Here is my response to a question from the NaNoWriMo forums on avoiding the stereo types when writing about characters with Autism:
okay – you know what I can answer you with a very long post if you don’t mind.
copying from my web site: http://www.squidoo.com/Aspergers-Syndrome-and-Me (I actually recommend you read the site, cause it’s got pictures and more detail and stuff)
~Who Is Affected by Autism?~
In one word: me. I have Asperger’s Syndrome, a type of Autism. Life is difficult, not so much because autism affects the things I do, but mostly because people do not take the time to get to know me. My cloths scare off most people, before they get to meet me. The few that aren’t scared off get upset at my not making eye contact when they speak to me. They get more upset when I don’t answer them back. Next they start interigateing me, questions left and right and I sit down on the ground and start drawing or writing in order to block out their words, because I can’t process so many questions all at once like that. Next thing I know they are calling me a retard and telling their friends to stay away from me. Think I’m talking about kids? Think again. I’m over 30 years old. No kid ever called me a retard, but their parents did (and still do), Sunday School teachers did, adults, men and women in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. When you tell someone you have Asperger’s Syndrome they ask: “What’s that? Never heard of it.” When you say it’s a form of Autism, they respond with: “Oh, so you ARE retarded than. I thought so.” My response is: “Was Albert Einstein retarded?” and they say, “No, he was a genius, he was the farthest thing in the world from retarded!” And than I throw the big one at them: “Did you know that Albert Einstein had Asperger’s Syndrome? and so does nearly every other person whom like myself is one of the 3% of the world’s population with an IQ of over 130?” (My IQ is 138 btw.)
There needs to be a better understanding in the world about Autism, and well, you hear doctors and teachers and parents talk about what the “think” it’s must be like, but how often do you hear what it is like from someone who actually has it? Not often enough, I’m afraid, so I am going to speak out, and maybe others like me will read this and than step forward too.
It takes me a long time to get enough used to some one to start speaking to them … years sometimes. It’s very hard, because people don’t want to make an effort to try to understand and worse they never want to become my friend. Autisms = a lonely life.
Asperger’s = The Crazy Cat Woman of Maine
I have Asperger’s, though I didn’t know it until just less than 2 years ago! I always knew I was “different”, but I grew up at a time when, children who were “different” were quickly labeled as either retarded, stubborn, rebellious, or schizophrenic and all of these labels had been used on me by the time I was 4 years old. I guess in the last 30 years people have become more civilized, because now, teachers try to find a diagnosis instead of just name calling.
Growing up, I had great difficulty with things that others found easy to do, and yet, stuff they found difficult, I found easy. I had started reading and writing at age 3, but was never able to learn how to spell words properly, and could not make numbers stick in my head no matter how hard I tried. Today, 30 years later, I still can’t spell, but I’ve developed spell-checking “tricks” to get around it and I still can’t do math, though I can do basic addition and subtraction, and can count money enough to get by.
Today as an adult people call me “The Crazy Cat Woman of Maine”. I currently have 13 cats. All former ferals. People look at you and judge you because you look different, dress different, act different, talk different, whatever. Cats don’t judge. Cats love you without demanded you wear the same cloths they do, talk like them, act like them . . . they don’t care, that you don’t wear fur, purr, or sleep in the sun all day . . . . they love you anyways. As the years went by, my longing for human contact grew, but lack of understanding about me, about autism, about Asperger’s, means that in 34 years, I have had exactly 4 friends. One when I was a kid, but by the time I was 9 her parents had banned her from contact with me. Three when I was a teenager. All three of whom moved away and forgot to write. I have meet thousands of people in my life time. I’ve tried being friends with all of them, but no one wants to be friends with you when you are like me, and so my army of cats, dogs, roosters, rabbits, fish, goats, horses, squirrels, birds, and parrots steadily grew over the years. Animal rescue became my life. In the past 30 years more than 5,000 animals have made their home with me. I started out “crazy”, and due to the way I was treated, or rather neglected by humans, I grew up to become the infamous Crazy Cat Woman of Maine.
The biggest challenge is my difficulty in talking (speaking verbally, face-to-face) and making eye contact, and my needed to have everything “in order”. I became a writer, due to it being my preferred form of communication, rather than speaking verbally. And I live in an alphabetized and color coordinated life.
Have you ever tried looking up information about Aspergers? After I was told I most likely had it, I wanted to know what it was I supposedly most likely had. I found books at the library and sites on Google, all on the same basic theme:
># help for parents of a child with Asperger’s
># what to look for in an Asperger’s child
># why your Asperger’s child does the things he does
># surviving the trauma of raising a child with Asperger’s
># etc, etc, etc . . .
Everyone tells you what it’s like to raise a kid with Aspergers, but no one ever tells you what it’s like to be the kid with Aspergers or what life is like through their eyes, and what about once they grow up? Yes, children with Asperger’s do eventually grow up and become adults with Aspergers. But here’s the thing, you think it’s hard to be a kid with Asperger’s? Do you have any idea how hard it is to be an adult with Aspergers?
I have Asperger’s, and a lot of people don’t understand what it is, or what it’s like to have it or how hard it is to try to live with people who can’t understand why you do the things you do. Well, that is why I decided to create this lens. I know what it’s like to live with it. I’m not a doctor or a parent giving an outsiders view of what it is. I’m it, in and of itself. You can find out more about how I live my life here: http://www.squidoo.com/EelKat
Speaking Verbally vs The Written Word
Outside of the 7 members of my family, I don’t talk. I started reading when I was three, and was writing shortly after wards. In my younger years I was very talkative around family, but near silent all other times. When I was 14 my best friend was murdered, and I just stopped talking and started writing more than ever. Written word took over and I became known for my 20 – 30 page double sided letters. (Which I wrote to 70+ pen pals from all around the globe, as well as letters of protest to many companies.)
Today, many years later, I still rarely speak a word and than only to immediate family members, but now I’m also known for my extremely long-winded articles which I write online. In my lack of speech, writing took over as my main form of communication (which is why I’m better at communication online, than I am face-to-face with someone: online I can type).
I’ve been told I should go to speech therapy. I’ve never been to speech therapy, probably never will. It’s not that I can’t talk or that I having difficulty talking, I just don’t like talking. Talking feels weird. It feels rude. It feels intrusive. I don’t like it.
Why Can’t You Accept Me As Me?
As an Aspie, I can tell you outright that I really hate it when people start sticking pills at me and telling me if I would take them I’d be normal. You know what? I have no problem with who I am, I do not see any reason why I should change. I am different, yes. I know that, and have never denied it. I just want people to stop telling my to *be normal* or how nice it would be if I would *seek medical help*. I’d just like the whole pack of them to leave me alone . . . I don’t need a bunch of Hitlers in my life telling me how to act, how to talk (which I don’t and that pisses most people off), or anything else. I am not you, why do you expect me to act just like you do? I am not a clone. I am me.
