Sharing the journey: This chapter completes the first emotional arc in the memoir. Chapter 7 starts a new emotional arc where the the river that is my life starts to carve a massive chasm between academic and social success. I will probably start that chapter. But I will be spending time with my coach on a serious “development edit” of the first six chapters. I am hoping I don’t decide to start again from scratch. I am always happy to get comments, but now that there are six chapters, it is hard to read one chapter alone. My writing has improved a lot over these six chapters… so there is a lot of work to do. This is the longest draft chapter so far- over 4,600 words. All in all, the drafts together are close to 20,000 words. The book has evolved and become clearer as I write, but is emotionally difficult as I recall hard memories. In any case, these are the current questions driving each chapter- it is still very much about what it is like to experience being autistic without knowing I was— but it is broadening into a story of “ecological fit”..
Chapter 1: Something is terribly wrong. Am I crazy?
Chapter 2: Where did this child come from?
Chapter 3: What made him different?
Chapter 3.5/4: How did he survive?
Chapter 5: Where did he belong?
Chapter 6: What happened when he lost that place?
Chapter 6: The Road to Perdition
“Connecticut, here we come!”
That’s what I said to myself with naïve optimism as we readied to leave. But, I was also feeling the Yin/Yang of the opportunities and challenges of relocation, even though I had never heard of Yin/Yang.
I cried about Frisky’s disappearance. Partly for the loss. Partly out of optimistic joy because I could see her tail wagging as she jumped out of a car that delivered her to Connecticut and ran into my arms. These mixed feelings were like the deep sadness one might feel when their best friend goes into potentially fatal surgery while at the same time spending extraordinary energy staying positive about seeing them smiling and alive in their recovery room.
I said, “see you soon!” to Adam. I didn’t cry. I rarely cry about people. I saw us smiling playing baseball, or baseball cards, on a new field in Connecticut when he visited. I felt like I was on the expedition with Lewis and Clark charting the unknown world of New England and then communicating its beauty back to Adam who would find it breathtaking and follow me.
My brother was now a pot smoking, long-haired hippie at Antioch College in Springfield, Ohio. I had survived a year without him. I wasn’t worried. Well, I tried to say that to myself, but I didn’t like the thought of being further away from him.
The most important items I had would come with me. They included my baseball glove, the thousands of baseball, basketball, hockey and football cards, a few record albums and forty-fives, and ragged clothes.
I looked forward to the Steelers playing for the AFC title against the Miami Dolphins and watching the game on TV as one of my first activities in Connecticut. The Steelers ended up losing that game. But, that loss was truly the beginning of a winning dynasty. In retrospect that isn’t a bad metaphor for what I hoped for with the move. That didn’t quite work out.
I also turned twelve, and my parents celebrated their twentieth anniversary, shortly after we arrived. I made a wish when I blew out the candles. I don’t remember what it was. I was optimistic when I made it but feel confident that It never came true.
In setting out for Connecticut, my sense of optimism and sadness coexisted together like lions and zebras. They both need each other in a way. Lions need zebras as food. Zebras need lions to keep their population from getting out of control. All is good when they are balanced. I was at ecological equilibrium when we left.
When I look back at the time we moved, I can see myself like a larval banana slug having no idea there were other biomes besides a redwood forest. I didn’t know that hot, dry, harsh biomes even existed until a few weeks at my new home.
We pulled out of the driveway and got on the road.
Our packed paneled dodge aspen wagon made its way through Squirrel Hill.
We passed Adam’s apartment building. I waved.
Then we drove by Davis Elementary School where Mrs. Jerpe saved me from early onset baldness and its field where I was part of the most important upset in softball in human history - third graders beat sixth grader. I smiled.
We made our way to Murray Avenue, the main artery of the biome.
We drove by places that have never left my sensory memory. I watched as we passed Eddie’s newsstand, where its crowded and small space would have made me claustrophobic if it weren’t for the joy of buying sports cards and being called Little Chooch by the owner
Then we passed by a Jewish deli that seemed to change ownership every year. I don’t remember all of the names, but the enjoyable smells and tastes of corned beef, chicken noodle soup. Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda, Kosher pickles, and other deli favorites coexisted in my mind with the awkward shame of stuttering when I ordered the food.
