Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian With Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers

by John Elder Robison

  Challenges continued when I became an adult and I learned that no one hires a jerk. People have to like me well enough to let me into their circle, whether that circle is a job, or a club, or any other group in which other humans gather.

  As an adult, I’ve finally learned to make and keep the friendships that sustain me, in a reasonable state of middle-aged contentment. In these next chapters I talk about some of the ways I’ve moved toward that great goal of lasting friendship and social success.

  The Center of the Universe

  When you walk into a room and change the channel on the television without asking, you can bet that whoever was there before you will have something to say about it. “Hey, what about me! I was watching that!” I’ve heard complaints like that more often than I can count: first from my parents, then from my little brother, and finally from my friends, and even strangers at parties. I haven’t been able to change my ways, though. When I walk into a room, if the “wrong” show is playing, I change the channel.

  Usually, I’m so focused that I don’t even notice someone else is in the room. What could I be so focused on as I walk to the television? you might ask. All I can say is, I’m lost in my own thoughts, as I usually am. I can walk into a room, look a person straight in the face, and change the channel. It’s like I don’t even see him. Traffic cops say, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” when writing tickets, and that’s true. But all too often, I am ignorant of how my actions affect other people, and in this situation, I am often even oblivious of them. That’s gotten me in lots of trouble over the years, and has made it very difficult to make friends.

  (There’s also the issue of what’s being watched. I’ve always had a lot of trouble understanding who in his right mind would want to watch the shopping channel when there’s a show about trains, the Alaska pipeline, or the Port of Los Angeles on. The way I see it, I am doing those people a favor by introducing them to something that’s really educational and worth watching.)

  I don’t think altercations over the television make me a bad person, but people tend to interpret my actions as egocentric or self-centered. Can that really be what I’m like? At first I didn’t think so. But the more I was called self-centered, the more I began to worry.

  I listed the most common complaints I heard from others:

  “Didn’t you give any thought to how someone else might see this?”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I was using that when you took it?”

  “Do you ever consider the other person’s feelings?”

  Accusatory questions like those told me that people found me terribly inconsiderate, to say the least. I knew I wasn’t trying to be. I was surprised to learn, however, that people seemed to think that I had a duty or an obligation to consider their feelings before I did something. Could that be true? But every person thinks of himself first, so everyone is self-centered to a degree. That’s why people get annoyed. I get in their space or interfere with their idea of how an interaction should play out.

  At first, the knowledge that everyone is self-centered led me to dismiss the allegations against me. But the more I learned about myself and Asperger’s, the clearer it became that self-centeredness was not the problem; it was merely the symptom.

  I decided to learn more about what being self-centered means to nypicals. With that knowledge I could examine my own behavior and consider my next move.

  I asked several of my nypical friends what being self-centered meant, and they all said essentially the same thing: A self-centered person is someone who gets ahead at the expense of others.

  When I heard that, I challenged my friends. “Do I seem to get ahead at other people’s expense?” All my friends agreed—I didn’t do that.

  Their answer highlighted an important point. Self-centeredness means something different for Aspergians and nypicals. Self-centered nypicals are fully aware of others. They have their plans and goals, and they seek to exploit those around them for their own gain. If someone did that to me, I’d be annoyed, too.

  That runs totally counter to the way I think. When I walk into the room and change the channel, I am not intentionally imposing my will on others. Rather, I am oblivious of the other people. I do not realize they are there, and with that realization lacking, there is nothing to stop me from changing the channel.

  Why don’t I notice? I’ve thought about that, and I think the answers are first, I often concentrate deeply, and when that happens, I’m oblivious to lots of things. Second, even if I do notice people, I often don’t get their connection to something like the TV. Perhaps it’s a body-language thing; perhaps it’s just too abstract. If I do notice others or just “get it,” and that happens sometimes, I leave the TV alone.

  Outside the TV room, I’m essentially a loner, so my plans pretty much involve me and me alone. Once I get outside the circle of my family and close friends, it does not occur to me to include other people in most situations. If other people are included in my plans, it’s because they are cooperating with me, not because I am exploiting them in a predatory way.

  I realize that I often get into trouble when I implement my solitary plans and someone else unwittingly gets in my way. To that person, I look like the nypical who’s trying to take advantage, when in reality I didn’t even know he or she was there. It doesn’t help to try explaining myself, because not knowing someone was there can be just as much of an insult as deliberately taking advantage. That’s been a hard problem for me, because it goes right to my Aspergian social weakness.

  It seems that nypicals are more aware of their surroundings, especially in a social sense. I’ve already talked about how I miss subtle expressions in other people. This issue of self-centeredness makes me realize that sometimes I don’t even notice the other person at all! It must be awful to be totally ignored by someone else when he is standing right next to you. And I don’t even know I’m doing it.

  I wanted friends, and I didn’t want people to perceive me as something I’m not, so I resolved to develop a workaround for that deficiency.

