It’s What Works for Me

I’m not big on quotes, or cliché.
I usually don’t go in for idioms or figures of speech and other assorted Redewendungen.

Unless an Aspie or someone thought to be an Aspie coined it.

One I like, though is:

So what? – Andy Warhol

Here’s what:

When I was finally diagnosed with “Classic Aspergers” I did a typical AS thing and went on a reading binge.
I wanted to know everything about it.

And I started to detect a trend among clinicians, a word which I’ve come to think of as a euphemism—when I started to run into the constant repetition of some form of:
“AS patients show deficits in social interaction, inappropriate, communication skills, and interest restriction, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah….”

And then they would add to the fire, either as a backpedal strategy or some form of guilt with: “…but also display a rich variety of subtle clinical characteristics and talents and more blah blah blah blah blah blah blah….”

Which was rapidly turning us into the old adage:

“If you’ve met one of them….”

Which I knew immediately to be mis-informed, as I knew several Aspies, and we couldn’t have been more different.

Which led me to:

“If you’ve met one of us; you’ve met one of us.” –  Me

Something I said long before it got turned into what one sees on the web now.

So what?

Here’s what I decided I would base my reactions on, after several years of reading and absorbing, to better enable me to blend here on planet Earth:

  • At some age, based on someone’s research, between 2 and 4 years, the grey matter in the brain began to grow at an accelerated rate.
  • By age 4 it was 10% larger than normal.
  • And, whether due to the availability of resources,
  • Or, by design,
  • Or, simply a matter of space:
    • There was somewhat lesser white matter, leading to some processes taking longer while they traveled to the lower brain,
    • And, the lower brain got a weaker signal than normal,
    • Or, the lower brain also developed somewhat less than normal,
    • Or, simply didn’t work,
    • Coupled with, the absence of mirror neurons,
  • The social mechanism of the AS brain simply doesn’t work like a normal persons.

But, the gray matter of the brain works somewhat differently too.

I’ve personally seen the following:

  • Aspies who can:
    • Tell you the day you were born from the DOB,
    • Tell you the weather every day since they could read the newspaper,
    • Give you directions (better than MapQuest) to anywhere in the U.S.,
    • See stars in the daytime,
    • Solve just about any puzzle, problem, brain twister and quiz,
    • Look at a crowd, flock of birds, cars on the highway, and immediately come up with the count,
    • Build data bases that would knock your socks off!

They’re just not very good at parties.

Now, before your brain explodes, this is just stuff that I decided I would use as a way to navigate among normal people, blend as much as possible, and make a living to support my family.
It’s not very scientific, I get that, but it was something that worked very well for me.

With this model, however flawed, I was able to do things I could never have done without it.
I identified areas where I was weak, did my best to remediate them, and when I couldn’t, I knew, that was not the place for me.

When I was a kid I tried baseball like all little boys. I got hit in the face with the ball, then I got hit in the throat.
I moved on.

I tried football, ‘til I got flattened by the big guys and flanked by the fast ones.
I moved on.

I joined the crew team and tried rowing.
I hold three national titles.

Written June 6 2026

Scroll to Top