Next to the deli was a Chinese restaurant, whose name I can’t remember. But I remember the anxiety walking past its shaded windows. Everyone I knew had suspicion and fear because we never saw anyone go in or come out, despite the brightly lit open sign. I still have not learned the solution of how that restaurant with no business survived so long.
Then we passed Mineo’s pizza where I stared in awe of the men in the window tossing pizza dough like it was an art form. I never had the dexterity to toss pizza dough like he did. I also started drooling a bit like my dog does when I am eating pizza..
We turned on to the Pittsburgh Parkway, went through the Squirrel Hill tunnels, and then left Squirrel Hill behind.
We drove past the exit for a swim club and an ice-skating rink where I learned to swim and kind of ice skate. I really wanted to play hockey. But the coach there told me I would have to skate a lot better than I could. That hurt. My feet are sort of awkwardly turned out so I never lived my dream of actually playing ice hockey. I wanted to bang my head.
We passed the exit for the Monroeville Mall, one of the first large indoor malls in the country. I relived being treated well and getting free meals at some of the restaurants, because one of my Pocusset Street friend’s father was part of the developer’s team. I felt important there.
Then we went through the tool booth and on to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. A road that had always led to happiness like summer vacation at the New Jersey beach. I never thought it led to perdition.
My parents and I played two games to keep us from getting bored when we traveled on the turnpike. Even though I was approaching my teenage years, I still enjoyed them.
One was collecting. The goal was to collect the state names from license plates we saw on the road, hoping to get all fifty. Each time we saw a license plate from a state we hadn’t seen yet, I would write down on the list.
Trucks were like bonus cards. The cabs of trucks could have many license plates, and often from states far away from Pennsylvania. I would turn my head as we passed a truck and try to read the license plates on the front of the cab. One might hear me enthusiastically yelling “Wyoming!” or “Oregon!” or if we were really lucky, “Hawaii!”
I hate semi-trailer trucks now for their loud engines and exhaust. They blow up my sensory systems and sometimes lead to a sort of road rage. But then, a truck with six license plates on the front of a cab was like finding a buried treasure.
The only food available on the turnpike was Howard Johnson’s. I engaged with my ice cream soda like a squirrel on a bird feeder. There would always be a gas station at the service plaza along with parking for the huge semis. We would drive around the truck parking lot finding license plates of states we hadn’t seen yet. I’d yell out “Idaho!,” “New Mexico!,” “Alaska!.” I was like a miner panning for gold during the California Gold rush gushing with joy at the site of what was in my pan.
Part of this game was also associating the state capitol with the license plate. As a ten-year-old, I could recite every capitol from each state. I doubt there were many more kids my age that would hear South Dakota and think “Pierre!,” or North Dakota and immediately think “Bismark!” or hear Missouri and not think of Kansas City or St. Louis but immediately think “Jefferson City!” I guess this was another sign of being different.
The other game we would play was twenty questions. This was a great game for a budding scientist, though I didn’t know I was one yet. A player would think of a person, place, or thing, and the other players were allowed twenty “yes” or “no” questions to figure out what they were thinking about. One had to have a very conceptual strategy to be good at this game. And, one had to know how to ask questions whose answer would drive discovery forward, not leave you stranded. I was actually good at it. Conceptual skills would become one of my distinctive capabilities.
One also had to trust that the other person in the game would not change what they were thinking about as questions were asked. Trusting was never a problem until I read the “shame on you” letter..
It wouldn’t be long until I hated twenty questions. Not because the game wasn’t fun. Not even because I got to be a surly teenager. But, because my dad would play a one-sided version of it on many evenings after school with me as the subject.
We made our way to interstate eighty-four. We got stuck in a two-hour traffic jam near Newburgh, NY, where our car overheated, but we got it cooled down. One does not find any new state license plates in a traffic jam, and twenty questions gets old. Patience runs thin. Was that a hint from the universe that we should have turned around? Maybe.
We arrived in West Hartford, CT and pulled into the driveway of a pretty one-story house with a nice grass yard in an average suburban neighborhood.
The year was 1972 and my father was very involved in integrating schools when he was on the Pittsburgh School Board and implementing busing in Pittsburgh. This made us pariahs on Pocusset Street and in Squirrel Hill for a bit. I was one of the few kids on Pocusset Street whose parents were excited that I would be bused to the inner-city Arsenal Junior High for woodshop and metal working classes once a week.
