For many years, I have known I am not like most other people. Part of it I attributed to my being extremely bright, with a love of physical sciences like astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics, meterology and many others, as well as math. For as long as I can remember, I have loved things to do with astronomy and space, as well as those other subjects. While working on a speech impediment which was possibly the result of all the ear infections I had when I was very young, they had us bring in and read articles we found which we liked.... For me, it was articles about the space program (Apollo, Skylab, Pioneer, etc.), and I had a huge collection. You could ask me for details about them, and I could go on for hours.

Later, while struggling to make passing grades in math, I was identified as being gifted... I could not complete a simple one page test of addition, subtraction, multiplication or division problems in the time given... you know...the one where they give you something like 100 problems and 5 minutes to do them in. But my math teacher, Miss Shell, thankfully noticed what I was reading during recess... a book on calculus. After talking to me and reviewing all the tests I had taken, she found I was getting very high scores when you just considered what problems I had answered. The difference was like a A vs. a D. And so, after some discussion with the 7th/8th grade math teacher, my mother, and myself, along with my taking a bunch of these same tests with no time limit, a challenge was set forth... I would practice to get my speed up to where I could complete them as expected, and I would be able to go at my own pace. This had me completeing the entire curriculum through 8th grade early, and 8th grade had myself and my friends Paul, Edmund, and Caroline doing Algebra off on one side of the classroom while Miss Paulus taught the other 7th and 8th graders.

At this same time, when most boys my age were obsessed with thoughts of cars and girls, I was more obsessed with things those same scientific subjects. I was a lab assistant, I had a nice 10" telescope I got for one birthday, I had a weather station of sorts and could attempt to make rough forcasts, etc. But don't get me wrong... I liked girls probably as much as any other guy in my class... it was just that where they were concerned, I never had much luck. I only had one gal agree to spend a significant amount of time at a school dance with me. That was Caroline. But when I would go to ask another gal, I would end up screwing it up somehow, either before the dance, or during it. And so, I ended up not going to many of the dances, because I knew I would just end up sitting off to the side. Indeed, my first true date was my Senior Prom, with a freshman gal I had come to know that year. Instead, I focused on things like scouting, where I got merit badges in things like atomic energy, chemistry, and such early on. Or, I spent time making serious observations with my telescope, including being involved in a program which involved amateur astronomers such as myself in studying Halley's Comet. Then, there were my science fair projects, which had me going to the district level once and the state level twice in four years (I found out about the science fair my freshman year about 3 days before it happened, so my project was pretty poor in retrospect). And I never was much into team sports... I preferred to cycle, sometimes riding 100miles a day every few days. And, when it came to friends, I had very few. Indeed, in high school, I was a part of that same group of four, and around us, there were perhaps a half-a-dozen more who could generally be found around one of us. Add in maybe another 8-10 for a second circle, and that was my social group.

This pattern continued through my years at Ohio State, and through the rest of my time in college, with one exception. For some reason unknown to me, I broke my pattern of avoiding girls outside of a classroom setting, and I walked over to the table to talk to the woman who would later become my wife. Early on, she made comments about me not showing emotions and being a cyborg. Had I known then what I know now, I would know why. Had she known then what she knows now, she probably would have avoided this guy who wore a pocket protector, and could talk for hours about things like astronomy, electronics, computers and D&D, but who had horrible social skills.

To make a long story short (for now)... I got my degree, in Computer Engineering (a BSEE with a strong programming background). I got married. I have worked for companies as a programer, primarily working with UN*X, including being the UN*X expert at places like CompuServe and Lucent/Bell Labs. And I have a wonderful daughter. But, along with this, I have had my problems. Some, like having to work long hours to keep my bosses happy and keep my job, I had very little control over, regardless of what my wife may think. When people are getting laid off, your wife does not work, and you have the pressures of having to work to pay a mortgage, car loan, put food on the table, making sure we had health insurance and such... you end up putting in those 70-80 hour weeks as I did at CSI, or the 50-60 hour weeks at Lucent. I pretty much feel that I missed the first 2-1/2 years of my daughter's life... I did not get to see my family anywhere nearly as much as I wanted. And unfortunately, thanks to this and some other factors, some emotional distance opened up between my wife and I. And some of those other factors, such as my wife being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and Lupus, and the resulting pain and depression, and you get a mix which when combined with AS, appears to be quite toxic to marriages.

Becoming aware of AS

How did I first become aware of AS? Well, one of the earliest things I remember seeing was an article in Time or Newsweek where it talked about Bill Gates, and some of his personallity traits while sitting in the office of my wife's OB/GYN. This was around the time my daughter was born, and it talked about the fits of rage folks had reported he would have, how he would sit and rock back and forth, and a number of other traits, all of which were discussed in connection to Autism.

Later, back around 2001 or 2002, I remember seeing a program on a channel such as CSPAN which was talking about the exploration of the possible links between vaccinations and autism. I remember they also talked about other ASDs such as HFA and AS, and how persons with them could mostly appear normal, and might be very bright, but who had problems with things like reading peoples emotions, or showing emotions with others. As I started reading back then, I found very little in the way of information, but what I did find sounded familiar. Unfortunately, many of those I spoke to, such as one of my bosses at Lucent, did not think so. When I heard that from folks such as my boss, especially when that same boss said something like "No... I have a relative with Asperger's, and you are nothing like them, so you don't have it... you are just a typical engineer", I took it as an authoritative answer, and stopped considering my possibly having AS. [TO BE CONTINUED]