“How can you tell me which clothes to buy at the thrift shop?” I replied. “We have a dress code,” said the HR representative assigned to deal with me. “We all know that.” He fired me before I could explain further.Īt my first Fortune 500 job, I wore thrift shop clothes to work-straight out of the bin, unwashed. I had no idea that an assistant could not call up Yoko and tell her the work was subpar. At my first job-as a project coordinator at a small website-I was assigned to post Yoko Ono’s interactive art online, but when her submission came in, I rejected it. In my twenties, I began shocking people at work instead of school. Then, around fourth grade, people lost patience with me: I’d forget to go to school, or I’d flunk gym class because relocating to my locker and changing clothes required too much planning.
#How to you pronounce aspergers how to#
I wrote a novel while other kids were figuring out how to write complete sentences. I used to study the encyclopedia at my desk while other kids were learning to read. Plus, people will excuse a lot of odd behavior in a kid who is smarter than everyone else in school. Also, the disorder wasn’t included in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic reference until 1994-although Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger first described it in 1944-so in the past, telltale signs were often chalked up to bad social skills. Part of the reason I wasn’t diagnosed sooner is that Asperger’s is extremely hard to identify. Later, I found out that a possible detail of Asperger’s is face blindness. I always knew I was bad with faces, but two months after my son’s birth, I still couldn’t remember what his face looked like if I was not in the room with him. Until I was 30, I wore only skirts and dresses-I wasn’t sure how pants should fit. I thought it was a casual, do-it-when-you-feel-like-it-thing. There were earlier signs, of course: I didn’t brush my teeth on a regular basis until I was in my mid-twenties. I learned that I had Asperger’s when I was 33 I was trying to diagnose my four-year-old son and realized all the boxes I was checking off for him also applied to me. Then Ryan will have to script me on how to say happy birthday to someone else. I will feel the same social stress when my friend in the cube next to me celebrates her birthday. It’s just that I don’t know how to generalize from the scripts. (Studies about women with Asperger’s show that we do better in the world than men because we’re good at getting help with social situations.) People with Asperger’s love scripts. For them, not for me: I don’t understand awkward, and so I don’t mind asking my employees for help. However, many of these people work for me, which can make this kind of office interaction painfully awkward.
So this is how I get through my days: I have helpers-people who know I have Asperger’s and who expect weirdness from me and who give me scripts to say when I’m at a loss. I have Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism marked by poor social skills and above-average intelligence. Ryan smiles and we move on to bigger things. Just go tell him you know it’s his birthday but you can’t talk about it.
I think I might cry if I have to do it.” And then I am actually crying. I sneak past his office and go to a friend’s cube and say, “I can’t tell Ryan happy birthday. I wanted to skip work to avoid it, but I had to come in because we are getting so many media calls for our product launch-a tool that allows companies to recruit people from blogs. We’re together every day, but I can’t say happy birthday. We have been through two years and $4 million in funding.
0 kommentar(er)