My dad wanted to move into Hartford where I would have gone to a diverse inner-city school and he could live his values of being at the heart of urban living, not in the safe suburbs. But my parents had a great deal of anxiety about how I would fair with the move. I didn’t know how to protect myself very well, and I was no longer protected because others feared my brother’s retaliation. I was a bit scared. My mother embraced my anxiety and convinced my dad it would be better for me in West Hartford.
We ended up living in West Hartford. But we lived there for there for only six months.
After unpacking the car, we went out to eat. We went to a Friendly’s in West Hartford. Friendly’s was (and still is) a casual sit-down restaurant known for their ice cream and comfort food like a tuna melt or a hamburger with fries.
I ordered a strawberry soda expecting one of Friendly’s ice cream sodas. What the server brought to me was strawberry pop. I was really confused.
In Pittsburgh, pop was the term for soft drinks like Coke. A child only used soda when referring to pop with ice cream in it. In Connecticut, pop was either your dad or the sound that is made when you step on bubble wrap. Soda was reserved for soft drinks.
I thought to myself that the maybe the transition was going to be harder than I imagined. I didn’t realize I would need to learn a slightly different language in New England.
In addition to calling Coke, “pop,” Pittsburghers have their own very distinctive accent. I don’t know how to describe it. But some words sound different. For example, Wash is pronounced warsh. House is pronounced hahs. I also couldn’t (and still can’t) pronounce the difference between pool and pull, and fool and full.
These linguistic differences might not sound like much. But, when you are a new kid in middle school it matters because for the first time I realized that even my words might not belong.
My house was about half a mile from King Phillip Junior High School, which would be my new school. It was close enough to walk. My parents chose West Hartford, because it seemed to have the characteristics of Squirrel Hill with a large Jewish community. I suspect they hoped I would immediately find a similar friend group there.
I was pretty excited, albeit nervous, on my first day at King Philip Junior High School. I was small and thin kid. I walked into the front door of the large one-story building and into the lobby. My eyes were wide as I looked around. Butterflies were playing kickball in my stomach.
I was quite shy.
Someone came up to say meet me in the lobby to welcome me and show me where homeroom was.
I walked into my homeroom class with my eyes avoiding contact with anybody. I assumed they were all staring at me wondering who this new kid was. I don’t know what I expected when I walked in, but I feel certain that it wasn’t not being noticed at all. I wasn’t planning on being the invisible boy that day. As it turned out, I was the invisible boy on too many days.
I found a seat somewhere, pulled out my notebook and pen, and pretended I was writing something down. I had no peripheral vision so I couldn’t see everybody in the class not paying any attention to me.
I actually don’t remember anyone being mean to me on that first day. But I don’t remember anyone being particularly nice, either. I was just happy to have survived. When I got home, I reflected on how I felt. The sense of belonging I had three weeks ago in Pittsburgh was now as ancient as the dinosaur bones in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.
I was in the “popular group” of kids when I was in Pittsburgh. I didn’t have to do anything to be in that group- we just all grew up together.
When one is naturally in the popular group, it is easy to be oblivious to the middle school caste system. I was until I moved. The world looked very different from my new perspective as the new kid in school. In fact, it looked like I was at the base of a steep rock cliff without any climbing gear or any experience in rock climbing.
I never learned how to climb up. I just figured out how to move sideways and just be different. I did eventually make one friend, Seth, who danced sideways with me. Seth was also a smallish kid, with long hippie length hair, who was very smart, not particularly athletic or into sports like me, but who defied any stereotypes. He was a natural outcast. I belonged with him now.
I don’t remember being bullied at school. I may have just blocked that out. But I do remember learning just how far down I was on the social totem pole.
King Phillip was a well-resourced school, so gym class was expansive. One sport I learned there was collegiate wrestling. After learning how to wrestle, we had a tournament.
I was not particularly strong or in super shape. But I was athletic as a kid. I was not aggressive, though, and had no competitive need to win. Well, I wanted to win but I never felt it was the end of the world to lose.
I learned some techniques of wrestling pretty well and I was really hard to pin. I was a better wrestler than anyone expected.
I was pitted against Peter in my first match. Peter was the epitome of the popular kids. He was taller than me, thin, but very good looking. He had curly blond hair. His friend group was large like mine was in Pittsburgh and girls liked him a lot, and he seemed to have no social anxiety.