I am normal. Normal is what you were born as. Every one was born to be normal in their own way. Just because what is normal for me, is not normal for you, doesn’t make it wrong or bad, or anything else. It just means that for me, normal is different than it is for you. Besides, when you start being rude and staring at me and trying to get me to stare at you, and rudely talking to me, when I didn’t speak to your first, I look at you and think: “What the hell is wrong with this freak? Didn’t any one ever teach them any manners? ” If you had decent manners you would know it was rude to stare and rude to speak when not spoken to, and yet, here you are trying to make eye contact with me and talking your fool head off. You see, in my mind, it is you being weird and freaky and not acting normal, but do I try to poke pills at you or call you retarded? No. I don’t do those things because I have the moral decency not to be rude.
I esp don’t like people who walk up to you and say: “Why don’t you answer me? What are you retarded?” I really, really, REALLY hate that. To be retarded you require an IQ of 70 or less. The average IQ is 90 – 100. Less than 3% of the population has an IQ above 130. Want to know what my IQ is? I’ll tell you. It’s 138. I’m about as far as you can get from being retarded, so don’t call me retarded just because I don’t talk or make eye contact.
I’ve been asked why I don’t join any groups for people like me. I’m afraid I can’t really comment on those groups because I’m not familiar with any of the autism groups. I’m not a busy body who needs constant gossip (what most people call socialization, I call rude gossiping). The way I see it, that’s all those so-called groups are. A place to gossip and waste time. My time is better spent elsewhere.
Of course, as the years went by, I have learned that I don’t like being around people. I don’t like to get involved in groups and such, because that means being around people and being out in public, both of which means there will be folks pestering me to talk and that’ll lead to teasing, and I really don’t want to deal with rude, cruel mouthed, mean people anymore so I rarely leave the house anymore. I used to try to be around people. I used to want to be around people. But there is just so many times you can call a person retarded, or schizoid, or crazy, before I finally, say: Why did I want to be around people when all people do is hurt me?
People preach kindness and understanding and acceptance, but you’d be surprised how very few actually practice what they preach when they are forced to come face to face with someone like me.
The Obsessions:
Undiagnosed, Aspergers and most other types of Autism are easily mistaken as Obsessive Compulsive Syndrome. Indeed, it does seem that you can not have Autism without also having OCD.
As an adult, one of the most often asked questions I hear is: Do you have OCD?
I obsess. I obsess a lot. I obsess over everything. My obsessions started early.
One of the earliest things a parent notices about any form of Autism, is that the child is obsessed with keeping things in order. As soon as they are old enough to walk, they start lining up all their toys: from biggest to smallest, or alphabetically by name, or in categories by subject, or by rainbow-order color. I did this. I did this a lot.
When I was about 3, I had a set of wooden blocks. I lined them up, from one end of the house to the other, by shape and color. All the rectangle red blocks came first, followed by the red square blocks, followed by the orange triangles, than the orange circular pillars, next the green square pillars, and finally the long blue road blocks.
The fact that I can, 30 years later, not only remember that I did it, but also remember in what order I put them, is another common factor in Autism: a photographic memory and the ability to remember almost anything instantly as soon as I see it, and than never forget it ever again.
At around 5, I took an interest in baby dolls after each other my grandmothers and my mother all bought me a baby doll for my birthday. My three dolls were always set in order: the one with brown curly hair first, her name was Cristine and I would only dress her in blue; the one with long black hair second, her name was Colleen and I only dressed her in yellow, Natalie was last. Natalie was a bald preemie that drank and wet herself, and she was the one that I took with me every where. I always dressed her in white.
By the time I was 8, I had 28 Barbie dolls, all of which sat on the shelf, again, in order by hair color and race. (I was unusual, in the 1970’s in that I was a white child in Maine who wanted black and Hispanic Barbies — racial colored Barbies were extremely rare and very hard to find back than.) Whenever I changed the outfit on one doll, I changed the outfits on all the dolls, so that they would all match. For example if one was wearing a wedding dress, than all the others had to wear brides maids dresses or if one wore a bathing suit, than they all did.
I don’t know when my love of crayons started. I can’t remember a time when I did not always have crayons at my side. I also don’t remember a time when I didn’t dump out my crayons on the floor and line them up from red to indigo. I also do not remember a time when I have gone to a store, and walked past a box of crayons without buying one. It may be one of my worst obsessions and I’m not sure what triggers it, but it is impossible for me to walk by Crayola Crayons in the store and not buy them! The end result is, well, I have a lot of crayons! I’ve spent 30 years buying every crayon I see, and than coming home dumping them all out on the floor, and lining them up. It’s like, I can’t go on with anything else, until I have first found some crayons and put them in order.
I do know when my love of comic books started. I was 3 years old. We were at a local fish shack restaurant place known as The Maine Castle. We were buying haddock boxes, which was a white paper box with a breaded haddock fillets, a sour pickle, and fries. Basically it was fish and chips, with a different name. The restaurant was run by a Greek guy whom everyone called Lefty. On the counter next to the cash register, he had a big stack of comic books.
It was our tradition, to go to the Maine Castle every weekend, than to Ray’s Lunch Van (now known as Rapid Rays Diner after he made enough money to buy the block and build a diner in the spot where he parked his van). Than, with The Goldeneagle full of food, we picked a star, any star, and followed it. Sometimes we ended up in New Hampshire! This was a ritual which my parents did right up until the day The Goldeneagle died, for some reason, star chasing in any other car just wasn’t the same.
I loved being in the car, however, for me, to sit and do nothing, for hours on end, was impossible. I had to have something to do on these weekly road trips and that something happened one night at the Maine Castle, when I saw a comic book sitting on the counter, which would forever change my life. There on the counter was a bright pink comic book (pink was always a big attraction for me), on it was a duck wearing a top hat (I’m obsessed with top hats, can’t pass one up, collect them wear them, obsess over anyone who wears one), and fighting a big green dragon (I love dragons). I was mesmerized. I sat there reading the book about this crazy old duck off looking for treasure and fighting dragons, and was so instantly hooked. When we left that night with our haddock boxes, Lefty handed me the book and told me I could have it.
Today, 30 years later, I now own one of the world’s largest and most complete collections of Uncle Scrooge comic books, have gotten the autographs of Don Rosa and Alan Young, and am known by the locals, as “that crazy girl in the red frock coat and top hat.” Yep, my Uncle Scrooge obsession went over big time, and I have nearly every comic book ever made which ever featured the crazy old duck even just for a single panel! I not only collect the English comic either. I have a near complete collect of every French edition of Uncle Scrooge ever made, as well as most of the German editions and several Italian, Danish, and Australian editions too. All together: 7,000+ issues, all bagged, boarded, indexed, and in order by publication date. I also have a card catalog to file them by. That’s how big, an obsession caused by Asperger’s Syndrome can get.
