BREAKTHROUGH IN LEARNING AND COMMUNICATIONInner Light

Within the depths of one’s being,

Is one’s potential waiting for the opportunity to be expressed,

Made available for the seeing.

One needs to open one’s eyes to look within oneself,

And to seek and create opportunities that chime,

For brighter light within oneself to shine,

And for that within others to be brought out,

Just as well so not to be left out.

Though acquisition of language made my communication much easier and enabled me to have a more normal childhood, I still faced many challenges in not being fully included in my community and the resulting low self-esteem.  With my speech impediment and being behind in my social skills, I dealt with low confidence.

I started going to the League School for exceptional children in September 1962 when I was five.  This school founded only ten years earlier in 1952 was the first of its kind in the United States to provide day educational programs to children with emotional disturbances or autism.  I went to the afternoon kindergarten class.  The school provided transportation by vans, to school in the mornings and from school in the afternoons.  Since, they did not provide service in mid day, my mother brought me to school for my afternoon program.  The van brought me home.  It took about an hour, since there were several stops along the way and we lived around twenty miles from the school.  Mom went out to meet me when I got dropped off to take me up stairs.

The classes in my school were very small, with about five to eight pupils to two teachers in each class.  In my class, there were five children including me, two other girls and two boys.  This was an exceptionally high girl to boy ratio for the school.  Within the student body of about seventy pupils, there were around three boys to one girl.  This is about the same ratio for autism.  The school was housed in an old building that was once a very large house.  The living and bed rooms were converted into classrooms.  The basement was used as kitchen, lunchroom, and extra space for dancing and storage.  The attic was used as offices and two additional classrooms.  Some of the rooms had fireplaces that we never used.  Each room had an old fashioned heater.

 

In my class, we played all sorts of games, academic and physical, that enhanced learning.  We were introduced to the alphabet and numbers.  I learned basic arithmetic concepts, such as adding, subtracting and simple fracturing.  I started to learn to read with the Lotto flash card game.  This was very important to me, since this lead to my major breakthrough.  Each card had a diagram and the written word below.  As we laid down each card to the matching picture on the board, we pronounced the word over and over again until I understood the word being spoken without the other cues.  This enabled me to make visual associations with the spoken word of various objects.  New pathways opened in my brain.  After a while, I started to understand the connecting words, verbs, adverbs, and pronouns along with basic nouns.  Whenever I heard a word or a sentence that I was familiar with, visual images formed in my mind.  This enabled me to learn since I did not need to rely on sound without visual associations.  I began to talk as I learned to pronounce words.

Although I was not able to distinguish certain consonants, such as “L,R,Y and W.”  I pronounced all these as “W,” since these sounded the same to me.  I also did not pick up the “N” sound.  Moreover, I had difficulty hearing some other consonants, such as “B, D, and P.”  Since these sounds, unlike the vowels that are drowning out, are sharp and rapid my brain was unable to process them quickly enough to discern them.  But, I learned how to pronounce these letters by watching the positions of the lip and tongue for each sound.

I started speech therapy when I was six.  My mother took me to a speech pathologist at a hospital for a couple of sessions.  But, it didn’t help much.  Then about a year later, my school brought in a speech therapist to work on my pronunciation of various letters.  She showed me how to pronounce the consonants that I had missed all those years, including the “R, L, Y,” and “N.”  Even though I had mastered each letter, I still had a noticeable speech impediment with severe stammering and stuttering.  I also had difficulty getting certain words out at times. 

 

Since, I was just learning to communicate, I was still years behind in my development in language and social skills.  This adversely affected my self esteem for many years to come.  I became aware that I could not socialize nearly as well as most children my age, especially those in our neighborhood.  With this low image of me from being so far behind, it was very difficult for me to catch up and develop self-confidence.  Even with all of my problems, deep down inside of me, I still had a glimmer of hope that I was going to improve my skills and lead a normal life.

Shortly after I learned to read, I had one book, in which blank spots on the illustrations for peel-out objects or creatures to be applied.  I was very good in this, with my superior visual and fine motor skills.  This helped take my mind off my struggles.  Though my interpersonal skills were low, my visual and artistic skills were sky high.  I was very observant of things around me.  I displayed excellent visual and spatial concepts of which I felt was at an even match or even higher than the best computer programs in graphics.  I fabricated complex patterns of puzzles to match each picture on a section of standardized tests.

I used the principle of linear perspective in my drawings.  I had good, fine motor control with my hands.  My drawings were very accurate and detailed for those performed by my age group.  I colored very neatly within the lines with crayons.  Occasionally, I used oil pastels for drawing.  I drew all sorts of things, such as, flowers, trees, animals, people, and houses.  At school, we applied paints to large sheets of paper.  We used tempura paint most of the time.  Sometimes, we did finger painting.  I loved all art activities which was exhilarating and took my mind off my troubling thoughts.

While I was learning to write the letters in the alphabet and all the numbers, I drew on the walls in our apartment and practiced my letters and numerals with crayons in various colors.  I also scratched and drew on a few of Gail’s older records.  But, my parents were able to get the stuff off the walls with lots of scrubbing and cleaning formula.  I learned not to do it anymore.

Moreover, I played with all sorts of toys that enhanced my creativity–building toys and clays.  I played with Tinker Toys, Lego-style bricks, and a set with large square interlocking pieces.  I molded all sorts of things in oil-based modeling clay, Play Doh, and Silly Putty.  I had the Etch ‘N Sketch toy in which I drew pictures by turning knobs for vertical and horizontal directions respectively.  I was highly skilled and developed excellent manual control with it.

I had a few toys that were traditionally owned by boys for a change of pace from the traditionally girl toys, such as a battery operated car with a track set, several small metal cars with wheels that roll, and a G.I. Joe doll.  Watching the battery run toys and rolling cars along was had a meditative effect.

As to reflect my generally peaceful temperament, the toys associated with war never went to war.  For example, I arranged Bob’s set of army men in various configurations that danced and marched together in peaceful ways.  My G.I. Joe married Barbie and led a peaceful existence.

 

As I was becoming more verbal, I was able to do more social things with my siblings and other children.  I played card games with Bob, such as “Wild Duce” and “Gin Rummy.”  We also played board games like checkers, and several popular games with rolling dice and drawing cards.  We also had games that involved rolling marbles in various contraptions which involved speed or knocking down things.  These games, besides providing me with stimulation, kept my mind occupied as to keep it away from any troubling thoughts.  This also taught me how to play and interact with others.

