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.