The Journal of Best Practices

by David Finch

  At some point, in the hours that I spent absorbed in research and raw self-discovery, something occurred to me: I process things differently from Kristen, I’m as socially functional as a tuba, I don’t look beyond my own needs and my own interests, I haven’t been talking to her, and I behave very strangely. No wonder our marriage sucks right now. I think this Asperger syndrome may just be what’s destroying our marriage! I know, I know—great detective work. But with that discovery, I felt as though I’d been reborn. The reason we struggled for so long to find solutions to the problems in our marriage was that we hadn’t understood their causes. Identifying the source and knowing that it affected millions of other people made for a very short leap to the conclusion that I could finally do something about it. We’re screwed suddenly became We’re saved!

  It’s amazing how swiftly a spot diagnosis can catalyze change. As a teenager, I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD)—first unofficially, by my mom, and then officially by a doctor. I’ve been taking Ritalin or something like it ever since, and it works. The medication helps me to process information, focus my thoughts, and keep myself organized at a functional level that I can’t achieve on my own. But there is no silver bullet that will eliminate all the difficulties that come with Asperger’s. If there had been a single pill that would help me to put the needs of others before my own, to rid my life of meltdowns and control issues, and to help me to be a highly sociable person, then I would have been mighty tempted to take it, if only to stop annoying everyone around me. But I couldn’t take a pill that would accomplish all of that—it doesn’t exist—so I decided to take initiative.

  Armed with knowledge and new self-awareness, I could start looking every day for ways to manage the behaviors that had been wreaking havoc on our marriage. Address the causes and the symptoms will vanish. I wasn’t interested in a complete personality overhaul; I just wanted to become more in control of myself.

  “I think I can fix our marriage,” I said to Kristen the following morning. “I’m basically the one who destroyed it, and now that I know what my behaviors are doing to us, I can start working on ways to improve myself.”

  “Dave, that’s awesome, but it’s not all because of you,” she said. “You didn’t destroy our marriage, and I hope you know that. I’d say there’s a lot that we both need to work on in our relationship, and we can do it together.”

  “Sounds good to me.” I had no idea what she intended to sort out from her side; I was so focused on myself that I didn’t even bother to ask.

  We also agreed that there was a lot about me that we hoped would never change. The harmless little quirks that, in Kristen’s words, “made me Dave”: achieving perfectly consistent spacing between all ten fingers, getting carried away with an internal recitation of a phrase to the point where it blurts from my lips (“Heyoooo!”), repeatedly snapping pictures of myself. These were the things we wanted to keep. However, doing those things while she and the kids wait outside in the car, late for our son’s baptism, well, that’s exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to overcome.

  My hope was that by transforming myself, I would bring about some transformation in our marriage. Transforming myself would mean changing my behaviors, and I knew it wouldn’t be simple or easy. If it were, I probably would have done it long ago.

  Most people intuitively know how to function and interact with people—they don’t need to learn it by rote. I do. I was certain that with enough discipline and hard work I could learn to improve my behaviors and become more adaptable. While my brain is not wired for social intuition, I was factory-programmed to observe, analyze, and mimic the world around me. I had managed to go through school, get a good job, make friends, and marry—years of observation, processing, and trial and error had gotten me this far. And my obsessive tendencies mean that when I want to accomplish something I attack it with zeal. With my marriage in dire straits, I decided that even if I needed to make flash cards about certain behaviors and staple them to my face to make them become second nature, I was willing to do it.

  Kristen didn’t know it, but that was what her life was about to become—her husband, with the best of intentions, stapling flash cards to his face. Okay, not to his face. And there were no staples involved. But flash cards? Definitely. Many people leave reminder notes for themselves: Pick up milk and shampoo, or Dinner with the Hargroves at 6:00. My notes read: Respect the needs of others, and Do not laugh during visitation tonight, and Do not EVER suggest that Kristen doesn’t seem to enjoy spending time with our kids.