It’s not just my things either. If I’m at someone elses house and they have a box of crayons, I have to dump them out and line them up. If they have a bookshelf and their books are not alphabetized, I can not do anything else until I removed every book off their shelf ad put them in order. If they have a bowl of candy sitting on the table, I have to line them up in order by flavor, brand name, or color. This bothers people, the fact that I do this, and results in very few people allowing me to set foot in their home.
I’m a person that has to have organization and order. I learned the Dewey Decimal System, just so I could properly catalog my private book collection (of 10,000+ books not including the 7,000+ comic books already mentioned). I buy the Crayola Big Box with 120 crayons and the first thing I do is dump it out and put all the crayons in rainbow order from dark red to light red to light orange to dark orange to dark yellow to light yellow and all the way down the line. I do this with my paints, colored pencils, pastels, and even my clothes. I not only know their order visually, but I have all the names of all 120 colors of the crayons memorized and put them in order that way too.
As an adult, I live a very “organized” life. I alphabetize everything or order everything in rainbow-color order, and I have to have everything in it’s place and a place for everything. I always loved crayons, and today am a professional artist, but I still have to have all of my crayons lined up and in order before I can start any drawing.
What bothers me most is that people are always trying to change me and make me do things their way because they think their way is “normal” and that I’m just a freak.
But why? Why do I do this?
you can find out just how far my obsessions can go here: http://www.squidoo.com/LordSesshomaruCostume and here: http://www.squidoo.com/LordSesshomaruCostumeCosts
You see and hear things I can’t see and hear, therefor you are crazy and have Schizophrenia
Since I was 4 years old, I have routinely been accused of seeing and hearing things that no one but myself could see or hear. By the time I was 14, I was being accused of being schizophrenic, however, 3 different doctors said that I was not schizophrenic. In spite of these doctors telling my accusers (namely the bishop of the LDS Cape Elizabeth Ward in the mid 1990’s, thankfully since relieved of his duties as bishop) that I did not have schizophrenia, the bullying got worse and escalated into the bishop demanding that members shun me for witchcraft and poltergeist activities (and he call ME crazy?!?).
Over the years there have been many views and theories regarding what it I actually see and hear when I see and talk with Etiole. The theories range from mild: people saying I have an over active imagination or suffer from fantasy prone personality disorder; to outright insane: that I talk to demons, have a pet poltergeist, and require an exorcism done on me! In the middle range are theories saying that I talk to faeries, have had contact with aliens, or have a rare ability called “second sight” which allows me to see into the spirit realm.
While the debates over who and what Etiole is, and how or why I can see and hear him while (most) others can not (there have been others who’ve said they saw him as well.), is certainly the most often discussed topic regarding the things I see and hear that others do not see and hear, Etiole is not the only thing I see that others do not see.
Okay, before I go any farther, some of what I say, may sound a bit odd if you don’t first know this, so, I should point out one thing: I’m a Mormon. I’m a very strict Mormon. I am called by other Mormons “a fanatic”, “a Jesus Freak”, “a Super Christian”, “an Amish Mormon”, and the not often heard term “an Orthodox LDS Saint”. I live the church laws the way they were written in the 1830’s. I follow the rules to the letter. I do not interpret, translate, or avoid parts of scripture that are “inconvenient”. I take the words of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrines & Covenants at their face value. This, it seems, bothers people, esp the other Mormons who find the strict and rigorous laws of the gospel to be too strict and therefor find reason to interpret the scriptures into “what God REALLY meant to say”. Now that you have been made aware of this fact, some of what follows, should make more sense to you, I hope.
Okay, back to what I was saying: Etiole is not the only thing I see that other people do not see as well. Colors are another thing I see. I’m attracted to esp bright colors, and when I see a color I do not just see a color.
For example, when you see red and think, that’s red, I see red and think: love, lust, passion, fire, or hate depending on the shade of red. To me colors and emotions are interchangeable and every color has a very significant meaning.
All of my life I have seen these “colors” and pointed them out to people, usually my parents, a relative, or a Sunday School teacher, and would say something like: “Look at that black man, how can any one be so evil?” or “That woman is awful green. Why do people get so jealous?” or “Why is that guy so blue?” The adults would look around for a man with black skin, or a woman wearing a green dress, and none would be seen.
I was not aware that others did not see these colors until I was in my late teens, when one Sunday School teacher asked me to explain what I meant when I had said one of the guest speakers in Sacrament meeting “was blessed”. I said: “Only people who are blessed are pale blue like that. That’s the first time I’ve ever actually seen any one that color. It’s very rare.” My teacher was puzzled, because he couldn’t understand how it was that the man was pale blue, and I explained that “his color” was pale blue. My teacher asked, “What color, he was wearing a black suit?” And I suddenly realized that my teacher could not see “the color”, so I explained that every person had a color hovering all around them and that it changed with their moods and emotions and that you could tell when people were happy or sad based on what color their color was.
My dumbfounded teacher asked me how long I had been seeing these colors and I explained that I had always seen them, and asked what was wrong with him that caused him to not see them. He than explained to me, that, no one saw these “colors” I was describing and what I was describing was what some people call an “aura”, but that he’d never heard of any one who could actually see them.
After talking with him, I asked a few other people in church about this, and was stunned to find that NO ONE saw these “colors” I was seeing. This puzzled me, because I had assumed every one saw them too. However, it occurred to me than, that my seeing colors that no one else could see, was the reason for the event which had happened in the temple in 1978.
Like all “good Mormons” my family went to the Temple. It was what Good Mormons were expected to do. However, on this particular day, I was being lead by a temple worker into the sealing room, where a wedding was being held, and I suddenly froze. Nearly every one in the room, was black, and not a normal black like I had seen before, but a weird swirling coal black smoke-like cloud which was growing bigger and bigger and swirling up to the gold painted ceiling. I had never seen anything like it before, nor had I ever been so over whelmed with a feeling that not the people in it, but the room itself was evil, very evil, very, very, very evil, as though Satan himself was standing there in the room. I turned around and ran screaming through the temple with a line of temple workers running after me. I was 4 years old and it took 5 full grown men to over take me and forcibly carry the screaming and kicking and biting and clawing and scratching, freaked out and never more terrified in my entire life, me back to that room.
While I have seen others since than that has a black color around them, I has never before or since, seen anything like that monstrous black cloud that was swirling around those people that day.
This event however, was witnessed by all of our closest friends and family, and from that day forth, I was labeled as “the crazy girl who ran from the temple”. This was a label that stayed with me, and which I was bullied and teased about until my mid-teens, when “the crazy girl who ran from the temple” was replaced with the word “schizophrenic” instead.
Because of this inncidant, I have never since been allowed to get another temple recommend and basically, I am banned for life, by the church, from ever again going to the temple.
