A Little About Myself…..

I am a middle aged high functioning autistic man living in York, Pennsylvania. My first “official” diagnosis was when I was three or four years old when I was placed in foster care.
My foster parents thought I was mentally retarded. I was either mute or hardly spoke at all, and it took them almost four years to toilet train me. The doctors thought I was brain damaged because of poor motor coordination and I was slow in learning new things. I always wanted (and still do) to be off by myself. Later I went through two other foster homes. Social Services was trying to have me placed in Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, NY. This was in the 1960s. That institution was eventually shut down because of the terrible abuses going on in there. For more info on Willowbrook go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School. FortunatelyI was never sent there. My diagnosis was “upgraded” to “Minimal Brain Damage” then later my I.Q. tested to be 120 or greater depending on the test given or the test conditions. My guardians
kept sending me to one Freudian von Shrinkendork after another trying to find why I “tick but don’t tock, or tock but don’t tick”. I kept forgetting what I was told to do, had a hard time understanding people, I did very poorly in school, but I did manage to graduate high school on time. Not many foster kids got their H.S. diplomas back in the 1970s. And yes I was bullied, and picked on a lot. I survived. I learned electronics and worked in that field for more than 20 years. Today I am not working in electronics, I work in a machine shop in a factory that makes windows for schools, and residential complexes, and other institutional buildings. As for my condition; I can’t stand loud percussive noises, being touched, and sudden or abrupt changes in my routine. I seem to be here, but my mind or parts thereof are in a different universe. My left brain could be thinking about the Quadratic Prime Series, at the same time my right brain is thinking about Pentominoes.
Autism is called a spectrum condition because we have different “mental colors, notes, or wavelengths.” I call myself an Autie, I may have some, but not all, characteristics in common with Aspies.

Any blogging or commenting I do about autism or Asperger’s Syndrome will be done on Wrong Planet.Net or some other forum for those on the spectrum.

Here I’ll be talking about my other interests which include bicycling, chemistry, computers, electronics, photography,various maths and sciences, gardening and sustainable technologies. And I’ll also be sharing my ideas on Tools, Ideas, Practices, and Services that those of us on the spectrum can use to better our lives.