  I’ve made a lot of headway with that in recent years. Nypicals may take in a roomful of people by instinct, but I can achieve a pretty decent result by using good old focus and concentration, just as I do with reading people’s emotions. When I walk into a room, I now make a point of looking at and noting every person. Sometimes I’ll say something. Other times a quick glance is all it takes. That simple step of establishing a connection to others is crucial. It reduces the chance that I’ll do something wrong out of ignorance, and it opens the door for people to greet me or otherwise draw me into their circle.

  I suspect that the importance of initial connection is the reason nypicals evolved the hand-shaking ceremony. By shaking hands with everyone when you enter a room, you make a connection to them and avoid the “I never noticed you” problem. I never did that before, preferring to slink into a room quietly and stand in a corner. Now I embrace the handshake routine wholeheartedly, and it really works. I might get a few more diseases from all the skin contact, but hey, that’s what hand washing is for.

  Simply making myself aware of others has remarkably improved in my social life. People accept me much faster now that I ignore them less. The change is dramatic.

  This process is a secret of my success, one that helped turn me from a self-centered loner into a pleasant eccentric with a number of friends. To me, that’s pretty good progress. And the cost has not been great. I can still watch those television shows; I just ask first now. Sometimes the people say yes, and sometimes they squeal and I switch the channel anyway. But even when I do that, it’s okay, because somehow it’s not insulting anymore, now that I acknowledge the people around me. The only problem I’ve found with focusing on the other people in a room is that it’s mentally exhausting. Nypical party animals may go till three in the morning on instinct; I’m worn out by ten. But I’ll take fewer hours and more friends any day.

  It’s a constant source of amazement to me, how imp
ortant something like simple social acknowledgment can be to others, while being totally invisible to me all these years.

  The Art of Conversation

  I’m blessed with excellent language skills. My vocabulary, grammar, and diction have always been far above average for my age. Yet all through grammar school, when it came to using those wonderful skills to win friends and influence people, I fell flat on my face. Luckily, that situation improved as I got older. One key to success proved to be acquiring some wisdom. Language came to me naturally, with no apparent effort. Wisdom, on the other hand, was really tough to obtain.

  The first big piece of wisdom came about at age ten, when I made a life-changing discovery. I figured out that I had to make “context-sensitive” replies in conversation. For example, if I was playing solitaire on the card table at school, and Ben Parker came up to tell me about his new bicycle, I had to say something about bicycles in response.

  Before that revelation, if Ben said, “Look at my bike,” I would have answered, “I have three aces.” Looking back, I can see that those two statements don’t go together, though my response made perfect sense to me in light of what I was doing. Why should I have to talk about his topic? I was playing cards, and Ben had approached me. Logic suggests that Ben should have walked up and said something like, “Neat game of solitaire you’re playing!” He shouldn’t have talked about his bike at all until the conversation got going.

  Yet that never happened. Kids walked up to me and said, “Look at my bike,” or whatever was on their minds. And they expected me to answer whatever weird thing they said. It sure seemed illogical and unfair. I didn’t comply, and the interaction broke down. Usually, I ended up alone, without the hope of a new friend.

  Today, if Ben said, “Look at my bike,” I would reply, “Nice bike. I like that seat,” and the conversation would take off. “Nice bike” is a correct contextual response; “Look at my helicopter” is not. Now that I understand, it’s obvious. But it was not obvious before.

  What a simple and powerful conversational rule that is:

  You should respond to what others say, not just speak what’s on your mind. Teachers had been explaining that to me for years, but until I was about ten I didn’t recognize that other kids had thoughts and feelings that were fully independent of my own. When I finally figured all that out, I made a big leap forward socially.

  I learned a few other things by the time I entered junior high. For example, big words were problematic for me. I knew I had a good vocabulary—all the grown-ups said so—but big words turned out to be another tricky aspect of dialogue. Though adults were impressed when I used words like “prognostication” or “reciprocity” or coined a witty turn of phrase, like “You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead,” the response of kids was much less consistent. Some laughed at my cleverness, while others laughed at me. A few smart kids threw their own big words right back at me until it felt like a contest to see who had the most esoteric language.

  I could usually win those contests, because I was blessed with the ability to make up big words, like “repugnatron,” and then use them in some totally made-up context that no one else understood, but which sounded believable anyway. I had a lot of kids believing that repugnatrons converted sewage and lawn waste into edible foods in New York City cafeterias.

  Even though I won the contests, I knew I was losing the war. I realized that my use of big words and complex phrases set me apart from the other kids. Instead of helping me to fit in, my sophisticated speech isolated me. To solve the problem, I fell back on my grandfather’s sage advice: Listen to what the others do, and act like them. I became something of a chameleon of language, talking like a little professor when I was among the real professors at my parents’ college, and talking like a little thug in the Amherst High School garage.