(Joseph Smith btw, saw and talked with angels, spirits, dead people, Jesus, and God himself or regular occasions, so if I’m crazy for seeing a few, than he’s a whole lot crazier than me, because he saw dozens!)
more info about things seen but “not seen” by me . . . 238k words about the Faerie Etiole can be found here: http://www.squidoo.com/Amphibious-Aliens and his ship here: http://www.squidoo.com/VISION-D8
You look like you just walked out of a history book . . . why do you dress like that?
All of my life I have had a close affinity with colors. My cloths in their day-glow, bright, neon, and popping colors, are the first thing people notice about me, and are always the start of every conversation any one has with me. In my past 34 years of life, nearly every conversation has started with: “Why are you dressed like that?” or some variation of it. I have no explanation for why I wear the things I do. I started dressing like this at about 12 years old when I learned how to sew my own cloths and have dressed like this ever since.
Before the fire of 2006, my contact with humans was limited to seeing people in church on Sunday. So before 2006, I had no idea, that from Monday to Saturday women do not wear long flowing bright colored dresses. I had never seen a woman dress any differently that in “Sunday Dress” before. This revelation, shocked me. When I try to explain this to people asking about my cloths they respond to say: “But didn’t you see people on TV?” uhm . . . no . . . for many years we did not have a TV. We did have a VCR to watch movies, but, when you consider the movies I watched: Labyrinth, 1776, Scrooge, Fiddler on the Roof. My Fair Lady, Sherlock Holmes, Pirates of the Caribbean, Oliver . . . you’ll understand how I was completely unaware of the fact that hoop skirts, trains, and huge long gowns are not what people wear anymore. You see, I thought people DID dress just like they did on movies like My Fair Lady, and was no fully aware of the fact that people stopped dressing like I do, some 250 years ago.
I love history, but I’m afraid I’ve never studied anything beyond the time Napoleon and Hitler. I started out with ancient history and move upward through the thousands of years, but when I got to Napoleons evil acts followed by Hitler’s worse acts, I decided that I dislike modern history and did not study any part of history any newer than Hitler. So, while I have a very good knowledge of what people wore from centuries BC until the 1930’s, I had no real idea of what people wore after the 1930’s and was not aware of the drastic change that had occurred.
For the past 30 years, I have worn the huge skirts, the long gowns, the hooded capes, the monk-like habits, the kimonos, because that is what people in the history books wore and the history book were my only contact with people. Like I said, before 2006, I only left the farm to go to church and I wasn’t aware of the fact that people wore very different cloths to church from what they wear the rest of the week. I just thought all women wore dresses and all men wore suits.
I think it is safe to say that I am suffering from extreme culture shock at learning that people dress very different;y from me, because I wasn’t aware that I was dressing any different than any one else, until I was suddenly forced to live in contact with humans after the fire of 2006.
More about the vandalism, harasment and how I became homeless can be found here: http://www.squidoo.com/OnBeingHomeless2
Law & Order
As I said back up farther, I live by the laws of the church to the letter, in the strictest of fashions. This puzzles people (keeping in mind here, that the only people I know personally are themselves Mormons.) There have been several occasions (usually missionaries) when I have been asked:
Why don’t you put on a bathing suit and go swimming with the rest of the church?
Why don’t you eat meat?
Why don’t you get a job?
Why do you always wear floor length dresses?
Why don’t you wear make up?
Why don’t you have any piercings?
Why don’t you cut your hair?
Why don’t you own any credit cards?
Life would be much easier for you if you had some money, why don’t you take out a loan?
Why? Because every one of those things are things the church teaches you NOT to do. I am increasingly amazed at the fact that these people, these so-called members, who see absolutely nothing wrong with doing those things.
And if I had a penny for every time a member used the phrase: “But it’s only a little white lie . . . ” I’d be a millionaire now.
So, what does this have to do with Asperger’s? Well, I used to think all of these people were a bunch of no-good, evil rotten, immoral hypocrites who had only joined the church because it was the “thing to do” and they just joined to be hip, rather than because they actually wanted to obey God’s laws. (Actually, I still think that about quite a few of them, but that’s besides the point) However, since finding out I had Asperger’s, I discovered something which I found very odd and possibly the most puzzling thing of all: it’s human nature to want to disobey the law and only people who have Asperger’s see anything wrong with bending rules, finding loop holes, and telling little white lies! OMG!
You mean I’m a freak because I WANT to obey the laws and rules! This realization just about blew me away. It never would have occurred to me, that it was natural for people to not want obey rules. It never occurred to me that strict obedience of rules, regulations, laws, and ordnances was so rare, that it could be considered a symptom of a mental disorder. All these years, I thought people had something wrong with them because they were disobeying laws of the land and laws of God, and now I find out, that it’s me who has something wrong because I DON’T disobey them!
Well, all I can say is I’m completely flabbergasted and have no idea what to say about this. The very idea of willingly being disobedient to anything is just too much for me to comprehend and I don’t know how to deal with people who think it’s okay and completely natural to be disobedient.
More info on no meat, no violence, no guns, anti animal testing, anti war, and how I came to think that way . . . http://www.squidoo.com/No-Meat and the story behind how the Proctor and Gamble Boycott got started by an autistic girl (me): http://www.squidoo.com/Voice-of-the-Voiceless
Excuse me . . . I’m sorry, but I’ve been talking to you for a half hour now and you haven’t heard a word I said . . .
This is a frustrating thing and unfortunately, it happens often. I well be sitting usually writing, sometimes drawing, other times embroidering (the three things I do more than anything else), when suddenly I look up and see some one standing over me, and asking why I haven’t answered them yet. Me? I’m sitting there confused as hell, wondering what it is I am supposed to be answering and how they got there without me noticing them.
I don’t talk, I write. I write a lot. I am often told people like my writing style, because it is unique, and I am often asked, if I could explain or teach them how I write so that they can learn my methods and write like I do. The problem comes when I try to explain what happens to me when I start writing. I guess, if you want to learn to write like me, than you’d have to learn to mimic one the the more outlandish symptoms of Asperger’s: blocking out everything around you and seeing and hearing nothing.
Nothing. Period.
I can’t teach my writing method, because it’s not really teachable, all I can do, is try to explain it.
The biggest problem with my writing style, is the fact that I simply sit down and start writing. Literally. No matter where I am, or what I am doing, I simply sit down and start writing. This is such a huge problem, that you almost never see me go out in public unaccompanied by another adult. This is also why I do not live alone, why I do not drive a car, and why I can not hold a *regular* day job. I sit down where ever I am, when ever the mood strikes and just start writing. If you ever see a comic book character sitting cross legged on the floor in the middle of the milk aisle at Wal-Mart, writing away, well, that’s me.