  Opportunity for change was everywhere, I noticed. When I thought of something I wanted to address, or when I learned something in an argument with Kristen, I would write it down. Don’t change the radio station when she’s singing along. When she’s on the phone, don’t force yourself into the conversation. Don’t sneak up on her. I wrote these little gems everywhere: on loose-leaf paper, in my notebooks and journals, on my computer and phone. One particularly intense series of realizations, which ultimately led to remarkable breakthroughs in our relationship, was recorded on an envelope that I kept in the pocket of my car door.

  In order to keep up with the rapid pace of inspiration, I started keeping a journal—the Journal of Best Practices. This wasn’t some huge, leather-bound diary that I kept under my pillow, as one might expect. That wouldn’t have been practical, since there was no telling where I’d be when my feverish rumination would cough up a new best practice. Rather, the Journal of Best Practices was my collection of notes. I could have called it my Nightstand Drawer of Best Practices, since that’s where most of the scraps of paper, envelopes, and actual journals ended up—but what kind of wacko keeps a Nightstand Drawer of Best Practices?

  Collectively, the entries in my Journal of Best Practices would become my guiding principles. Some of them would stick. Others would not. Some would be laughably obvious (Don’t hog all the crab rangoon), and certain others would be revealed only after many painful scenes. Even so, the hardest work would lie not in formulating the Best Practices but in implementing them. But with our happiness at stake, that’s what I’d learn to do.

  Chapter 1

  Be her friend, first and always.

  When people who know me first meet Kristen, I’ve learned not to be surprised when they pull me aside later and ask, “How is it that you wound up with someone like her?”

  The question may be valid, but validity doesn’t relieve the sting of indictment. It’s a question that implies two things. Namely, that I am the walking manifestation of circus music, and while I may be qualified to do certain things, landing a good-looking, interesting woman wouldn’t be one of them. I find it especially annoying when people say this in front of Kristen. Even if it’s meant as a joke, have some class. Normally, I laugh and make little self-effacing jokes, but Kristen usually replies, “There’s just something about him, I guess,” and beams at me as brightly as she can.

  Her smiling but firm reply always neatly puts the person in their place. “We’re done taking shots at my husband now,” it says. I like it because I know what she means when she says it. I understand why we’re together. I know what she sees in me, most days. So when Kristen isn’t there to defend me, I find that it’s best to explain it simply: “We’ve been friends since high school, and at some point, I won her over.”

  What better way to say it? Our friendship has always served as a reminder of how happy we can be together, a mark on our compass even in the darkest of moments when we lost sight of what our marriage was supposed to have been.

  As if having Asperger syndrome didn’t make me cool enough, in high school, I chose—to the exclusion of playing sports, taking drugs, or beating up nerds—to get involved in all things music. I wasn’t just in the band, I had to be in four school bands: concert, wind, jazz, and (coolest of all) marching. I wasn’t just in the choir, I had to sing in two select choirs: a cappella choir and the snazzy jazz vocal ensemble, MACH-1: Music At Contemporary Heights . . . One. I went f
or singing and dancing roles in the musical productions Hello, Dolly!, Annie, Brigadoon, and Little Shop of Horrors, where I learned ultra-cool techniques for applying and removing inexpensive makeup.

  Being in these bands, choirs, and musicals still wasn’t enough; I bought a letter jacket and had my mom sew the names of these activities onto the back, along with the letters I’d received for my participation. Walking through the halls in my oversized letter jacket—an orange and black billboard advertising myself to the bullies and the frightening shop kids who used smokeless tobacco—I’d hear comments ranging from “Band and drama? Who puts that on a coat?” to the more direct “What a homo.” Not to worry, though. I never got physically attacked. Nothing staves off a beating from jocks like a toothy smile and an energetic display of “jazz hands.”