  Some of my classmates didn’t use any words longer than five letters and didn’t understand any word longer than six. I initially followed the lead of grown-ups, interpreting certain kids’ poor speaking skills as a sign of their diminished intelligence. But as I realized that many kids with marginal speech skills often had fascinating interests and abilities, I became hesitant about making that assumption.

  The guys in the auto shop were a good example. “You can recognize greasers by the well-developed muscles in their heads” was how my friend Juke described them, meaning they had muscle instead of brains in their skulls. He may have acted contemptuous toward them, but those greasers could do things like tune a carburetor and set up an engine—things I just dreamed of at that age.

  I might have known lots of big words, but the engines they worked on were far superior to the bicycles I tinkered with. That’s why I decided to look beyond their poor grammar and limited vocabulary. There were things in that shop that I needed to understand.

  Once I began talking their language, I got to know a few kids in the shop, and I learned for sure that they weren’t stupid at all. They sounded rough, but they were actually quite intelligent.

  “You guys sound pretty stupid, but you are actually smart” may have been an accurate expression of my feelings about the guys in the shop, but by the time I was able to communicate with them I had luckily come to my third important realization: There are times when it’s better to keep your mouth shut.

  “If you don’t have anything nice to say,” my grandmother said, “just keep your thoughts to yourself. You’ll never get into trouble if you follow that rule.” I made a mental note of the kinds of things I should not say to people, even when they were true. These are the things I do not say. I do not tell people they are

  fat

  foul smelling

  revolting

  stupid

  really weird looking

  or anything else of that ilk

  In fact, I distilled all those things into one simple rule: Do not talk about someone else’s appearance unless it’s a compliment. Even if I am really, really curious about the disgusting pus-filled sore on Fred’s cheek, I know it’s best to not mention it. If I am lucky, Fred will volunteer the whole gross story, but if he stays quiet, so do I. It’s better that way, but it’s hard to be quiet when goo starts dripping off his cheek.

  In addition, I do not compare other people unfavorably to myself, even though the comparison may be apt. I know from hard experience that saying, “I could do that better when I was seven” may well be true, but the statement virtually guarantees a bad outcome to the conversation.

  There are instances, though, when it’s not clear if someone will take what you say as an insult or as a compliment. For example, if I say, “You look really pregnant” to a girl who is merely overweight, she might turn vicious. But if she is pregnant, she will be complimented. The outcome hinges on my guessing ability, which isn’t too good.

  There are people with greater social sensitivity who can handle conversations like that, but I am not one of them. I find it best to just talk to the person without commenting on her appearance. That’s almost always safe, especially when dealing with females.

  And that brings me to my last learned rule of conversation: I have to be a lot more careful around females than around males. There are certain conversational missteps that seem to provoke hostile reactions only from girls. Anyone will be insulted if I say, “Jeez, you sure smell bad today.” But females can also get insulted if I don’t praise them, whereas guys don’t generally expect compliments.

  For example, I remember my first girlfriend getting mad at me one day. We were talking about Larry Niven’s new book, Ringworld. She seemed to be getting snippier, and I could not figure out what was wrong. Finally, she blurted it out. “I cut my hair, and you didn’t even notice!”

  It was true. I had not noticed. Was that a failure of conversation, or a failure to notice? I now believe it was both. I am not very observant about changes in other people. Haircuts and changes of clothing style usually pass right over my head. My friends have come to know and accept it. But I have learned
that new acquaintances and especially girls may hold me to a higher standard in that regard, so I pay closer attention to what I say when I’m around them.

  I taught myself to look for nice things I can say, things that are somewhat complimentary without seeming over the top or fake. That can be dicey, because many positive adjectives tend to be taken the wrong way. For example, “You smell clean today” seldom goes over well. I said that to a girl once, and instead of thanking me, she responded, “Why, did I smell bad last time?” I used to have a problem with questions like that, because I felt I had to tell the whole truth, which might be something like, “No, but you smelled really bad last Tuesday and Wednesday.” Truthful answers like that led to trouble. Now I know I can say something like, “That’s not what I meant. Smelling good today doesn’t mean you smelled bad yesterday!” Even if she did smell bad, my statement is still true, and it saves the conversation.

  Today, I understand that the whole testy exchange can be avoided with an innocuous “You look nice today.” For some reason, I can say a girl looks nice and it’s a compliment, whereas praising her for smelling clean is chancy and open to challenge.

  A guy would never respond that way. Girls are the trickiest and most unpredictable creatures a fellow like me will ever talk to.

  Lobster Claws: Dealing with Bullies

  Don Mclean sat in front of me in Mr. Styspeck’s chemistry class in eighth grade. I wasn’t friends with Don before that class, though I knew who he was. Don was a quiet kid, but he did some annoying things. One was throwing spitballs. He’d roll up these disgusting wads of wet paper in his grubby damp hands and toss them back over his head when he thought I wasn’t looking. What kind of animal would do that?