The following year, when I was ten, an elderly neighbour died and a young family moved into the street. One day my mother answered the door to a small girl with blonde hair, who said she had seen a little girl from our house playing outside (that girl was my sister Claire) and asked whether she could come and play with her. My mother introduced her to my sister and me – she thought it a good opportunity for me to mix with other children in the neighbourhood – and we went over to her house and sat in the porch in her front garden. My sister and the little girl soon became good friends and played together most days in her garden. Her name was Heidi and she was around six or seven. Her mother was Finnish, but her father was from Scotland so Heidi had been raised speaking English and was only now beginning to learn her first Finnish words.
Heidi had several children’s books with brightly coloured drawings and the word for the object in Finnish under each. Beneath the drawing of a shiny, red apple was the word omena and under another of a shoe appeared the word kenkä. Something about the shape and sound of the Finnish words I read and heard was beautiful to me. While my sister and Heidi played together I sat and studied the books, learning the many words. Although they were very different from English words I was able to learn them very quickly and remember them all easily. Whenever I left Heidi’s garden I would always turn and say to her, Hei Hei! – the Finnish word for ‘goodbye!’
That summer I was allowed to walk the short distance to and from school by myself for the first time. The route was lined with row after row of hedges and one afternoon while walking home from class I noticed a tiny, red insect covered in black dots crawling inside one of the hedges. I was fascinated by it, so sat down on the pavement and watched it closely as it climbed over and under the sides of each small leaf and branch, stopping and starting and stopping again at various points along its journey. Its small back was round and shiny and I counted its dots over and over. Passers-by on the street stepped round me, some of them muttering under their breath. I must have been in their way, but at the time I did not think of anything but the ladybird in front of me. Carefully, I put out my finger for it to climb onto, then I ran for home.
I had only previously seen ladybirds in pictures in books, but had read all about them and knew, for example, that they are considered lucky in many cultures because they devour pests (they can eat as many as fifty to sixty aphids in a day) and help protect crops. In mediaeval times, farmers considered their help divine and it’s for this reason that they are named after the Virgin Mary. The ladybird’s black spots absorb energy from the sun, while its colours help to frighten away potential predators because most of them associate bright colours with poison. They also produce a chemical that tastes and smells horrible so predators won’t eat them.
I was very excited by my find and wanted to collect as many ladybirds as I could. My mother saw the little insect in my hand as I came through the front door and told me they were ‘clingy’ and that I should say, ‘ladybird, ladybird, fly away home!’, but I didn’t say it because I didn’t want it to fly away. Upstairs in my room was a plastic tub where I kept my collection of coins. I emptied it, pouring the coins into a mound on the floor, then took the tub and placed the ladybird inside it. Then I went back outside onto the street and spent several hours, until it got too dark to see anymore, looking inside the hedges for other ladybirds. As I found each one, I gently picked it up with my fingertips and placed it with the others in the tub. I had read that ladybirds liked leaves and aphids, so I pulled lots of leaves and some nettles which had aphids on them from the hedges and placed them in the tub with the ladybirds.
When I returned home I took the tub back up to my room and put it on the table next to my bed. I used a needle to pick some holes in the sides of the tub so the ladybirds would have plenty of air and light in their new home, then put a large book over the top of the tub, to prevent them from flying away all over the house. For the next week each day after school I went out and picked more leaves and aphids for the ladybirds and took them back to the tub in my room. I sprayed some of the leaves with water so they wouldn’t get thirsty.
In class I talked about the ladybirds ceaselessly until my exasperated teacher, Mr Thraves, asked me to bring them in. The next day I took the tub with me to school and showed my ladybird collection to him and the other children in the class. By that time I had found and placed hundreds of ladybirds in the one tub. He took one look and then asked me to put the tub down on his desk. He gave me a folded piece of paper and asked me to take it to the teacher in the next class. I was gone a few minutes. On my return the tub had disappeared. Mr Thraves, worried that the ladybirds might escape from the tub and fly all over his classroom, had told one of the other children to take it outside and release all the ladybirds. When I realised what had happened, my head felt like it was going to explode. I burst into tears and ran from the class all the way home. I was absolutely distraught and didn’t say a word to the teacher for weeks afterwards and became agitated if he even called my name.
At other times Mr Thraves could be exceptionally kind towards me. Whenever I became anxious or distressed in class he would take me to the school’s music room to help me calm down. He was a musician and often played the guitar to the children in his lessons. The music room was filled with instruments including cymbals, drums and a piano which were used in the school’s various productions throughout the year. He showed me how the different keys on a piano produce different notes and taught me simple tunes to play. I liked visiting the room and being left to sit at the piano and experiment with the keys. I have always loved music, because of its ability to help relieve any anxiety I might be feeling and to make me feel calm and peaceful inside.