I became very interested in dolls which were great instruments in developing social skills.  I started to collect Barbie dolls, including relatives and Ken, and various other dolls with different attributes.  I enjoyed getting several outfits for them and dressing them.  I loved to manipulate them with bending, walking, and kissing.  I had a nice red wooden doll closet.  I hung up a few of Barbie’s dresses that I had hangers for.  For example, I had a “Heidi” doll, that came in a red carrying case with a window and closet space, which raised her right arm with the press of her button.  My mind had become so focused and lost into my dolls that it was though that nothing else existed or mattered.  Playing with dolls was very meditative. 

As I began talking more, I started to make a few friends on our block.  My favorite activity with them was playing dolls.  One girl, Sondra, was a year older than I and lived just down stairs on the first floor in our building.  She, on her initiative, used to come over to our place to play dolls with me.  She was able to see through my struggles and see the beauty in me.

I also made friends with two Chinese sisters who were younger than I and lived in a ground level unit in another building.  When we met in the playground, they would invite me over to play dolls when they could.  They and their family moved away shortly after we got to know each other.  I used to go play a little bit in the playground with other kids.  It was difficult for me to take any initiatives with my friends, so I used to wait for them to come or invite me.

There was one family, the Lisbonas, who lived in our building and had a daughter and a son who became friends with Gail, Bob, and I.  They came over to our place quite often.  Sometimes Bob and I went to their place.  I used to call the girl, “Bona,” because I missed hearing that her name was also “Debbie” and missed the first sound of her last name.  Sometimes, I had a tendency to misunderstand names and just pick up on the most prominent sounds.

 

In my class there was a boy my age with a one tract mind for music.  Ralph was highly talented in music, and played the flute and piano.  He had perfect pitch and he had an amazing ability to hear any classical music and play it on his instruments.  He would do this for hours and hours.  I found him to be a nice boy.  At parent’s meetings in my school, my folks made good friends with Ralph’s parents, Danny and Esther.  We visited each other with our families often.  They lived in Brooklyn.  So it was a long way to go see them by subway, over an hour each way, but, it was well worth it.

Sometimes when we went to their house on a Sunday, my family would leave me there to let me stay over.  The next morning, I would get on the school bus with Ralph to go to school.  I enjoyed this very much.  Danny was also mildly disabled by deafness in one ear.  In spite of that, he was very playful with all of us kids.  This family used to bring me gifts when they first visited us and for my birthdays.  They were like family to us.  My parents also made friends with another couple who also had a non-verbal giggly child in my class.

 

I had some obnoxious habits that I did not understand were wrong until people pointed it out to me.  These included yelling for getting attention from others, sucking my thumb all the time, and picking my nose and then wiping my finger on my clothes.  I hated the gooey texture of snot so I wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible.  Moreover, whenever, I had a runny nose, I used to blow my nose on my dress or shirt.  By the end of the day when I had a bad cold, my skirt or shirt would be sopping wet with snot.  I also hate the feel of my nose dripping, so I wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible without getting a tissue.  I did not understand how important appearances are to others.  When I was about nine years old, I learned that wiping one’s nose on clothes and that picking one’s nose are disgusting habits.  So I stopped doing them.  I learned from comments of several people on such behaviors and from my mother criticizing my father on his nose picking habit.

Unlike many children with autism, I never played with bodily secretions such as saliva and mucus.  I never liked the feel of these.  But, I formed bubbles with saliva in my mouth for a short time until someone asked me to stop and explained that this is a repulsive habit.

 

With my love for music and the calming effects, I began to play records myself when I was five.  We had an old Westing House record player with speed settings for 33.5, 45, and 78s records.  We set it on top of our upright piano.  I climbed up on the piano bench to reach this record player to play Gail’s 45s.  I played some of the hits I recall from the early 60’s when we still lived in the Bronx, including “Run Away Sue” by Dion, “She Cried” by Jay and the Americans, and addition records since our move to Queens.  Occasionally, I played each of my favorite songs especially when new over and over again, about five times in a row.  I did this until I got tired of the same hit all the time.

I began to play the radio when I developed an interest from listening to it in the school van.  We had an old radio with a single speaker that was the size of a shoe box.  We also had some small portable transistor radios which had poor quality sound.  My mother played the radio a lot with classical music on most of the time and occasionally on easy listening background instrumentals that used to be popular.  I was mostly interested in rock ‘n roll and children’s folk music.  I also liked some of the theater music records my mother played, such as “West Side Story.”  My mother bought me a few long playing children’s sing-along records by several artists.

For years I had the radio on for the top one hundred hits of that year.  I used to listen to these for hours for a couple of days until my ears hurt from all that noise.  It was a big deal for me to hear the greatest hits.  I listened to the radio or records when my father wasn’t around since he never cared for rock music. 

When ever I listened to a familiar song that I loved, I would play that song over and over again all day long in my mind.  I would feel almost that I had a dancing rhythm in my head.  This set the tone for my day, and helped boost my mood a little.  I always had difficulty in remembering a song that wasn’t familiar shortly after I heard it.  After I heard it a couple of times, then I remembered how it went.

 

During my second year in the League School I learned a lot of spelling and became very good at it.  Every morning, we took turns writing down the day of the week and the date on the blackboard.  I practiced good penmanship on line paper.  I had pride in myself.  One day in the classroom, the two other girls and I created an elaborate snake like design with all of the blocks of the set all over the floor.  After we finished this project, one of our teachers did a sketch of it on paper in coloring pencils and framed it.

Everyday when the weather was nice, we went out to play in the school yard that had a dog house and monkey bars.  The school provided several tricycles and red wagons.  I rode the larger tricycle until I out grew it.  We had fun pulling each other in wagons.  We sometime played outdoor games, such as tag, relay races, and “May I take a step.”  I remember that there were nice tall trees surrounding the yard fence.

About a couple of times each month, my whole school used to walk several blocks to a small museum to use their auditorium.  There we watched various children’s classic and educational films.  The films, especially the interesting ones, took my mind off my worries while I was learning various subjects including morals to selected stories.  This museum had a few artifacts on counting devices.  It was housed in a charming old building.  Sometimes following the movie, we stayed and played in the play field where we flew kites.

 

I took in more of the world than others realized.  For example, during the major political events of the early sixties–Cuban missile crises in October 1962, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 when I was five and six, I remember my mother being glued to the television set for days about the respective situations.  I felt the nervous tension in the air, even though I didn’t understand the full impact.  I watched the funeral with my mother and grandmother.  I liked the marching bands. 

 

In spring of 1964, the Danny and Esther adopted a baby girl, Rhonda, who was very cute.  I adored the baby with her straight blond hair and blue eyes.  Shortly after Rhonda was with her adoptive family, she was discovered by a modeling agency.  She got signed for modeling contracts to appear in magazines and television ads.  Whenever the family came over to our place with little Rhonda, our dog, Honey, would get afraid and keep away from Rhonda.  Honey remembered how I, as a small child, mistreated her.  She had made a generalization that all toddlers are bad to dogs.