I never thought of Peter as a horrible person. He was always affable to me and sometimes I even thought that we might at least be acquaintances.
A challenge throughout the rest of my life was introduced to me in this wrestling match with Peter. I learned that I really had no idea what other people thought of me.
The gym had a professional, thick, navy blue, wrestling mat with the smaller circle in the center where the match started and a large circle that represented the wrestling area. Beyond the circle was out of bounds. If the wrestlers got outside the circle, the match was stopped and they were moved to the center to start again.
If only life worked that way.
The kids all sat around the ring. Peter sat with many kids in the popular kid crowd on the other side of the circle from me. I sat with Seth creating our own “proud to be different” caste.
Our match started. I don’t really remember what happened in the match. Wrestling is about winning points for gaining position over the other wrestler, since not every match ends in a pin. I outwrestled Peter. I did not pin him. I think I won by a couple of points. I was squirmy and quick and never let him get position on me.
Seth was pretty proud of me. No one else was.
Peter started crying. He was not crying in pain. He was not crying because he was a super competitor. He was crying because he lost to me. He was in the engine car of the train, and I was at the back of the caboose. Cabooses don’t beat engines. He cried out of embarrassment to losing to the wimp new kid. He made that clear.
You might think this made me feel better as if I were David taking down Goliath. But, I hadn’t seen Peter as the enemy. I was jealous of him for being popular while I was outcast with Seth, but he had never seriously teased me or called me names. So, I thought he at least thought of me as a human being. Learning that losing to me caused such embarrassment made me feel as small as a nanoparticle. It stoned me.
I remember after school was dismissed that Seth and I were talking on the sidewalk near his house about the fun of beating a popular kid but absorbing just how outcast we both were. That is honestly the only conversation I remember in Middle School. But boy do I remember the feeling of being lonely, outcast, and not belonging. I never experienced that in Pittsburgh.
It is hard enough being an adolescent in middle school even when you feel you belong. It’s particularly hard when you feel like a larval banana slug that suddenly got transported to a desert from a redwood forest where you fit perfectly.
Believe it or not, it was actually worse than just being a creature adapted to somewhere else. My home no longer provided any comfort.
I still held out hope that Frisky would be found. I needed her. My parents knew I needed a dog, so we rescued a young spaniel mix that we named Scooby. Frisky was an easy dog. She took herself in and out, never caused trouble, never devoured a sofa, or stole a steak off the counter. So, I had never learned how to train a dog. And I discovered my parents didn’t either.
Scooby was crazy like young puppies are supposed to be. We made her crazier. We didn’t give her a job. We didn’t exercise her well. We gave her very little mental stimulation. I never really bonded with her because I was waiting for Frisky. When dogs don’t get what they need from their owners, they get it themselves. For Scooby that meant defecating in the house, tearing and shredding what she could find. She was so ill-behaved that we put her in the basement when we went out, which could be most the day. She entertained herself by eating the wood steps to the basement of our rental house.
Scooby’s life with us was not any better for her than my life was for me at King Phillip. We both wanted and deserved so much more. We were able to rehome Scooby. But my parents didn’t want to rehome me.
The move was also difficult for my parents, particularly my dad. Twelve-year-olds are usually too narcissistic to notice challenges their parents might be having in their new biome. At least I certainly was. So, I didn’t realize it was as hard for him as it was for me.
I knew my parents had lived in Pittsburgh their whole life. But I didn’t know that my dad had been accepted into Columbia University’s doctoral program- the best program in his field but decided not to attend and go to the University of Pittsburgh. He didn’t make that decision for himself. He made it for his mother.
Jewish mothers are known as the masters of inciting guilt in their children. My dad’s mother was the guru all the other Jewish mothers trained with.
They talked on the phone every day. My dad was expected to call. The conversation would be something like this.
My dad would say, “Hi mom!”
She would sadly say “Hi” and then break out in tears as she said, “I miss you” followed by a soft threat, like “My chest hurts. I think I am going to have a heart attack. Who is going to get me to the hospital?” My father’s face would turn white as he apologized profusely.
Guilt leads to anxiety. A lot of anxiety.
