upon speeding past the exit we needed from the dual carriageway, I maturely and calmly decided a change of tack was required. So I threw a fit about how pointless this whole trip was and, having missed the turning we needed, it was crystal clear that we should just turn round and go home. And why I ever needed to see an Asperger specialist was completely beyond me as it is patently obvious that I’m well adjusted and normal. Vanessa took the next exit and found the road we needed. I went back to silence.
We were late, but not by much. I loathe being late, unless it’s for something I don’t want to go to, in which case I couldn’t care less.
The consulting rooms turned out to be a converted house that reminded me of the sort of flea pit I lived in as a student. We were told to wait in the waiting room, which I could have probably worked out for myself. I didn’t ask where I could go to the toilet but I imagine that would have been the toilet. Those receptionists have a tough job remembering it all.
We didn’t wait long, which was just as well as it was the sort of place where tropical diseases probably flourish. Except that they would have probably frozen to death on that morning as some useless halfwit had turned the heating off. We sat there waiting for the professor and trying to avoid the ravages of frostbite.
He came in and greeted us profusely. Asked if we had had a good journey. I was just about to say ‘No, we were late leaving, the traffic was bad, we missed our exit from the dual carriageway, some muppet had stopped in a no-stopping lane which meant we all had to pass him in single file, and then we couldn’t find the building as we were expecting smart consulting rooms rather than a wartime bomb site’. But before I did, Vanessa said ‘Fine, thanks’ and smiled. The professor smiled back and that was it. My answer would have been better but not on this planet. I let them go ahead before following on like a lost dog. This was not going to be fun.