  Performing music and assuming the personalities of characters came naturally to me. I assumed at the time that it meant I was sort of artistic, rather than sort of autistic, but as it turns out, I’m both. The former quality drew people to me, and the latter seemed to push them away. In the ebb and flow of peers, there were a few who stuck around and became close friends, the type that would last a lifetime. There was Andy, who played sports and exhibited genius at every turn. There was Delemont, who was also circus music with feet. And there was Kristen.

  A year older than me, and a million times cooler and more popular, Kristen was a pretty, perfectly assembled, athletic blonde who almost always had a cheerful smile on her face. To me the other students were little more than outfits with faces that clogged doorways between classes, but to Kristen they were all friends of varying closeness. She had a singular warmth and capacity for fun that pulled people to her. I was one of them.

  Our connection was immediate and seemed to be the result of a mutual appreciation for silliness. We found humor in exactly the same things—and she was one of maybe three people for whom that was true. Gags from Leslie Nielsen movies, the way our gym teacher cleared his throat over the intercom, Paula Abdul—it was fun to laugh about these things with someone, especially someone as wowing as Kristen.

  Early in my freshman year, during a rehearsal for Annie, I watched as a remarkably arrogant kid bonked his nose against his own knee while working with the choreographer. He (the kid) had been rude to me a number of times (“Is that all you do, Finch? Mimic the sounds you hear over the intercom?”), so witnessing his blunder was deliciously satisfying. In a perfect world, the only sound accompanying his gaffe would have been a toot from a good ole-fashioned bicycle horn, but instead Peckerhead just let out this tiny yelp. He quickly righted himself, covered his nose with his hand, and allowed his face to betray nothing—no pain, no annoyance, nothing—and then he sat like that for the remainder of the rehearsal. Kristen had seen it, too, and we exchanged delighted glances, silently saying to each other, Yes, that really just happened. From then on, all I ever had to do to make her laugh was to erase any expression from my face and cover my nose. I’d walk past her chemistry classroom this way, and I’d hear her laugh from her seat in the back row. I’d wave to her in the cafeteria and she’d cover her nose, while her friends asked her what she was doing.

  Kristen also observed things about me that my other friends didn’t seem to notice. She was, for example, the first and only person to recognize my complete inability to walk out of time with music. Entering the auditorium while the pit band warmed up before rehearsal, I’d cross in front of the stage and take my regular seat in perfect step with the music. If they were rehearsing a slower ballad, it might take me a minute to get to my seat; faster tempos got me there sooner. If the music stopped before I got to my seat, I’d lurch forward and dash the rest of the way. Everyone but Kristen seemed oblivious to this. She’d laugh, saying, “Oh, David James, you just kill me.” (I never knew why she called me by my first and middle names, but she was the only person who did, and I loved it.)

  Talking to anybody else was usually a depleting chore; conversation was disruptive and I avoided it whenever possible. But Kristen made it something to look forward to. Seeing her in the hallways was exciting, hanging out with her in the music room was calming. I didn’t have to work as hard with her. Sitting next to me in the auditorium during rehearsals, she would keep a stream of conversation flowing that I could actually get into. When I grew shy and couldn’t keep up, she would do something to lighten me up—launching a tiny thread of saliva onto the stage, for instance (a maneuver which she referred to as “gleeking”), or removing something from my backpack and asking me about it. “That’s quite a calculator! Can it spell my name?” The next day in math class, I’d turn it on to find her name written in variables across the screen: kRi∫τEη. Her matching outfits, her bursts of laughter, her ability to spit on a target from thirty feet. I was hopelessly in like.

  I was thrilled when we began hanging out more often during school. Study periods once reserved in my mind for diligent work became hour-long blocks of Kristen Time. A daily note from our choir director excused me from my normal study room, so I could spend time “helping” Kristen in the music library, where she volunteered to organize stacks of sheet music—a bogus responsibility that excused her from her own study hall. Surrounded by cluttered shelves of choral arrangements, we would talk and find ways to make each other laugh. Sometimes, I helped her with homework and in return she prevented me from accomplishing anything academic whatsoever. “See, David James, isn’t talking to me more fun than outlining your biology chapters?” Yes, actually, and you’re the only person I can say that about.