Feelings of high anxiety were common for me throughout my time at school. I became upset if a school event in which everyone was expected to take part was announced at short notice, or by changes in the normal routines of the class. Predictability was important to me, a way of feeling in control in a given situation, a way of keeping anxiety at bay, at least temporarily. I was never comfortable at school and rarely felt happy, except when left alone to do my own thing. Headaches and stomach aches were frequent signals of how tense I was during this time. Sometimes it got so bad that I did not even make it into class at all, for example if I arrived a few minutes late and realised the class had already gone to assembly. I was terrified of the idea of walking into the hall by myself and didn’t want to wait for all the crowds and noise of the children walking back out together afterwards, so I walked straight back home to my room.
The school’s annual sports day was a source of considerable distress. I was never interested in joining in and had zero interest in sport. The day involved crowds of shouting onlookers for events such as the sack and egg and spoon races, and the combination of crowds and noise (and quite often summer heat) was too much for me. My parents often allowed me to stay at home rather than risk me having a meltdown. If I felt overwhelmed by a situation I could go very red in the face and hit the side of my head very hard until it hurt a lot. I would feel such a sense of tension within me that I just had to do something, anything, to let it out.
This happened once during a science lesson where Mr Thraves had helped one of the pupils to prepare an experiment involving a ball of play-dough suspended on a piece of string. I was fascinated by this unusual sight and – unaware that it was part of an ongoing experiment – walked over to it and started to touch and pull the dough with my fingers. At this point my teacher became annoyed that I had interfered for no reason (at least as he understood it) and told me off, but I had no idea why he was angry with me and became very confused and upset. I ran from the class, slamming the door behind me with such force that the glass window shattered into pieces. I can still remember hearing the gasps of the children behind me as I ran from the room. When I got home my parents explained to me that I had to try very hard not to react in such a way again. They had to pay a visit to the headmaster, write a letter of apology an
d agree to pay for the cost of replacing the broken window.
One idea my parents had to help me cope better with my emotions was to teach me how to skip rope. They hoped it would improve my coordination skills and encourage me to spend more time outdoors, outside my room. Though it took some getting used to, I was soon able to skip for long periods of time during which I felt a lot better and calmer within myself. As I skipped I would count each turn and visualise the number’s shape and texture as I imagined it to be.
I often found it confusing when we were given arithmetic worksheets in class with the different numbers printed identically in black. To me, it seemed that the sheets were covered in errors. I couldn’t figure out, for example, why eight was not larger than six, or why nine wasn’t printed in blue instead of black. I theorised that the school had printed too many nines in their previous worksheets and had run out of the right colour ink. When I wrote my answers on the paper the teacher complained that my writing was too uneven and messy. I was told to write every number the same as the others. I didn’t like having to write the numbers down wrong. None of the other children seemed to mind. It was only in my teens that I realised that my experience of numbers was very different to that of the other children.
I always completed all my sums well ahead of the other children in the class. Over time, I had progressed, literally, textbooks ahead of everyone else. After finishing, I was asked to sit at my desk and to be quiet so as not to disturb the others while they did their work. I would put my head in my hands and think about numbers. Sometimes while absorbed in my thoughts I would hum softly to myself without realising I was doing so until the teacher came up to my desk, when I would realise and stop.
To fill the time I created my own codes, substituting letters for numbers, so for example: ‘24 1 79 5 3 62’ would encrypt the word ‘Daniel’. Here, I paired the letters of the alphabet: (ab), (cd), (ef), (gh), (ij), etc. and gave each pair a number from 1–13: (ab)=1, (cd)=2, (ef)=3, (gh)=4, (ij)=5, etc. Then it was only necessary to distinguish between each letter in the pair. I did this by adding a random number if I wanted the second letter in each pair, otherwise I would simply write the number that corresponded with the pair in which the letter was in. So ‘24’ meant the second letter in the second pair, ‘d’, while ‘1’ stood for the first letter in the first letter pair, ‘a’.
Having first asked the permission of the teacher, I often took the maths textbooks home with me after school. I’d lie on my stomach on the floor of my room with the books spread out in front of me and do sums for hours. One time, my brother Lee was in the room watching me. Knowing that I loved multiplying a number by itself, he gave me some to try, checking the answers with a calculator: ‘23? 529’ ‘48? 2304’ ‘95? 9025’. Then he gave me a much bigger sum: ‘82 × 82 × 82 × 82?’ I thought for about ten seconds, my hands clenching tight and my head filling with shapes, colours and textures. ‘45,212,176’ I replied. My brother didn’t say anything, so I looked up at him. His face looked different; he was smiling. Lee and I hadn’t been close up to that point. It was the first time I had ever seen him smile at me.
In my final summer at Dorothy Barley, the teachers organised a week-long trip for several classes, including mine, to Trewern, a residential outdoor centre situated in countryside on the border between England and Wales. My parents believed it would be a good opportunity for me to experience a different environment for several days. A long, shiny coach with a driver who smelled of tobacco came to collect the children and teachers. My father had helped me to pack my clothes and books for the trip and came to see me off.
