Quiet. Shy. Serious. Smart. These are some of the words that would have been used to describe me as a kid. Weird. Odd. Eccentric. Those were some others. But never the word: Autistic.
Most of us had never heard about autism until the film Rain Main. Afterwards, our whole idea of autism wasn’t of a spectrum of traits and severity, but of a stumbling set of socially inept behaviors overshadowed by the ability to perform almost super human mental tricks.
I had a few tricks of my own.
I could pick up nearly any instrument and play a tune on it.
I could dig into any new subject and show a high level of proficiency very early on.
I could not get lost.
I had a spot on memory for events.
I was not, however, someone that’s ever been good at memorization, especially of trivia. I’m not the type of autistic that could tell you what happened on a certain date or who all the actors in a certain movie were. Hell, I’m shit with names.
I’ve leaned on my spectral skill set as a sort of crutch. Because I can jump into a new subject and see the patterns, manipulate them in my mind as a set of shapes that connect one way or the other, I tend to avoid the specifics. This has been a challenge professionally as remembering the syntax of any given programming language is crucial; I program via images of concepts and ideas flowing around and together.
Time for dinner.