After being around with Rhonda and admiring her cuteness, I began to wonder what it was like to have a baby sister and desired one.  I had a big old doll baby, whom I named Amy.  When I was seven, I used to pretend for months that she was my baby sister.  It stayed in my mind all the time.  I wasn’t able to get it out of my thoughts until other obsessions came in. 

 

Often on a weekend morning, I went to Bob’s bed and watched Honey pounce on the bed and play with him.  Bob used to stick his fist from under his quilt cover, then Honey bit it playfully.  I would also pet her.

 

Occasionally, Gail took me along to visit few of her best friends from school.  One of these friends, Eleanor, used to come over to our place quite often.  She accepted me very well the way I was and was nice to me.  Her parents became friends with my parents.  They were also very nice to me and had me in their apartment, when my folks went out.

Sometimes, my mother and I went walking to department stores close by to browse and shop.  Afterwards, we would eat out for lunch, usually at a fast food place such as the “White Castle” for our favorite hamburgers.  Each burger was small, square, and flat with several holes with grilled diced onions.  I didn’t care so much for cheese with it, since it wasn’t in the Jewish custom of not combining dairy with meat.

Occasionally, we went shopping in Manhattan and than had lunch in a nice delicatessen.  I generally ordered things that were more gourmet when I got more mature as I liked to venture out and try new things.  Getting out of the house and walking around helped taking my mind off my problems, besides the release of tension from the physical activity.

 

Throughout the summers of 1964 and 1965 when I was seven and eight, we went to the New York World Fair that ran for two seasons.  It was very close to us, about a mile away, so we always walked there and back.  I enjoyed going through all of the exhibits, even though; I couldn’t understand the technological advancements some of these were promoting.  We went to an elaborate fire works display and a dazzling dance show that I enjoyed very much.  I enjoyed also viewing the pictures and crafts from various countries around the world.  I hardly remember anything from other exhibits, since I was so young and I hadn’t yet been taught about different cultures and was unable to relate to the showings.  But I did enjoy very much the festivities.  I didn’t mind the crowds as partaking in the festivities took my mind off any troubling thoughts.  My mind was absorbed by the fair.

 

Our biggest family vacation during my childhood was when we went to Washington, D.C. in July 1964.  Grandma Rae came with us.  We traveled by Greyhound bus.  I enjoyed the ride, looking out the window of the scenery of farms, cows, and horses.  But, I got a little bit anxious before arrival, since I wasn’t used to that long a trip.  We stayed in a two room suite with a kitchenette in a fancy hotel, with a sweeping view of the city.  We went sightseeing to the major tourist attractions, such as the White House, Washington Monument, and memorials of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.  We also went in paddle boats on the Potomic. 

On my seventh birthday which was during the vacation, we had chocolate cake with candles.  For my birthday gift, I received a lollipop game, in which we aimed to get the balls in the stick inside each lollipop.  Gail and I played this together.  We took pictures of our trip with our regular and movie cameras.  We all enjoyed the trip.

Even though this was the first time that I was ever away from home more than a weekend I didn’t get homesick since I still had my family, except our dog.  I was very thrilled to go on the trip with my family for a change of pace.  The exhilaration of exploring new areas and sightseeing took my mind off home as well as my problems from my disability.  I knew that we would be back home less than a week and that Honey would be okay.  But, the down side was, that we put Honey in a kennel, which made her miserable.

 

The following month, I went to a day camp for four weeks for the first time.  It had a nice park setting.  I liked doing all sorts of activities, with arts and crafts being my favorite.  We made boxes out of Popsicle sticks and ashtrays from mosaic tile.  I used to wade in the pool, since I lacked enough courage to learn to swim for several years yet to come.  I was taken to a certain location to be picked up by a van to the camp each morning.

 

That school year, there were only one other female pupil in my class.  Whenever she was absent, I felt displaced being with the remaining four pupils who were all boys.  It was uncomfortable to be the only one in anything even for things that I had no control over such as gender.

Every month in this class, we made a calendar of the month on a large sheet of paper.  We drew a big mural on top to depict the season.  On the bottom, we allowed enough space in each date to take turns filling in the weather pattern.  At the end of each month, we had a drawing to give away that month’s calendar.  Once, I won and I was very thrilled to get to take it home.

In school, the “Weekly Reader” was distributed to each pupil for social studies.  I enjoyed its articles on geography, history, and current events.  I liked the “Dick and Jane” series for the repetitions and clarity of the basic verbs and adverbs.  This made it easier to learn to read.

Every day in school, we used to rest for five minutes on mats that we rolled out.  Afterwards we often did slow, dance like movements to act out the transformation of a seed in to a flower to stretch our bodies before we get back to our chairs.  In addition, we played several games that were more physical–Musical Chairs, Bluebird, Hokey-Poky, and Ring-Around-the-Rosy.  I enjoyed the singing and the rhythmic movements, which were soothing for me.

It helped me release some of my nervous tension that resulted from my inferiority complex.  I placed high standards upon myself to develop excellent social skills.  I felt that this was highly valued by society.  I sensed that most other children outside of my school were much more sophisticated than I.  I felt that no matter how much I tried, I never measured up.  I was concerned if I would ever make friends as easily as my siblings, for example.  This low image of me was emotionally draining.  I didn’t feel like that I was valued as much as others, despite my other attributes.  It was as though I was chained to one area and didn’t know how to break free.  This resulted from limitations that I imposed upon myself. 

 

I had different food preferences and dislike as most other children.  For example, when we had snacks of juice and cookies, I drank some juice even though I didn’t like it much.  I tried drinking soda pop several times, but I never developed a liking for it–unlike most other folks.  I also didn’t care for fresh fruit, because of its tartness, except ripe bananas.  I liked all the meals served in school, including all the vegetables.  I loved mashed potatoes.  As I approached adolescence, I started to like canned apricots and peaches.  I was a chocoholic–I loved chocolate everything much more than anything else.  I had a strong preference for all of my desserts to be chocolate all the way through and through, along with chocolate milk.                

 

When I came home from school at around four o’clock in the afternoon, I used to watch children’s variety shows and cartoons on our black and white television for an hour or two.  This was enough TV viewing for me each day.  The Flintstones and Bugs Bunny were a few of my favorites.  Whenever I was home from school, I used to watch Captain Kangaroo in the mornings.  Since, I had about an hour commute to school, I had to leave my place at around seven thirty in the morning, just before the show went on.  I didn’t have any problems in comprehending the content.  I related to all of the characters with their naiveté.  Sometime, they would act more ridiculous than me–doing funny things to capture and fight with others.  Whenever Grandma Rae was around, I watched several game shows with her.  I never got into the soap operas with my mother.  Fortunately, noise from the TV never bothered me.