I actually can not walk in places where I will have to cross the street or a parking lot, unless I have some one with me to guide me across the road, because I frequently, just stop to write right there in the cross walk. It’s a problem I have, and a really bad one that has caused me to be nearly hit by a car on countless occasions, because my mind no longer see things around me.
I once sat down and started writing, and didn’t stop for 48 hours . . . Did not eat, did not sleep, I completely lost track of time. I was totally taken by surprise when I realized the 2 whole calendar days had passed before I noticed it, because to me, it seemed like no more than 20 minutes had passed. The odd thing about this, though, is I only started doing this less than ten years ago, and this seemed to have happened shortly after a month with 4 deaths: first my horse, than my grandmother, than my dog Blackie, and than my other dog Muffin. All four of them died with in 3 weeks of each other. Stress, seems to be the triggering factor that shuts off my brain and causes me to not see or hear anything or any one around me and makes me simply start writing in an uncontrolled and unstoppable manner.
This *shutting off* and writing is the same reason why I rarely speak to people, because fact is, I rarely see them. I see the streets, I see the buildings, if there is a car made prior to 1975, I see that car and that car only and not the other cars speeding by. They simply become totally invisible to me. When I mentioned this to some one last year, they had an explanation which I had never heard of before, but quickly Googled and found out more about: she called it “second sight”.
She said that this “second sight” could explain both my seeing and talking with Etiole, as well, as my odd inability to see and hear people around me at certain times. She explained that “second sight” believers claim there are two worlds: the physical world and the spiritual world and that the co-exist one on top of the other, constantly intermingled, but that neither world is aware of the existence of the other, except on rare occasions when “sightings” (ghosts, faeries, aliens, angels, or demons) occur. She also said that there is a high frequency of Autistic people being able to see through the barrier between the two worlds and see beings from the spirit world. She said that people who can see and otherwise interact with the normally invisible spirit world, are said to have the gift of “second sight” and she believed that this was what was happening when I see Etiole and when I seem to no longer be able to see or here people around me.
Well. Okay. Whatever. I actually haven’t been able to find much info on this “second sight” thing, so I don’t know if I should believe in “second sight” yet or not, but, it did make sense and sound like a plausible answer.
I do talk to people if I notice they are there. The trick is to get me to notice that you are there. Like I said, it’s like watching TV, and I have to switch from one channel to the other in order to notice you there. If I shut off the world in my head, I can see people around me and talk to them fine, the problem is, switching my mind out of the world I write about and into the real world where people around me live. It’s not easy. I know when I stopped talking. I can tell you the exact date: August 21, 1991, the day my best friend was murdered. I know when I started turning off the real world too: after the things that happened at church with the bishop and Pine Land Center. The real world simply became more than I was able to handle on my own and I had no friends or family to turn to.
This also explains my cloths. You see, I dress no different than the characters of my books, and to me this is perfectly normal, as it is the way all of them dress. I don’t notice that real people are dressed different than me, because I don’t very often see the real people around me, and it is not until some one comes up to me and asks me why I’m dressed like I am, that I am brought back from one world to the next, and see that, yes, in this world, I am dressed quite a bit different from other people. But you see, there is another part of the problem: the people I write about are the people Etiole knows. His family, his friends, his enemies. When people ask me where I come up with my ideas, I can’t give them an answer they will believe. I can’t tell them that I am writing down things that Etiole has told me about his world. I can’t tell them that Etiole is not a fictional character from my books. I can’t tell them, that I don’t come up with these ideas, that it is Etiole who comes up with them, and that Etiole is a very real creature who lives along side us, even though very few humans have ever seen him. I use to tell people these things, back in the 1980’s, but no one ever believed me when I told them, so I stopped telling them, and simply, stopped answering them at all.
Of course, my cloths, started when I was just 4 years old, and I was wearing my Wonder Woman underoos under my Cinderella dresses . . . I always did dress like a comic book hero gone princess. No one paid any attention to it though, until after I was about 22 years old, and people started questioning why I didn’t wear *normal* cloths, but the fact is, for me they are normal, because I have never worn any thing else.
Does having a mental illness effect my writing? Most certainly. It effects every thing in my life. But than again, as I have never been diagnosed as having a mental illness, there in lays the question: why do people think I have a mental illness? (Autism is a birth defect not an illness.)
As you can see when people say they think I have schizophrenia, or Aspengers, they are not saying so in jest, to be funny. They are very serious, and often very frightened of me when they say it. In nearly 40 years, I have yet to have a friendship last more than 6 months, because most people, once they get to know me, are completely terrified of me. At first they meet me and think I’m in costume and acting in character, and they think of it as some sort of role playing game, but once it dawns on them, that this is no act, this is no game, that my mind is what my mind is, and that I am like this 24-7-365, I never hear from them again. If I do hear from them again, it is only to ask if I have considered medication to make me *normal* yet. My question is, Why would I want to be *normal*? What incentive is there? None that I can see.
Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?
Not a question asked to me, but a question I ask in response to people demanding I look at them when they talk.
Eye contact. Why do I need to be looking at you to hear what you are saying? I hear with my ears not my eyes. Why do I need to look at you to talk to you? I talk with my mouth not my eyes.
My lack of eye contact, my inability to speak around strangers, and my cloths, resulted in leading to my finding out I had Asperger’s, when in 2005 I was summoned into court as a witness to some case which I had no idea why they were saying I was a witness too. I’ll recap:
A year before the fire or the flood which left my homeless, a man walked up to me, handed me a paper, told me I had been served and I had to show up in court to testify. I found this to be very confusing and puzzling because I didn’t know anything about this so call case that I was supposedly a witness too. I tried to explain this to the man, but I’m not good with verbal explanations. He told me that it didn’t matter wither I thought I was a witness or not, it was a court order and if I didn’t show up at court later that week, I would go to jail.
Very puzzled, and very reluctant, I went to court on the date in question and found it to be one of the most nerve wracking frustrating days of my entire life. First off I had to be searched by a guard, who took my tote bag and dumped it out. (I carry my writing paper, my art supplies, and comic books with me every where . . . it’s a really big tote bag. Next I was questioned about my cloths; this being one of my very first confrontations with the world outside of church, I was completely lost as to understand why I was being asked about my cloths. What was wrong with the way I was dressed?
My things were stuffed untidily and messed up back into my tote bag and I was told to sit on the right side of the court room. I sat in the very last pew and spent about an hour, resorting my crayons, comics and papers back into their proper order. I was interrupted while doing this, by my name being yelled out. Apparently the judge had called my name several times, but I had not heard her because I was busy fixing the mess the guard had made of my writing materials. I stood up, but had no idea what to do next. She called my name several more times, before finally telling me that I was supposed to come up front and sit in a chair in front of all of those people.