Starting a new job as a dean in a social work school is not particularly a stress-free activity. Anxiety becomes multiplicative. The first month of starting such a job is having meetings with the faculty staff. All of them welcome you with open arms as they tell you what problems you have to solve. That would be OK if they were real problems, like “I need a raise or my wife will divorce me.” I can guess from my experience from being a dean and provost that my dad heard that problem. But I am sure he heard more urgent but stupid ones like Professor John being outraged that Professor Eva interrupted him in a faculty meeting. As silly as it sounds, those sorts of people problems in an academic environment are near the top of the charts in creating anxiety.
I had lived in the “popular” crowd for twelve years. My dad had lived in it for forty years. I never realized that he shared some of the same anxiety I did about fitting in.
My dad was also extremely anxious about me finding my footing in a new place. All of his anxiety got mixed together in a blender and he poured it over me. It was as if he needed me to be happy and well-adjusted in my new home before he could deal with his anxiety.
So, I was subject to interrogation every evening.
My dad would say.
“How was school?”
I might say, “it was OK” as unenthusiastically as possible.
Because I didn’t respond “Great!,” more questions were needed to get me to “Great!”
So, my dad would say,
“Did you make any new friends today?”
I would look down and say “no, not really”
My dad’s brow would look worried. He’d then say,
“Were kids nice to you?”
I didn’t know how awful a questions this was until later. It implies that there is a reason kids might not have been nice to me, or that I needed to worry about kids not being nice to me as if it were as serious as a deadly illness.
I’d unenthusiastically answer “kind of”
My dad would get anxious. Anxiety mixed with great skill as gifted interrogator was not good for a twelve-year-old
“Give me an example!”
The last thing a twelve-year-old wants to do is give his dad a play by play of his day feeling like an outcast.
I probably tried to subtly convey that nobody, but Seth talked to me all day.
For my dad, that was unacceptable.
“C’mon Jim, I am sure other people talked to you.”
I’d try to reply, “no, it was just Seth.”
But my dad would keep digging in with question after question.
He would eventually prove that there was reasonable doubt in my memory and that kids might have actually been nice to me.
His anxiety would ease.
I’d feel like shit.
It was bad going to school with no friends and being on the bottom of the social totem pole. It was worse having to come home and try to be convinced that everything was great
I was still just a mediocre student. In Pittsburgh, I was a relatively mediocre student, but socially reasonably happy, at least until girls entered the picture.
In West Hartford, I was still a mediocre student. But now I was a social disaster. This is when geology started to play a role- the river running through my life was now carving the beginning of a canyon.
My mom tried to help. But she was stuck in my dad’s anxiety like a fly in a spider web. And she was trying to adjust to a new job as a special education teacher. She was also in the popular crowd for forty years, so it wasn’t easy for her either. Nonetheless, she was very grounded and worried more about me and my dad.
My dad succeeded in the dean job. He was a great dean and even better professor. But, he had been so popular in Pittsburgh, he never felt he was good enough
And the conversations with his mother only got worse
I grew more sullen and started to dislike him immensely (though I still found ways to have fun), which made his anxiety even worse.
West Hartford was also a very suburban, mostly white town. And the Jewish population on our side of town was dominant. My dad was a civil rights leader, former urban community organizer, and he needed to be in a community that was more consistent with his values.
And I needed to go anywhere else. I was about to shrivel up like a banana slug would be inclined to do in the desert.
We would have moved into Hartford if it had not been for the town next door, Bloomfield. Bloomfield was a designated All-American City because it was truly racially, ethnically, and socio-economically integrated. That allowed my dad to align where he lived with his values.. And I could go to a better resourced school system, while still getting the chance to experience a great deal of diversity. There was hope I might fit better there.
I played a role in hunting for our new house. I was stupid. For some reason, my mom and I liked a split-level house in a subdivision designed so that each house looked the same, like Pringles potato chips. And, although there were a lot of houses close to each other, it was not a neighborhood like Pocusset Street. I don’t think my parents ever had any friends in the neighborhood. I found some kids to play basketball and tennis with, but it was not the carefree social life I had known in Pittsburgh.
I wouldn’t turn thirteen until December. I was lonely, outcast, sans dog as an emotional regulator, and too old for games with baseball cards when we moved in the summer of 1973. But I remained optimistic that things might get better.
The Pittsburgh Steelers were the worst team in football for over forty years. They were just about to become a dynasty. If they could do that, maybe I could in Bloomfield?
That turned out to be a crazy thought.
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