A strong motivation worked wonders on my will power to discard old habits.  I began to feel that thumb sucking was too immature for my age and that it was socially unacceptable.  I noticed that neither of my siblings was sucking their thumbs, and I wanted to be more grown up like them.  I felt that people would respect me more if I gave up immature habits.  During the new year of 1965 when I was seven and a half, I made a determination to stop sucking my thumb by January 23rd.  I knew that it was going to take some time to break a habit that I had for so many years.  By that date, I never sucked my thumb again.  My family was very impressed and proud of me.  They thought that this was amazing for a seven and half year old girl who had special challenges to exhibit such good will power.  It wasn’t easy at the beginning.  But, it took only a few days to lose any desire to suck.

 

One winter afternoon when I came home from school, I noticed that my skin was broken out every where.  I learned that I had the chicken pox and stayed home all week from school.  I used Calamine lotion to control itching.  My mother bought me a set of magnetic alphabet and numbers with a board to keep me occupied while recuperating.

 

My parents made friends with a couple, whose son, Mark, was in my class.  They lived very close to us, less than a mile a way.  Occasionally we walked to their apartment.  Mark was very withdrawn and had difficulty communicating to others.  He had a speech impediment.  He also rocked back and forth, like me.

They baby-sat for me several times.  One time when I was with them, I played with a cute inflatable yellow and green stand-up punching bag that Mark ordered through Canada Dry by sending in proof-of-purchase tabs of their “Wink” drink.  I wanted one too, so I had my family buy enough “Wink” for the promotional deal, even though I didn’t like the beverage.  I was somewhat influenced by advertisement in shaping desires though not always. 

 

For about eight weeks during the summer of 1965 when I was eight, I went to a special day camp program for challenged children at Samuel Field Y in east Queens.  There were around fifteen other children in my group with two camp counselors.  There was door-to-door transportation service by van.  One adolescent girl, with mild mental retardation, who also was in the program, lived only a block a way from us and came over in the mornings to catch the van with me.  She seemed to radiate an innocence which was beautiful and that I admired.  From then on I developed a greater sensitivity towards all those with a similar disability.

We had birthday parties for the summer birthdays including mine of which my mother sent a bunch of chocolate cupcakes from the bakery with me to share with my group.  They all sang to me which made me happy that I was receiving attention.

On my block, I made friends with two girls who were a few years younger than I, Mary Ellen and her best friend Maria who was Hispanic.  They were always together.  They invited me to their birthday parties, where I enjoyed the people and the excitement.  We mostly played dolls together.

 

Sometimes when we went on walks, I got all sorts of candy–mostly in the candy store which had comic books, and a counter that served malted drinks and sandwiches, as well as sweets.  When I was around eight years old, I began walking about a half mile each way to the candy and toy stores including Woolworths then back by myself.  I was very thrilled to have the independence to go on my own which made me feel more mature.

 

On one August day, we went on a family outing on a big boat going up north on the Hudson River to Bear Mountain on an Island.  It had a very nice park where we had a picnic.  The trip took about three hours each way.  I enjoyed the trip very much.

Each summer, we made a couple of trips to Manhattan for outdoor activities such as strolling through the Central Park and visiting the major museums near by.  In addition, we use to go to Greenwich Village for outdoor art shows continuing for blocks and blocks and browsing all sorts of wares that people sold on tables that went on and on.  There were a lot of jewelry and things to wear.  There were also lots of paintings, including acrylic on black or dark velvet that I liked.  Just about on every street corner in Manhattan, there were carts selling hot-dogs, big soft pretzels, and ice-cream and pop.  I had the pretzels every time.

 

One teacher, Norma, who I had for two years, took me out a few times to Manhattan.  We went to the Empire State building, and then we went all the way up to the hundredth floor and looked down on every thing below.  I enjoyed seeing people as ants.  At another time, we went to the F.A.O. Schwarz toy store that specialized in the most expensive toys, including the most elegant decorative dolls and stuffed animals.  Norma bought me a few souvenirs from these outings, plus a nice filigree design bracelet.  She left my school.  I felt sad that she moved on.  I became attached to her and missed her.  She also took me to Jones Beach in Long Island, a few years later with another teacher.

As with my caring teachers, I always was happy whenever someone spent time with me and gave me things as this made me feel valued.  For example, one afternoon when I had just come home from school and I fell and scraped my knee, a woman came up to me and took me to her apartment to put a Band Aid on my knee.  In addition, she happened to have a nice collection of doll clothes that she gave me.  These outfits were very nice, some were hand knit suits.  I was elated that someone who hardly knew me could be so generous.  The gifts made me feel loved and accepted.

 

In school there was one boy, Stuart, in my class and van who was attracted to me.  He was like my first boyfriend.  He sat next to me as much as possible.  We liked each other very much.  We made each other cards for birthdays and holidays, including Valentines Day.  He was very intelligent.  He, like me, talked too fast and loudly.  However unlike me, he talked on and on with excessive details on technical matters.  This made it more difficult for me to listen.  He was always analyzing something.  He took a part of radios and put them back together again.  He was fascinated in how everything worked.  He probably was on his way of growing up to be a good scientist or engineer. 

 

In school, a dance teacher taught us dance twice a week.  Moreover for a few months, she gave me private ballet lessons a half hour a week in school.  She felt that I would benefit from this which I did.  I learned the basic five positions.

At the end of the school year, she gave me a book.  This was a touching story about a little girl who had legs so weak that she couldn’t go out to play with other children.  Then, she started to take ballet lessons to build strength in her legs on the recommendations of her doctor.  With lots of persistence and practice, she eventually became a good dancer with strong legs.  Even though her problem was different from mine, I related very well to her.  She touched my heart with her struggle to overcome it.  We both had our respective hardships to deal with and had to work with them to make improvements in our lives.  This inspired me that with faith and determination, anything is possible.  Perhaps it was possible for me to develop good social skills as an example.

 

For show and tell in school, I brought all sorts of toys to show–Silly Putty, Sixth Finger with projectiles, a top with wire projector, Gumby, and several new dolls.  I wasn’t very skilled in presenting things to my class.  My speech still lacked fluency and I often mentioned things out of order because I would forget to include something in its appropriate spot and remember later when I was already onto other areas.  My stuttering resulted from talking too fast and from a lack of self confidence.  It was my low self image with my speech impediment that led to my self-fulfilling prophecy.  Moreover, I had a great deal of difficulty in modulating my voice.  I had a tendency to talk way too loud, especially when I got excited.  I couldn’t hear myself very well.  I enjoyed watching the presentations by my classmates and seeing what they brought.