Up front, I was asked to repeat a bunch of words, but now came my first really big problem . . . I was being asked to open my mouth and speak, something I had not done in years, and I was being asked to do it in a room filled with 40 or 50 people. This was not my first time in court. When I was 14 I was the only living witness to the murder trail of my 5 friends killed on August 21, 1991. It was court that had stopped me talking before. I spent day after day after day of interigation, back at my friend’s murder trail. When the murder trail ended, I went home and was never able to speak to a stranger again. Now, here I was again 14 years later in court. The judge asked me again and again to repeat the words of the police officer who was standing in front of me. I did. I tried, I said the words, again and again, but though my mouth moved not a sound came from my lips. It was like me throat was strangling them and refusing to let the words escape. The judge finally accepted a nod of yes and told me to sit down.
Than came the questions from the 2 men sitting at the tables in front of the judge. They had to ask and re-ask their questions several times, but I could not hear their words, all I could do was stare out at all of those faces, rows and rows of them sitting in the seats below. I think I answered some of their questions because the judge kept telling me I had to speak loud enough for the tape recorder to hear me, and finally she said she had had “enough of this circus”. She than turned to me and told me to look at her. I looked at her hands. She repeatly demanded I look at her. Than she started yelling and saying that I was a grown woman acting like a child, she started yelling at me about my inappropriate cloths, my refusal to answer questions, my refusal to comply with orders, and my arrogance at not making eye contact. My cloths again. What was wrong with my cloths? She dismissed me as a witness, but told me not to leave the court, but to go wait at the front window.
While I was sitting on the bench waiting, several men and women, I assume to be lawyers based on the fact that they were wearing suits and carrying brief cases and were in a court house, stopped to talk to me about my cloths. Most asked if I had been on my way to a party or a Ren faire when I had come to court. A few elderly women hobbled over to me and started talking about how nice it was to see people dressing up again like when they were young. Someone asked if I was a “dead head”. Dozens of people walked past me ever few minutes going in or out of one of the three court rooms, and nearly every one of them, made a point to stop and ask me about my cloths. With each question, I was growing ever more puzzled about this obsession every one seemed to have with walking up to me and talking about my cloths.
About three hours later the woman at the front window called my name and handed me a paper. It was a court order to see a psychologist, with a slip of paper saying that the State of Maine was going to pay for one 3 hour appointment. As I turned to leave, the woman commented that she liked my costume.
I was wearing a Josephine Empire gown of wedge wood blue, with a 3 foot long train. Over which I wore a 7 yard blue velvet burnoose (a type of hooded cape).
A few weeks later at the psychologist’s office, I was greeted with: “So you are Wendy. Why are you dressed like that?”. (I was wearing a full kimono — many layers of kimono). He told me he had been reading my case (What case? I have a case? Since when?) sent to him by the judge. He commented several more times about my cloths. Asked if he could see the contents of my tote bag, and than spent the rest of the time asking me about my drawings and writings and how I lived my life. During the course of the meeting he commented several times on my “bizarre accent” and use of old style language, which he said was seen only in rare cases of twins left to be raised by themselves. He called it “twin-language”. He said he had read cases of it, but that he had never witnessed it himself before. By the end of the meeting he had become very excited and was acting like he had just discovered the Lost City of Eldorado or something.
He ended by writing up a paper which he said was a request to the State for funding to do a research study on me, saying that I was an “anomaly” which he could not properly diagnose, because I was displaying so many symptoms of so many disorders.
I left his office that day very confused, and for the first time in my life, noticing what people around me were wearing and noticing that it was very different from what I was wearing. I was also, now realizing for the first time, that people look into your eyes when they talk to each other. I was also realizing that people on the street around his office seemed to be doing a lot of standing around (wasting their time) and talking to each other. It has only been 4 years since that meeting, and I still am having a very hard time processing the fact that people talk a lot, people look at each other a lot, and people . . . well, you people just plain dress really weird as far as I can see.
I have not again heard back from the psychologist, however, both my mother and my father have gotten letters from him, and each of them, and my mom’s current husband, and my three brothers were called in to be “evaluated” by him to see if the whole family was like me, or if I was the only one in the family who was like this. I don’t know who else he contacted, but I suspect he was the one who sent the social worker to “the tent” a year later, after the flood and the fire left me homeless and living under a tarp.
All this, because I wouldn’t look a judge in the eye? I remain confused over why the judge responded the way she did to me, and I remain equally confused as to why the psychologist responded the way he did to me. It was my first real contact with any one outside of the Mormon church and I found it very strange. But, as a result of the judge and the psychologist, I also found out that outside of the Mormon church, people do not believe in demon possession, and unlike the Mormon leaders who always said I acted the way I did because I was possessed by a demon, an evil spirit, or a poltergeist, I had now learned from the psychologist that what they had called evil spirits was really some sort of birth defect in my brain, which causes me to see the world on a different brain wave pattern than every one else, resulting in me acting, dressing, and otherwise responding differently to things than does every one else. Well, I must say his medial diagnosis certainly made much more logical sense to me than the religious leaders’ accusation of demon possession.
And now that I know the church leaders were wrong when they called me demon possessed, I no longer feel quite so much like an outcast, unloved, and alone. I’ve since looked into this whole Asperger’s thing, and I must say, it’s kind of a sigh of relief, because now I know what is “wrong” with me, and now, I can figure out how to work my life around it.
Asperger’s vs Sports and Perception
One of the things I discovered was a symptom as Asperger’s quite surprised me. An inability to play sports due to clumsiness and lack of coordination and no depth perception. Interesting. It often surprises people that I hate sports. Not, I don’t like sports, not I don’t watch sports, not I don’t play sports, but I absolutely hate, loath and despise sports with a vengeance. My extreme animosity towards sports takes most people by surprise and has resulted in a lot of teasing, which in turn has only deepened my hatred for them. There is a reason behind my hatred of sports, and it started very early.
I went to public school for three years, from the age of 5 till the age of 8. I played sports in school, because it was required for gym. Initially I loved sports. I jumped in on the whole thing with great enthusiasm. The enthusiasm was quickly shattered. Basketball and baseball were the two sports we had to play every week. At first I liked basketball. At first we played singly not as a team. On my own I was okay. However, being an only child (my 3 brothers were not born until after I was an adult) I had no practice in physical contact with any one, thus no practice being on a team. This proved a glaring problem once we were grouped into teams, and sent to play basketball together. The problem was every one was bumping into each other. It was the first time I remember being touched by a human and it was also one of the ONLY times in my entire life when a person has gotten close enough to me to touch me at all.
During that game of basketball, someone bumped into me, resulting in me screaming bloody murder out of the gym and down the school hall, to hide in the girl’s room. The physical sensation of having the soft flesh of another human being in contact with me was a harrowing and sickly experience, that sent pain rushing through every fiber of my body. The kid had really only brush against my arm, but it felt like he had dropped a truck on me. This was the first time another strange thing occurred: my entire arm turned black and blue as though I’d been beaten. These odd bruises on my arms and legs (usually over 8 inches in diameter) so up every time a person touches me, even if just to hug me. My extremely sensitivity to touch has stayed with me my entire life, and resulted in today, my not letting any one get within two feet of me at all.