  Once, I was cramming for a calculus test when she took my notebook and started quizzing me: “David James, find the derivative of x in this equation . . .” When it occurred to her that she couldn’t even pronounce the equation, she laughed and teasingly asked me what all the “squiggly little lines” meant. If anyone else had swiped my cherished math notebook and asked this question, it would have released the pin on a tantrum. But coming from Kristen, it was different. When I tried explaining the purpose and sheer beauty of derivatives and integrals, she got bored and began drawing something in the margin of my notebook.

  “Look,” she said. “It’s Duffy the Wonder Dog!”

  She handed the notebook back to me, and there, happily wagging its tail beside my meticulous proof, was a little cartoon version of her dog, Duffy, his superhero dog name written in large, bubbly letters across my solution. The next day I answered one of my extra-credit questions on the test, “Delta x with respect to time is . . . Duffy the Wonder Dog.” My dad got angry when I showed him the test. He is not a humorless man; far from it. But he didn’t see the humor in wasting valuable points on an exam. Kristen did. I still have the drawing.

  Our friendship was platonic. Kristen was so far out of my league that it didn’t even occur to me that we might be anything more than friends. But, then again, she was hot. I don’t know that any high school boy with a hot girl for a friend hasn’t from time to time imagined a steamy moment in, say, the girls’ dressing room behind the auditorium, while, perhaps, the drama geeks were starting their vocal warm-ups.

  Can you help me bustle this costume, David?

  But the director is starting vocal warm-ups. They’ll know we’re missing.

  Ooh, it will be so dangerous. Glue your mustache on and take me.

  Just saying.

  I had successfully hosed down any thoughts ignited by my own sexual imagination by the time Kristen started going out with Mike. This was during her junior year, his senior year, my sophomore year. Mike played first-chair alto saxophone in the school bands with me, and I thought I had him pegged. Earrings, muscles, attitude, and he could probably grow a beard—this guy was definitely too cool for me. But when Kristen was around, Mike opened up and I learned that he was as kind and genuine as she was. He was able to draw me out of myself, just like Kristen, and we eventually became friends, too. He taught me mind-blowing sax techniques (do not read that incorrectly) that I never would have learned during my own weekly les
sons. And we traded stories about our unusual hobbies—mine included halter-breaking cattle and making dioramas, while he dabbled in coonskin caps and burying machinery in the ground, a snowmobile being his crowning achievement. “I know how to pick my men,” Kristen would say, laughing.

  When Mike left for college a year later, he jokingly asked me to take care of Kristen for him, a responsibility that I took very seriously in my own Asperger syndrome–y way.

  When Kristen came down with the chicken pox during her senior year, for instance, I showed up at her door to surprise her with a get-well kit. A kit that included a new butter dish (just because), a handful of batteries (why not), and my own personal copy of When Harry Met Sally. (I was crazy about Nora Ephron movies—just one more thing to make me the coolest kid in school.) I’d always found that movie to be good medicine, and it seemed to work wonders for Kristen as well.

  “Thank you for coming over,” she said when it was time to go home. “And thanks for my butter dish and batteries. Only you . . .” She laughed.

  I covered my nose with my hand, made my face go blank, and told her that I had a wonderful time helping her feel better. She covered her nose and said she’d consider getting the chicken pox more often. With that, I scurried off to my car, clutching my videotape to my chest.

  Coolest kid in school.

  When Kristen went away to college, we didn’t see each other as much. Still, our friendship grew stronger. I would call her with funny stories, and she would call me just to see how I was doing. During holidays and summer breaks, she and Mike and I would get together and hang out. But I no longer needed to take care of her for Mike. She had sorority sisters and loads of friends. She had college and graduate school. Then Mike proposed, and suddenly she had a fiancé. Then just as suddenly, one day, she didn’t.