The social nuances, expectations, and pressures of high school can be tough enough for the average teenager to master. This is particularly true if said teen aspires to a happy and active social life during those years, including such mainstays as football and basketball games, parties, homecoming dances, dating, and the granddaddy of all high school social milestones, the prom. Not to mention hanging out with friends at the local burger joint, or malt shop, or wherever teens hangout these days. Looking and behaving in a manner that's considered to be acceptable by the "cool" crowd in order to fit in and have fond memories to rehash at the twenty-year reunion is, indeed, a job that can be difficult for even the most self-confident adolescent.
However, for a teenager with Asperger's Syndrome, the high-functioning form of autism that negatively affects social interaction, that job is nearly impossible. At a place such as high school, where social cues, behavior, and the pressure to fit in and be thought of as "cool" is everything, the youngster with AS (short for Asperger's) is often doomed. Because of typical "Aspie" traits such as obsessiveness with certain topics and objects, and saying inappropriate things during inappropriate times, the teen with Asperger's is likely to spend his or her high school years ostracized, bullied, shunned, and alone. Friends, an essential staple of the teen world, are difficult to come by and maintain, which leads to the aspie feeling like a social misfit whose only enjoyable high school memory is the day he leaves the place.
I know this is so from personal experience, because as someone with Asperger's, which affects 20 million people world wide, my high school experience was, socially, perhaps the worst of all time. My three years at that level was mostly filled with social rejection, loneliness, and depression, virtually from day one.
Actually, the seeds of my high school hell were sown before day one. Though it is approaching 25 years since I walked across the stage of my school's amphitheater in my royal blue cap and gown and picked up my diploma, I remember many of my slights and rejections as if it were yesterday...
My primary extracurricular activity during my high school years was the marching band, where I played the tenor and baritone saxophone. Since every high school's band has a band camp before school begins, where the band members learn the music and the field shows for the Fall, my high school experiences started two weeks before I walked into my first class.
I wish I could state that those band camp days were welcoming and enriching, that the other band members welcomed me with open arms and said, "We're gonna be your friends." Unfortunately, that would be lying. The very first day of that camp, the senior that was teaching me how to march was so intimidating and negative of every mistake I made that I skipped day two, telling my band director that my family was going on vacation, when I really just stayed home in bed. I was introduced to my fellow band classmates by my old junior high band mates as someone whose brain was "absent most of the time", which killed my credibility with the vast majority of the band members. To top it all off, the senior that played the same instrument I did, who was serving as sort of my mentor, said when I made a mistake during a marching exercise, "You're stupid, Derek." - his exact words, along with constantly nagging me throughout that year.
The band's trips to Disneyland, where we went every year, was another illustration of how I was largely ostracized and shunned by most of my band mates. "The Happiest Place On Earth" was not at all happy for me during those years. In tenth grade, after our performance in the park marching up and down Main Street, when it came time for the band to enjoy the attractions and rides, none of the different cliques wanted me to hang around them. Since the band director had a rule that no one went around the park alone, one group was forced to take me along with them. I especially remember when we went on the Haunted Mansion ride and the group I was with got into these sort of moving chair buggies.
I found myself all alone in my buggy, and remember looking into the mirror and seeing a desperately lonely and depressed-looking kid staring back at me, knowing that if not for that no-one-goes-alone rule, I would have been all by my lonesome in Walt Disney's Slice of Paradise.
My 11th and 12th grade trips to that theme park were a little bit better, save for one thing: In both of those years I was ditched by a group of trombone players at an arcade on Main Street, when they put me on a "man test" where I was holding on to some poles at one of the arcade games. I managed to find other groups that didn't mind me around, but to be disrespected like that two years running was emotionally devastating inside for me, and just another reason why my high school years were not exactly the stuff dreams or TV shows were made of.