This sensitivity to touch was not my only trouble with sports however. We tried baseball a few weeks later. Though I tried several times throughout the school year, I never once hit the ball, and when it came time for me to trow it, it always went completely the wrong way, too far, or not far enough. By the end of the year (and many various failed attempts at sports later) it was concluded by the coach that I had a complete lack of physical coordination, was unable to aim at anything no matter how hard I tried, and apparently had no ability of depth perception at all. For the rest of my four short years in school, I sat on the benches reading while every one else played sports.
Asperger’s Syndrome = I’m an Artist & Author Too!
I got several books out from the library about AS. Unfortunately they are all just a bunch of speculation and observations written by doctors and parents who ask more questions than they answer.
One of the things I read most often is parents noting that their AS child is attracted to crayons, colors, and drawing. So much so that when they pick up a crayon and start drawing, they completely shut out the entire world, unable to see or hear anything that is going on around them. I can testify to the fact that this is true. I can not explain it, but drawing is a must. It’s like eating or sleeping or breathing – I can’t survive without it.
Aspies tend to grow up to be very quiet, but very creative adults. Many of the world’s greatest scientists had AS. Many of the world’s greatest painters had AS. Several famous authors and novelists have AS. These are the three careers most commonly chosen by Aspies. Oddly, two of those three are what I did become: an artist and a writer.
Why do Aspies become scientists, artists, and writers? I’m not sure if there is a reason, but I can tell you my personal theory on the matter. Aspies don’t do well in jobs requiring a lot of contact with people, nor do they do well in places filled with loud noises. High traffic, lots of moving objects, phones ringing, lights flashing, people talking . . . all of these things are like stabbing an Aspie’s brain with thousands of pins and needles. Noise is frustrating. Noise hurts. Noise makes me want to take a book and throw it at whatever or whoever is making the god awful offended noise. (Throwing things “for no reason” is another thing we Aspies do a lot, only we DO have a reason: NOISE HURTS! It causes sering headaches and make my ears ring and is no different than had you just hit me in the head with a hammer. I am often accused of being “overly sensitive”, well, maybe I am, but even soft noises sound like cannons blasting through my ears and I can’t take the pain it causes, so I avoid noise, things that make noise, and places where loud noise is, at all costs.
Well, for me at least, art, writing, researching, and building things are all huge attractions because I can go off by myself, in the garden or at the library or on the beach, some place relaxing and quiet, and I can read and write and draw and study without having to worry about loud noises or sudden movements or people bombarding me with questions. Being an artist, writer, or scientist are “safe” jobs because you can focus on your work without worrying about some loud noise hurting your ears.
Not being able to work around people, means I work at home. I am an artist, an author, and a fashion designer. This article looks at how Asperger’s Syndrome affects my creating art: http://www.squidoo.com/How-To-Create-Beautiful-Art-For-Greeting-Cards-and-T-Shirts
Understanding what is really going on inside the child’s head.
After searching countless forums and sites and library books, I have come to one conclusion, and that is, that the most asked question about AS is: “What is really going on inside that child’s head?”This question, actually bothers me. Why? Well, how rude would it be if I walked up to you and demanded to know what was going on inside YOUR head? See? Doesn’t sound so innocent when it’s asked to a “normal” person does it. It’s like a white person looking at a black person and saying: “Your skin is a different color than mine, so what goes on inside your head?” Can you see how utterly offensive this question would be if it was ask to anyone OTHER than an Aspie? And yet no one seems to see any problem with asking it, and not to the Aspie, mind you, but rather to so-called experts who “claim” to know what’s going on inside the Aspie’s head, because they studied Aspies! Why doesn’t any one actually ask some one who has AS what’s going on inside their head? Why ask people who DO NOT have it? How could some one without AS actually KNOW what is going on inside the head of anyone other than themselves?
Let me ask it this way: How long have you been married? Five years? Ten years? Twenty? You must know you spouse really well them right? Okay, so what are they thinking about right now? What’s going on inside their head? You are such an expert on your spouse, so tell me, what are they thinking? You can’t tell me. And you know why you can’t tell me? Because you are NOT your spouse! You have no way of going inside their head and seeing what it is that goes on in there. So how do these doctors get off claiming to know what goes on inside the head of ANYONE, Aspie or otherwise?
End rant.
Okay, so what does go on inside an Aspie’s head than? I don’t know, what goes on inside your head? I think the problem here is that we are dealing with a very vague question. What goes on inside my head? Well, right now, I’m thinking about how my Ranchus have doubled in size in less than two months and with soon need a bigger tank, and wondering why they eat their eggs within a few hours after they lay them. I’m also wondering why evil men exist in this would and why they think they can get away with crimes and why the government allows them to get away with crimes if they are a priest.
I’m wishing it wasn’t raining right now, because my house (a tarp over a woodpile) is not entirely waterproof after three years, and I’m also looking at these blueprints I drew up yesterday and wondering how I can fix the “tent” and how much longer it’ll have to be my home. Which brings me to thinking about why I live under a tarp, and wondering why people thought it was okay to burn my house down because they didn’t think that someone like me had any feelings to be hurt and thus wouldn’t care that they destroyed my home and caused me to be homeless. Which lead me to thinking about how “normal” people treat people like me who have Asperger’s and resulted in me building this lens about AS.
I’m also thinking that I am hungry, and that I’ll probably cook some pasta and pickles after I get done writing this lens, but first I have to feed my 13 cats (whoops, 16, as of yesterday, 3 new strays showed up in the tent last night!). I’m disappointed that it is raining, because the roosters don’t get to go outside when it’s raining, and they love to help me tend the garden, they esp love digging up weeds, eating grubs, and eating the new shoots off of my long stem roses. On days like today when it is raining, all they cal do is wait in the barn for the rain to stop.
I’m missing my dog Buddy, who was my best friend for 13 years, but who just recently died, and I’m shocked that shelter dogs start at $495 and go into the thousands! I’m very upset that I can not find a way to come up with enough money to pay the shelter $495 for a buff Cocker Spaniel in Biddeford, who was taken away from her family because she attacked the baby. I got my Buddy 13 years ago, because he was a buff Cocker Spaniel who bit a baby. Buddy was different from other dogs, he was temperamental, nervous, skittish, and had a deep set fear of humans, thus he attacked every one that got near him, until the day he was handed to me with the words “Take him, no one can do anything with him, and you have a way with animals, I know you’ll be able to handle him.” Buddy, was like a dog version of me. Outcast, unloved, unwanted, misunderstood . . . all he needed was someone who understood him and was willing to put up with the fact that he just wasn’t your normal average dog. And now this other dog has been in the paper and on web sites, the shelter is desperate to find her a home, but no one wants her because she is different from other dogs. It’s like my Buddy all over again, and I’d take her in a second, but the shelter wants $495 dollars for her, and I just don’t have it.