 

Generally, despite having had made friends with my peers, I felt more comfortable expressing myself to adults than to other children my age.  I assumed that adults were generally more patient and understanding of my deficiencies, since I still lacked confidence in my communicative skills.  They were less likely to ridicule me than other children. 

Several children on my block used to make fun of me and wouldn’t get any where near me.  One day when I was in a bad mood and probably was coming down with something, I got mad and hit one boy about my size.  Illnesses generally made me vary irritable.  I usually was generally easy going when with other children.

It wasn’t only my differences that stood out due to autism that other children teased me about.  As a double whammy, I had some physical characteristics that stood out just as well such as a cyst in my nose that made it look funny.  I felt bad enough that I was given hard times about my disability.  I felt worse that I was made fun of my nose especially since nothing could have been done until years later.  The teasing made me feel ugly despite my family members telling me that I was beautiful. 

Right on my second birthday, my nasal cyst that I was born with became infected.  Boils formed on my nose.  Hot wet compresses were put on it.  It was very painful.  Lots of pus came out and left pin holes. It all cleared up in a matter of days. The cyst was very benign and made my nose look funny.  It made it look rather squarish almost like a cube.  I had to wait until all of my bones stopped growing completely in my teens in order to remove the cyst, since it involved restructuring my nasal bones.

 

My mother began going for her Master’s degree in library science at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.  One morning, she got on the school van with me to see how much quicker she could get to school, since both of our respective schools were in the same borough.  The driver was very nice to her.  It seemed so strange to me to have my mother join me for part of my ride to school.  It was overwhelming to me.  I used to feel uncomfortable if my mother appeared out of context.  For me, she wasn’t supposed to be on my van–though intellectually, I realized that her commute might have been made easier by going with me part way.  As it turned out, her commute wasn’t any shorter or easier than going by herself all of the way.

When ever a thought came in to my mind that made me feel uncomfortable, I used to squint my eyes and make contorted facial movements.  My mother always asked me “what is the matter?”  This behavior helped me release some of the tension until I came up with other methods.  Though I was aware of this it was difficult to stop as with nervous habits in general.  It was frustrating whenever negative thoughts came and stayed in my mind and I can’t get rid of them.  I felt as though my mind had control over me, rather myself controlling it.  I used to feel that most people didn’t like me as much as other children because I was ugly and inferior.

 

Every year on Halloween, I used to dress up and join several kids going trick or treating.  We would go through all the floors of most of the buildings on our block.  By the end of the evening, the big shopping bag with handles that I took with me would be filled up.  I loved the idea of all of our neighbors giving me things.  I received all sorts of things and homemade goodies.  In those days there was no concern of tainted food.

 

Just after Halloween 1965, I came down with a bad cold with fever for days.  While I was home sick from school, my mother wanted to pick up something for me to help lift up my spirits.  I requested the Glamorous Missy doll that came in white hair with special water soluble markers in several colors for coloring its hair.  I appreciated very much all my mother did for me.  This took some of the sting out of the sickness.

 

During the early evening of November 9, 1965, we had a major black out that affected all of New York City.  This was the first time in my life that I ever experienced a power failure.  It was due to a malfunction of the operating system rather from a major storm.  Luckily, we had enough flashlights and candles on hand for light.  Even though I got a bit anxious for the return of electricity, I took the situation in my stride.  I liked watching the flames and glow of the candles.  I tried to remain calm as there wasn’t anything I could do about but to make the best of the situation.  I was grateful for one thing, that I didn’t get stuck in the dark elevator while the power went out and have to wait until it came back.  Our electricity came back on the next morning.  At school, we all recounted our experiences with the black out.

 

Often when I went on a class field trip to the zoo or to a major park with concession stands, I bought Cracker Jacks caramel popcorn with peanuts and got a token prize in each box.  I enjoyed these trips very much.  It gave us a chance to get out of the classroom and explore places.  Occasionally we went to an amusement park.  I learned to like the bouncing horses on the carousel.  I went on the “spider” ride a few times.  I was afraid that people might vomit on me on rides like that.  I got the idea from hearing of people getting motion sickness from rides.  I didn’t realize that they are much more likely to throw up after them then during them.  Otherwise, I enjoyed the rides except those that turn me upside down, drop me down super fast, or went up very high.

During spring, several parents organized and took turns leading Saturday trips for the children for a few months.  This provided more opportunities for parent involvement, and breaks for other parents from their children–besides fun activities for the kids.  My mother led one of the outings.  I enjoyed all these trips to various places–several zoological and botanical parks, and ferry rides to the Statue of Liberty and to Staten Island.  We also went to the Coney Island beach.  I liked getting to know other parents, mostly the grandmother of a girl, Fanny, who was to be in my class the following fall.  The grandmother led most of the trips.  When ever there were bees out, I used to just stay still like a statue and not move an inch.  Even though I wasn’t stung yet by bees, I was afraid that they would be antagonized by any of my movements and sting me.

 

During the summers of 1966 and 1967 when I was nine and ten, I went to a regular day camp at a Jewish school, close to us in Forest Hills.  My parents felt that since I got along well in the classroom and with typical children in my neighborhood that a summer program with regular children would work out fine for me.  Transportation to and from camp was provided by school bus.  Boys and girls were in separate groups.  Each group had around fifteen to twenty kids to two camp counselors.  There were all sorts of activities–arts and crafts, swimming in the pool with group lessons, drama, and weekly cook outs at the Valley Stream Park just outside of Queens in Long Island.

I got along well with most of the kids, except for a few of the girls who used to tease me a lot.  I liked the idea of being with typically developing children, even with some teasing going on.  I adjusted to that.  I learned to ignore others who make fun of me.  I felt like there were enough girls who did like me to still feel accepted at the camp.  There was one girl, a little bit older than me, who liked me and sat next to me on bus rides to cook-outs and field trips.

During swimming lessons at the pool, kick boards were handed out and I took one.  It took me about several weeks to feel comfortable using it with both my feet off the bottom.  Once I mastered it, I enjoyed kicking with the board in my hands.  But, I still wasn’t able to get myself to float in the water without it.

One of the most popular projects in camp was making lanyards out of flattened cord that has been coated in a variety of colors.  I tried to figure out how to weave them by myself, but gave up after a while and had someone show me.  I liked the challenge of figuring out such procedures.  On my lanyards, I attached my apartment key, a rabbit foot, and a steel whistle.  With the same cord, we also sewed precut pieces of leather together to make purses.  We learned to weave baskets as one of the activities.  I enjoyed all of the craft activities as utilizing my strengths in artistic talent made me feel good about myself.