At the centre, the children were split up into small groups and each group was allocated a hut to stay in for the week. Each hut had just enough room for bunk beds, a sink and a table and chair. I hated being away from home, because everything was mixed up and I find it hard to cope with lots of change. We were expected to wake up very early – around five o’clock each morning – for a run around the field in a t-shirt and shorts. I became very hungry all the time because the centre did not seem to have any of the food I ate at home, such as Weetabix or peanut butter sandwiches. I also had little time to myself, as the children were expected to take part in group activities every day.
One of these was pony trekking, an activity run by the local stable. The day consisted of being shown how to control a pony and then going for a trek around the local lanes, accompanied by a guide. I found it very hard to keep my balance on the pony and kept slipping in the saddle, so I held the reins very tight to stop myself from falling off. One of the stable-owners saw me and became very angry and shouted at me. She was very passionate about her animals, but I didn’t understand at the time what I had done wrong and became very upset. After that, I withdrew more and more, spending as much time as possible on my own in the hut.
There were other group activities, including walking in an underground cave. It was dark everywhere so everyone had to wear hats with lights on them. The cave was cold and wet and slimy and I was glad to walk back out onto a log bridge running over a stream. As I made my way slowly over it, one of the boys in the group ran over, laughing, and pushed me hard so I fell into the water. In shock, I fell silent for a long time and just sat in the shallow water, my clothes soaking wet and clinging to my skin. Then I climbed out and walked back to my hut on my own, my face bright red, trying my hardest not to cry from the sudden loss of control. Bullying was sometimes a problem for me because I was different and a loner. Some of the children would call me names or tease me for not having any friends. Fortunately they would always get bored and walk away because I wouldn’t fight with them. Such experiences reinforced the perception that I was an outsider and did not belong.
There was one bright spot in the week at Trewern – at its conclusion, workers at the centre awarded various prizes for achievement to the different groups; mine won the award for the cleanest hut.
It was always good to be home. It was where I felt safe and calm. There was only one other place that made me feel the same way – the local library. Ever since I had been able to read I had made my parents take me on a daily trip to the little brick building with graffiti on its walls, and inside, a room with shelf after shelf of colour coded, plastic covered children’s books and brightly coloured bean bag seats in the corner. I visited the library every day after class and during the school holidays, no matter the weather, and would stay for hours, often until closing time. The library teemed with quiet and order that always gave me a sense of contentment. The encyclopaedias were my preferred reading material, though they were very heavy to hold so it was necessary to sit at a table with one laid out in front of me. I loved learning different facts and figures, such as the names of the world’s capital cities, and making lists of the names and dates of the kings and queens of England and the presidents of the United States of America and other trivia. The librarians became very familiar with my daily appearances and would chat with my parents while I read. The head librarian was sufficiently impressed by my attendance to nominate me for an award, which I subsequently won, recognising effort and achievement in reading. The town’s mayor awarded the prize – appropriately enough, a book token – in a short ceremony at the town hall. As I went to collect my prize the mayor bent over and asked me my name, but I didn’t hear him and said nothing because I was too busy counting the links on his mayoral chain, and I am not very good at doing more than one thing at a time.
5
Odd One Out
I remember standing alone under the shade of the trees that dotted the perimeter of the school playground, watching the other children running and shouting and playing from the sidelines. I am ten and know that I am different to them in a way that I cannot express or comprehend. The children are noisy and move quickly, bumping and pushing into one another. I’m constantly afraid of being hit by one of the balls that are frequently thrown or kicked through the air, which is one of the reasons why I prefer to stand on the edges of the playground far away from
my schoolmates. I do this every playtime without fail, so that it soon becomes a running joke and it is perceived as common knowledge that Daniel talks to the trees and that he is weird.
Actually I never talked to trees. It is pointless to talk to things that cannot answer you. I talk to my cats, but that is because they can at least answer with a meow. I liked spending time among the playground’s trees because there I could walk up and down, absorbed in my thoughts, and not worry about being pushed or knocked over. As I walked, it felt for brief moments as though I could make myself disappear by standing behind each tree. There was certainly no shortage of times when I felt like I wanted to vanish. I just did not seem to fit in anywhere, as though I had been born into the wrong world. The sense of never feeling quite comfortable or secure, of always being somehow apart and separate, weighed heavily on me.
I was gradually becoming more and more aware of my loneliness and began to long for a friend. All my classmates had at least one and most had several. I would spend hours at night awake in bed looking up at the ceiling and imagining what it might be like to be friends with somebody. I was sure it would somehow make me less different. Perhaps then, I thought, the other children will not think I’m so strange. It did not help that my younger brother and sister had several friends who sometimes came home with them from school. I would sit by the window overlooking the garden and listen to them playing. I could not understand why they weren’t talking to each other about really interesting things, like coins or conkers or numbers or ladybirds.
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant Page 7