I’m also wondering what my brothers look like today, because they told me on FaceBook that they got haircuts last night, and since the fire 3 years ago, we don’t live together any more, they live two towns away and I only get to see them a couple of times a week now, which makes me very sad and lonely because I have never lived by myself before and these past three years have been really hard, because I live alone now, and I’m not used to that. I’ve always had my family with me before.
Well, that’s what’s going on in my head right now. Is it any different from the things that go on in your head?
ever woundered what the world looks like through the eyes of autism? find out how I look at the world and how I judge what I read online here: http://www.squidoo.com/Faerie-Squid-Mother
Did you know these people had/have Asperger’s/Autism too?
I’ve been called crazy, stupid, retarded, schizoid, worthless, and other “choice” words due to my so-called “disability”. But you know what? I’m in pretty good company- artists, actors, writers, composers, presidents, scientists (and a few pretty evil companions too — namely Hitler!) . . . even — *shock* the current USA President Obama! Having Asperger’s makes me different, but it doesn’t make me crazy, stupid, or retarded. So before you point to an Aspie and call him/her retarded, make sure you feel comfortable calling these people retarded too, because they all have Asperger’s too!
># Isaac Asimov, 1920-1992, Russian/US writer on science and of science fiction, author of Bicentennial Man
># Hans Asperger, 1906-1980, Austrian paediatric doctor after whom Asperger’s Syndrom is named
># John Denver, 1943-1997, US musician
># Glenn Gould, 1932-1982, Canadian pianist
># Jim Henson, 1936-1990, creator of the Muppets, US puppeteer, writer, producer, director, composer
># Alfred Hitchcock, 1899-1980, English/American film director
># Howard Hughes, 1905-1976, US billionaire
># Andy Kaufman, 1949-1984, US comedian, subject of the film Man on the Moon
># L S Lowry, 1887-1976, English painter of “matchstick men”
># Charles Schulz, 1922-2000, US cartoonist and creator of Peanuts and Charlie Brown
># Andy Warhol, 1928-1987, US artist
># Woody Allen, 1935-, US comedian, actor, writer, director, producer, jazz clarinettist
># Tony Benn, 1925-, English Labour politician
># Bob Dylan, 1941-, US singer-songwriter
># Joseph Erber, 1985-, young English composer/musician who has Asperger’s Syndrome, subject of a BBC TV documentary
># Bobby Fischer, 1943-, US chess champion
># Bill Gates, 1955-, US global monopolist
># Genie, 1957-?, US “wild child” (see also L’Enfant Sauvage, Victor, )
># Crispin Glover, 1964-, US actor
># Al Gore, 1948-, former US Vice President and presidential candidate
># Jeff Greenfield, 1943-, US political analyst/speechwriter, a political wonk
># David Helfgott, 1947-, Australian pianist, subject of the film Shine
># Michael Jackson, 1958-, US singer
># Garrison Keillor, 1942-, US writer, humorist and host of Prairie Home Companion
># Paul Kostabi 1962-, writer, comedian, artist, producer, technician
># Kevin Mitnick, 1963-, US “hacker”
># John Motson, 1945-, English sports commentator
># John Nash, 1928-, US mathematician (portrayed by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, USA 2001)
># Barrack Hussein Obama, 1961-, President of USA
># Keith Olbermann, 1959-, US sportscaster
># Michael Palin, 1943-, English comedian and presenter
># Keanu Reeves, 1964-, Lebanese/Canadian/US actor
># Oliver Sacks, 1933-, UK/US neurologist, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings
># James Taylor, 1948-, US singer/songwriter
># Adolf Hitler
># Jane Austen, 1775-1817, English novelist, author of Pride and Prejudice
># Béla Bartók, 1881-1945, Hungarian composer
># Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827, German/Viennese composer
># Alexander Graham Bell, 1847-1922, Scottish/Canadian/American inventor of the telephone
># Anton Bruckner, 1824-1896, Austrian composer
># Henry Cavendish, 1731-1810, English/French scientist, discovered the composition of air and water
># Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, US poet
># Thomas Edison, 1847-1931, US inventor
># Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German/American theoretical physicist
># Henry Ford, 1863-1947, US industrialist
># Kaspar Hauser, c1812-1833, German foundling, portrayed in a film by Werner Herzog
># Oliver Heaviside, 1850-1925, English physicist
># Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, US politician
># Carl Jung, 1875-1961, Swiss psychoanalyst
># Franz Kafka, 1883-1924, Czech writer
># Wasily Kandinsky, 1866-1944, Russian/French painter
># H P Lovecraft, 1890-1937, US writer
># Ludwig II, 1845-1886, King of Bavaria
># Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1868-1928, Scottish architect and designer
># Gustav Mahler, 1860-1911, Czech/Austrian composer
># Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756-1791, Austrian composer
># Isaac Newton, 1642-1727, English mathematician and physicist
># Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900, German philosopher
># Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970, British logician
># George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish playwright, writer of Pygmalion, critic and Socialist
># Richard Strauss, 1864-1949, German composer
># Nikola Tesla, 1856-1943, Serbian/American scientist, engineer, inventor of electric motors
># Henry Thoreau, 1817-1862, US writer
># Alan Turing, 1912-1954, English mathematician, computer scientist and cryptographer
># Mark Twain, 1835-1910, US writer and humorist
># Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890, Dutch painter
># Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951, Viennese/English logician and philosopher
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I did also want to let you know – SAVE THIS THREAD/QUESTION and REPOST it Oct 1st! On Sept 30th NaNo shuts down and erases the system – all of your questions and answers will be gone forever! This is the 2008 forum you are posting on right now. The 2009 forum will not go live until Oct 1st.
If you repost this thread on the new forum, I’ll repost my answer for you.
You will need to reenter your profile information on your profile page Oct 1st as well. EVERYTHING is about to be erased! This close to the erase/reboot date it’s best to not start any new threads, because they be gone in a matter of days. Copy all of your threads, and save them on a blog or your hard drive or something. Than after the system reboots, next week, come back here and start them all over again.
What I do, is I start each of my questions on my blog. I write the blog post asking the question. Than I wait until the system reboots and the new (and very empty!) forums come back, than I copy each of my blog post questions and start my threads asking questions than. That way my questions stay in the system for the entire 2009 year.
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Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!
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Hey, you know what? I sell Avon! I’m an Independent Avon eRepresentative and that means you can buy Avon from me, 24 hours a day, from your computer, from anyplace in the world, and Avon will ship it to you.
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If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
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In any case, good luck on your story.
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