 

When Bob turned thirteen, we had a bar mitzvah for him, which included a Jewish ceremony at a synagogue and then a reception at a hall.  In the Jewish faith, this celebration is for a boy entering manhood at the age of thirteen years.  After the Bar mitzvah service at the synagogue, we went to a professional photographer to have our pictures taken separately in black and white in addition to the few pictures we took ourselves.  At the reception I had my hair set in rollers by Gail and I wore a fancy hot pink velvet dress with white trim.  We invited all of our friends and relatives, including children.  This added up to about a hundred people.

Bob also got a big present which was a reel-to-reel tape recorder in a nice solid wood deck.  This machine was quite bulky with each reel being about six inches in diameter.  He had fun with it recording rock hits from the radio and speeches from each of the family members.  I listened when those were being played back.  I talked and sang in to it.  I didn’t like the way my voice sounded.

 

We started to get together with friends of my parents from years earlier, Eddy and Teddy.  They had two daughters close to my age–Thea who was three years older and Neala nine months younger.  I played mostly with Neala.  She took to me very well and we played dolls together.  A couple of times, we slept over at each others apartments.

Once each summer for several years, Eddy and his family drove us to mutual friends.  They had a son, Benjamin, close to Bob’s age and a daughter, Rebecca, ten months younger than I, in Long Island for a picnic.  Neala, Rebecca, and I played well together.  They had a tiny cement swimming pool in the backyard. The water was cool since it was unheated.  I used to get in very slowly until I got used to the water.  Sometimes other friends would come with their three sons, so there was a big crowd with lots of children.

On my block, a large family with five children moved into a building close to ours.  I made friends with two of the younger children, a girl, Carol, who was several years younger than I, and her brother, Danny, who was a year younger.  Danny once came with us to the Far Rockaway Beach.  Carol came over to play dolls often.  Both of them invited me to their birthday parties.  She introduced me to a friend who was even younger than she.  We played at this friend’s apartment several times until that girl turned against me–she apparently didn’t understand my differences when it was more obvious.

For my ninth birthday, I decided that I wanted to reciprocate and invited a few friends who included me in their parties, about eight children who came.  A few of the gifts I received were a hundred-piece puzzle, a few dolls including the “Crissy” doll with pull out hair to make it long or short, and a special doll outfit with changeable color in response to acidic and basic solutions until the color faded in to neutral position.

Gail took me a few times with her when she was baby-sitting two sisters who were two and four years younger than I respectively and wanted to meet me.  We played dolls and other games, including Twister.  We became friends for a little while and I visited them a few times on my own.  They lived in a very nice apartment just a few blocks away.

 

Before I turned nine, my mother and my school looked in to the possibility of me going to PS 175 which was just blocks away from us, where my neighborhood friends went.  They felt that since I had good classroom behavior and that my socialization was improving that maybe it would work out.

The school rejected the idea out of concern that the teachers and the pupils wouldn’t know how to deal with my differences and special needs.  They feared that the other children would tease me, and that I wouldn’t get enough attention since the classes were very large, about thirty-five pupils in each class.  It was explained to me in words, “they do not take kids with problems like yours” or to that effect.  These words stayed with me for many more years to come.  This adversely affected my self esteem along with dealing with deficits in a world that does not value difference as much as it should.

I felt hurt that I wasn’t accepted for the neighborhood school.  I wanted to eliminate the long commute to and from school.  I had desired to be able to walk to and from school with my neighborhood friends.  I felt that I was somewhat inferior to them to be the reason behind not attending the same school as them.  I hated the idea of having to go to the different school as my brother and sister as that made me feel that I was being cast out as being different.  I wanted to be just like them by be provided the same opportunities in attending the same schools and making more friends from the neighborhood.  It was the idea of attending school for the emotionally disturbed that made me emotionally disturbed more than anything else.

By age eight, I felt that I was led to believe that there was something wrong with me and that it would be better if I would get fixed.  I had the idea that the better one pretends to be normal, the more respect one would get.  By then, I have heard so many references to so called “normal” children doing this or that and I knew that I was not being referred to.  Of course I had no idea of being “normal” means, especially since I am not neurotypical.

I felt helpless in this situation in that I couldn’t change the minds of those in charge of the educational system to change for me.  I coped by pretending that I went to the neighborhood school with my friends.  It was easier to run away from my problems than to face them head on and work them through, since I felt that it would be too painful to face the situation.  I was still aware of reality.  I used to talk about the fantasy only to myself.

 

It felt good to start off the school year with familiar children in my class as this was very comforting.  For example, Ralph and a few of the other boys were in my class again after a few years of separation.  In addition, I enjoyed having Faith in my class.  We got to know each other from the Saturday field trips and became friends.  I was thrilled that she had the same birthday as I, except that she was a year older.  I found coincidences like this amusing.  Both Faith and I had an attention deficit disorder.  We played dolls together.  Her parents had disappeared, so her grandmother took custody of her.  Once, my mother and I visited them in Brooklyn.  I enjoyed visiting my friends in their homes and seeing where they lived.

 

It was very difficult for me to pay attention for a long period of time.  My mind wandered off very easily.  I used to daydream almost all the time.  Whenever I would get over stimulated from unusual days, events, or any changes, I couldn’t pay any attention to lectures.  I moved around in my chair often.  But fortunately, I didn’t have the hyperactivity which is often associated with attention deficit disorder.  So I didn’t take any medication like many of the pupils in my school did to control their hyper kinetics.  I also had difficulty concentrating on reading when I was very excited about something.  Sometimes when I read I had a tendency to process the information wrong either by missing words or misinterpreting messages.

For several years, my mother took me about once a year to the Jacobi Hospital for follow up and testing of intelligence.  My performance profiles varied from mild mental retardation all the way through genius levels.  I scored my highest in areas of memory, visual analysis, mathematical concepts, and creativity.  I scored genius levels on special concepts and pattern recognition in changing perspectives.  I was such as genius in these areas that I was able to process all the items on this part of the test on time or even quicker than most people.  I apply these skills in drawing.  I did very well in mathematics.  I probably scored average in technical skills. 

On the other hand, I performed much lower in the verbal area since I was still so far behind in my vocabulary and I still didn’t socialize very much.  My creative mind tended to get in the way by coming up with novel associations that confused me of what the correct answers are.  I also didn’t test well at reading comprehension.  This was because I had difficulty concentrating on the passages in the test, besides lacking the vocabulary for most of these and due to time constraints.   I needed more time to be able to think more thoroughly.  I scored very low on listening skills due to my auditory processing deficit and an inability to hold things in my working memory to retrieve when asked to.

I used to experience sensory over load when ever I went somewhere out of my daily routine.  The testing itself added to my over load of processing so much information.  But, I still had good reasoning skills and analyzed my surroundings well.

