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.