and acts out the conversation.
According to Antonio Damasio, people who suddenly lose emotions because of strokes often make disastrous financial and social decisions. These patients have completely normal thoughts, and they respond normally when asked about hypothetical social situations. But their performance plummets when they have to make rapid decisions without emotional cues. It must be like suddenly becoming autistic. I can handle situations where stroke patients may fail because I never relied on emotional cues in the first place. At age forty-seven, I have a vast databank, but it has taken me years to build up my library of experiences and learn how to behave in an appropriate manner. I did not know until very recently that most people rely heavily on emotional cues.
After many years I have learned — by rote — how to act in different situations. I can speed-search my CD- ROM memory of videotapes and make a decision quite quickly. Doing this visually may be easier than doing it with verbal thinking. And, as I have said, I try to avoid situations where I can get into trouble. As a child, I found picking up social cues impossible. When my parents were thinking about getting divorced, my sister felt the tension, but I felt nothing, because the signs were subtle. My parents never had big fights in front of us. The signs of emotional friction were stressful to my sister, but I didn't even see them. Since my parents were not showing obvious, overt anger toward each other, I just did not comprehend.
Social interaction is further complicated by the physiological problems of attention shifting. Since people with autism require much more time than others to shift their attention between auditory and visual stimuli, they find it more difficult to follow rapidly changing, complex social interaction. These problems may be a part of the reason that Jack, a man with autism, said, «If I relate to people too much, I become nervous and uncomfortable.» Learning social skills can be greatly helped with videotapes. I gradually learned to improve my public speaking by watching tapes and by becoming aware of easily quantifiable cues, such as rustling papers that indicate boredom. It is a slow process of continuous improvement. There are no sudden breakthroughs.
Figuring out how to interact socially was much more difficult than solving an engineering problem. I found it relatively easy to program my visual memory with the knowledge of cattle dipping vats or corral designs. Recently I attended a lecture where a social scientist said that humans do not think like computers. That night at a dinner party I told this scientist and her friends that my thought patterns resemble computing and that I am able to explain my thought processes step by step. I was kind of shocked when she told me that she is unable to describe how her thoughts and emotions are joined. She said that when she thinks about something, the factual information and the emotions are combined into a seamless whole. I finally understood why so many people allow emotions to distort the facts. My mind can always separate the two. Even when I am very upset, I keep reviewing the facts over and over until I can come to a logical conclusion.
Over the years, I have learned to be more tactful and diplomatic. I have learned never to go over the head of the person who hired me unless I have his or her permission. From past experiences I have learned to avoid situations in which I could be exploited and to stroke egos that may feel threatened. To master diplomacy, I read about business dealings and international negotiations in the Wall Street Journal and other publications. I then used them as models.
I know that things are missing in my life, but I have an exciting career that occupies my every waking hour. Keeping myself busy keeps my mind off what I may be missing. Sometimes parents and professionals worry too much about the social life of an adult with autism. I make social contacts via my work. If a person develops her talents, she will have contacts with people who share her interests.
During the past twenty years, for example, I've worked with Jim Uhl. He has constructed more than twenty of my projects, and he is one of my closest friends. Construction is his life. His business started in a tiny toolshed at the back of his home and has grown into a major company that does big jobs for the Arizona Department of Transportation and the mines. We just love to talk about contracting. Some of the best times of my life have been working on construction projects. I can relate to people who produce tangible results. Seeing my drawings turn into steel and concrete turns me on. Construction workers love to complain about stupid people in the front office, and I fit right in when they bitch about the «suits and ties» from the office who don't understand equipment or construction. Over the years I have worked with many crews and many different contractors. They all like to complain and tell construction war stories. I have no trouble being with them, and I become one of the guys. Another reason I fit in with construction workers and technical people is that we are mostly visual thinkers.
I am told by my nonautistic friends that relationships with other people are what most people live for, whereas I get very attached to my projects and to certain places. Last year Jim and I drove out to Scottsdale Feedyard, which is now closed and partially torn down. All that was left were a few posts, some tanks at the feed mill, and a deserted, wrecked office. The pens had been sold for scrap steel. It upset me very much and I didn't know if we should have come. The windows in the manager's office were broken, and the rain had warped the wood paneling. One of the few posts still standing was from the door in the fence where twenty years ago I had been blocked by the cowboy foreman.
Watching the Swift plant slowly self-destruct and knowing it was going to close was very upsetting for me. I guess my relationships with Tom Rohrer and Norb Goscowitz and the other people there were the closest I've had. The Swift plant was the place where I had had some of my deepest thoughts about the meaning of life. Memories of its closing are much more devastating than any other memory. I still can't write about it without crying.
My sense of identity was tied up with that plant, just as the things I had in my high school room were my identity. Then, when I went away for the summer, I did not want to pack any of my wall decorations away because I felt I would somehow lose myself. I had a special attic room in the dormitory where I went to think and meditate. Going to the special room, known as the Crow's Nest, was essential to my sense of well-being. When the construction of the dorm was finished, I no longer had free access to it; a locked door prohibited me from entering. I was so upset that the headmaster gave me a key.
I also remember becoming upset when my Aunt Breechan died, but I was even more distraught when I found out that her ranch was for sale. The idea of the loss of the place made me grief-stricken. Hans Asperger also observed a strong attachment to places in autistics, noting that autistic children take longer to get over homesickness than normal children. There is an emotional bonding to the routines and objects at home. Maybe this is because of the lack of strong emotional attachments to people. I think Mr. Spock would understand.
Update: Learning Social Skills
Over the last ten years I have gained additional insights into how people relate to each other. I learned that I am what I do instead of what I feel. In my life I have replaced emotional complexity with intellectual complexity. People on the spectrum who are happy have friends with their same interests. Computer programmers are happy when they are with other programmers and they can talk about programming. I talked to one lady on the spectrum who met her husband at a science fiction book club. She writes technical manuals and he works in the computer industry. They love fine food and their idea of a wonderful romantic evening is to go to a really nice restaurant and spend time talking about computer data storage systems. Normal people have a hard time understanding why this special interest is so absorbing.
Develop Shared Interests
Social interaction revolves around shared interests. When I was in high school being teased by the other kids, I was miserable. The only place I was not teased was during horseback riding and model rocket club. The students who were interested in these special interests were not the kids who did the teasing. These activities were a shared interest for us.
I strongly recommend hobbies and careers where common interests can be shared. Mentors who can nurture talent can help students become successful. Students on the spectrum should be encouraged to participate in activities such as robotics club, choir, poetry group, scouting, or chess club. My '50s upbringing helped me because turn taking and sharing was drilled into me. Today some Asperger's students have difficulty working as a team to build a robot. Working with another person should be part of the activity. Little kids need to be taught turn