 

At home, my parents had an old medical guide, that I enjoyed reading.  This was the beginning of my interest in biology.  I studied the basic human reproductive system and various stages of pregnancy.  This book had a series of photographs for me to refer to.  This was my first dose of sex education.  In addition, I learned about the four basic food groups, which were the basic nutritional guideline we followed for many years.  I read about the well known communicative diseases–polio, tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough, and chicken pox.  I considered myself to have very good retention of facts as long as I didn’t study too much at a given setting.

I liked stories with lots of fantasy, such as Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella.  The latter was my favorite.  I related very well to “Cinderella” in that like me she endured hardships in her childhood, although her hardships differed from mine.  I had a great deal of compassion for her.  We both experienced rejection; she being shunned and abused by her step family, and I not being accepted by the neighborhood school and children on my block.  I also liked that the book had a happy ending.

Occasionally, my mother took me to the theater to watch movie classics such as; “Carrousel,” “Mary Poppins,” “Sound of Music,” and “My Fair Lady.”  I enjoyed these musicals very much with the beautiful singing and characters.  In “Mary Poppins” and “Sound of Music,” I liked that both the adults and the children were deeply involved in the story line in their respective situations.

In “My Fair Lady,” I related very well to the fair lady–in that she pronounced certain words wrong, such as “Rhine” and Spine” for “Rain” and “Spain” respectively.  Before hand, my mother explained to me that like me, she had a speech problem, though hers was from a certain dialect from an unsophisticated lower socio-economic class.

 

My mother began giving me a weekly allowance of one dollar a week.  When ever there was a doll, doll clothing and furniture, or any other toy I wanted to buy, I saved up my money for it and then walked a half mile to the toy store to make my purchase.  Usually, I spent under five dollars at a time, which took me several weeks to save.  I was always good in managing my money.  I never wanted to borrow or get advancement on my allowance.  I always paid as I went.  Receiving allowance enabled me to develop a greater sense of responsibility from managing money.  It felt good to have the independence to spend the cash in any way I wanted without needing approval by my parents.

I bought a special toy with assorted gears with holes for a pen that was used for drawing all sorts of spirals.  I used four different color pens for my drawings of spirals.  I was very intrigued of how the designs could be altered by the size and shape of circular or oblong of the plastic gear and the hole in which the pen was drawn.  I was very intrigued with the possibilities that seemed limitless.

 

At school, one of my teachers taught the girls basic embroidery with yarn and cotton canvas.  My first project was a yellow tulip with green stem, leaves, and grass.  I did several other ones with more complicated subject matters; including a sea scene of one of my smallest dolls out in the ocean in her sailboat with clouds and the sun.  I also did a self portrait with a skirt and sweater on standing on a parquet floor.  I loved this activity very much as I applied my talent in art and crafts.  I drew all of my designs with pencil to guide my stitchery.

For several months on Saturday afternoons, my parents signed me up for an art class for children that were held in a community center near us.  I only went to about half of the sessions because some weeks I didn’t feel like going.  I didn’t like going to the same place week after week.  I didn’t feel that I was learning enough to make it worth while.

Several years later when I was in my early teens, my parents tried again and signed me up for another Saturday art class–one that was one-on-one instruction in painting.  The older male artist, who worked with me, had a small studio behind his frame shop where he offered classes.  This was only about a half a mile from us.  There, I worked in oil pastels and in oil paints.  I took this private class almost every week for about two months.  I stopped going because, again I got tired of going to the same place every week.  Often I didn’t have the energy to go.  I felt it was much easier for me to do art work at home.  I didn’t want to be bothered with any classes on the weekends after going to school all week.

I had several coloring books and kits with sheets of paper outlined for coloring by numbers with Venus coloring pencils.  I loved filling in areas with color since I had excellent control.  It made me feel good to do things that I had a great deal of confidence in.

 

A few months before my tenth birthday as I was about to enter puberty, my hormonal levels started to act up and affect me.  I became more moody, irritable, and depressed.  Whenever one little thing happened, such as losing something belonging to my doll, I would get very upset about it for a whole day–although it wasn’t too often that I lost things since I was generally well organized.  I began to develop physically at a very young age while I was still emotionally immature.  This made it hard for me.  I started to wear bras about a half a year later.

When I went to the day camp at the Jewish school for the second summer, the people in charge and the camp counselors saw that I had regressed from the previous year.  So after two weeks of being placed in my appropriate age group, I was transferred in to a group with younger children.  Since I was less social than I was previously, the camp officials felt that I would fit in better with smaller kids about three years younger.  I would have preferred to have stayed with the other group.  I felt like I was being demoted and rejected by that group.  But, it worked out fine for me after all.  After a little while, I realized that I felt just as comfortable with the younger girls as those my age.  A few of the girls were very friendly to me and we played with each other. 

Since I was getting tired of my long commute to and from school by spring of 1967, I developed a strong desire to be the first one dropped off the van.  I wanted to get home as early as possible.  Although over the years, I realized that my drivers needed to drop off other children before me.  With feelings of helplessness, I pretended that I was the first one off the bus from day camp and school for over a year.  I used to do silly things, such as singing “I’m the First One Off the Bus”, in a borrowed melody to myself.

During the first week of camp that summer, the bus I was on used to go on the major street at the other end of my block from where I lived.  When ever we went by my block, I got upset at the driver for not dropping me off–since I knew how to cross that street and I would have been home much quicker.  Instead, my ride took about a half hour longer, going in a circle taking several other children home.  But, for much of the summer, I was transferred to another bus due to rerouting.  The trip home was much more direct with the revised route, so I felt better.  But, I still wanted to be the first one off the bus.  I didn’t like the idea of anyone having a shorter commute than I.  I was envious of a four year old girl who lived just a few blocks away from camp and was the first one dropped off.   I was so self-centered that I needed to have the best of everything to help compensate for my inferiority.

For one year when my van took several children to and from another private school in Brooklyn that was similar to the League School, in addition to driving children from my school, the commute was the longest I ever had which made things worse.  The long commute was tiring and I didn’t like missing cartoons that were on TV before I got home.  I developed an even stronger desire to be the first one dropped off my van at home.  One day with my jumbo-sized chalk, I wrote in big letters, “I’M THE FIRST ONE OFF THE BUS” on the sidewalk when I felt silly. 

 

One afternoon when I walked to the Flushing Meadow Park, I encountered a woman on my way home, who was visiting a neighbor near the park.  She invited me to her house for the next day.  The next day in school we had a discussion about being careful with strangers and not to be trusting with them.  We were warned that appearance and words can be deceiving.  Though this could be harder to understand with autism, I took that lesson to heart and never visited her.  I feared that she would harm or kill me.

We used to go to picnic at that park and lay out in the sun on the roof of our building for some of our family outings.  We began to take color slides when we went out and had a small slide viewer for seeing our slides.  We took bunches of slides for several months until the novelty wore off.  With my first camera that I got as a birthday gift in school, I took a bunch of pictures of friends, houses, and scenery until the novelty wore off.

 

For fall of 1967 when I was ten, The League School moved into a brand new building that was very nice with big windows on each long side of the building.  The school had out grown its old building which was falling apart anyway.  There was a long driveway in which vans could drive through and park to pick up the pupils.

I was happy to get along very well with the girl in my class who was two years older than I.  She loved to make fun of me, but in a friendly way that I enjoyed.

There was a larger class next door to mine that often invited us to participate in some activities together.  We often split up in boy and girl groups.  We girls did craft projects using a variety of materials such as Crepe paper, shoe boxes, fabric, ribbons, and bows that we brought in and purchased together at the store.

Other activities included the basics of manicures and shopped for the basic supplies that we stored in our boxes that we made in class with the supplies we bought.  In addition, we cooked simple things together such as macaroni and cheese, cakes, and cookies in the spacious home economics room with a full range kitchen.

In my school, there was also a wood shop.  Each class spent about an hour a week there.  This was one of my favorite activities.  I enjoyed making the various projects.  I made several things–a wooden top; a memo pad holder of plywood with a metal plaque, in which I punched holes for my own design and a copper strip in which I engraved “Myers” to hold the memos in place; a copper relief made from hammering over a mold of a dog; a plywood trivet with a sheet of copper, in which I punched holes for my design; and a long wooden box with a slide in yellow plastic lid.  I also made some individual projects that were my choice, such as doll furniture, a spice rack, and blocks of wood with my own designs cut by the jig saw.

 

My mother started working full time as a librarian after doing it part time for a little while.  She wasn’t home when I came back from school.  I was home alone for a short while until Bob came home from school.  His shift during his sophomore year in Forest Hills High School used to end as late as five o’clock.  Gail went away to University of New York at Stony Brook for her freshmen year and majored in psychology.  She graduated from high school early through a special placement program for brighter students in which the eighth grade was skipped.  Bob went through this program too.  I missed Gail, but at least I had my own room, except during her visits.   

 

Occasionally, I had the basic hearing tests.  The results showed that my hearing was about ninety percent accurate.  I frequently missed what were being spoken.  One of the doctors cleaned out my ears thoroughly to see if that would help, but it didn’t very much.  No professionals realized that my hearing problems were related to deficits in sensory processing with my auditory sense, which tend to be inherent in autism. 

So, in February, 1968, I had surgery to get my tonsils removed.  Doctors thought that this would improve my hearing, but I didn’t notice much difference.  This was the first time that I was given general anesthesia.  Before I realized, I was out of surgery and then being wheeled from the recovery room in to my room.  It was hard for me to believe that the surgery was over.  I spent all day and all night at the hospital.  My mother stayed all day and left me at bed time and came back the next morning to take me home.  I shared my room with one other girl who seemed to have had a much harder time recovering from the anesthesia than I.

I was a very good patient.  A positive aspect of this experience is that it took my mind off of my struggles from autism.  I stayed home for a week recuperating with a sore throat from the surgery.  Grandma stayed home with me and fixed lots of chocolate pudding which was easy for me to eat.  In the mail, I received get well cards from my classmates, teachers, and friends at school.  It felt good that people were thinking of me.  With my low self esteem from autism, I needed plenty of assurance that people cared for me.

 

For the League School’s annual luncheon, held at the Wardoff Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, several pupils were selected for a chorus group to perform at the luncheon.  After these children had practiced and performed, an appreciation party was held for them in the school.  When I found out about this, I got upset and felt that I was being left out of the festivities.  I didn’t realize all the hard work that was put in to the rehearsals.  Only those with the best singing voices in the school were selected.  I didn’t have that good of a singing voice and I had a tendency to sing out of tune.

For several years in a row my classes, including me, performed square dancing in front of about a thousand people at each of the annual luncheons.  As we walked on and off the stage for one of the performances, I fooled around and did some extraneous stuff that was uncalled for–waving my hand and saying “Hi folks” and “By folks” respectively.  After I was counseled on this, I learned not to do that anymore.  All of the performers arrived at the hotel with the parents and then met the supervisor who then took us up to two guest rooms that were provided for the children to stay until stage time.  But when I was in my early teens, I sat through the entire luncheon with the other girls in my class until we went up in front.  It was interesting to see all that went on there.

 

Once in a while, I would take time out to imagine things about my environment.  For example, I used to hang my head upside down from the side of my parents’ bed lying on my back.  I fantasized what our apartment would be like if everything was upside down and if we would walk on the ceilings instead of the floors.

In addition, just after I learned about atoms making up all matter in the universe from a museum display, I began to imagine that the series of faint dots that I saw everywhere were atoms in constant motion.  These dots–reflections of light off dust particles–became more visible if I squint my eyes into direct light.  As I learned more about the basic properties of gases, I started to see these as pulsating energy of the gases that comprise air and fill all our open space.  Not all individuals could perceive this.  Taking time out to imagine things in the surroundings was soothing and calming for my mind.

My vision tends to be very focused on the details of an object or plant and the surrounding areas are blurry until I shift my focus to another object or plant.  For example, I would focus on a bird or a butterfly flying from one shrub to the next.  It is almost like changing frames in a slide show.  My eyes shift frames of focus about every few minutes or more.  I could see the entire view in my visual field as wholes, but without any clear focus.  I prefer to see one item at a time with precise clarity.  Though I hyper focus, I tend not to let visual imperfections bother me as I generally never have the time or energy to worry about them too much.  Besides, I tend to be drawn to view nature and am generally easy to look away from imperfections.

Whenever I first look at something, the general characteristics appear immediately, such as shapes, colors, and textures.  As I allow time to process information, greater amount of details appear with more lines, shapes, and variations of color within the broader whole.  I need more time to process visually as well as auditorily.  There is only so much that I could see at once.  For example, whenever I go through a large buffet table with so much visual things to take in, I often miss some food items that I later notice when I go back for seconds.

Attainment of a degree of normalcy in my childhood was made possible primarily with the acquisition of language which enabled me to communicate with others.  I wanted very much to fit in my peer group, but with my deficiencies in social development, it was challenging.  My interactions with my peers mostly revolved around toys and games in the playground but tended not to rely on more complex socialization.  Despite my progress in this area, I still wasn’t able to convince the neighborhood school that I would be ready to be integrated in its classes.  Besides working on my weaknesses, I developed my strength which was art.

 

“And Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.  And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? Or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord?  Now therefore go and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.”–Exodus 4:10-12