That may be true, but I cannot help myself in thinking that if it was not for my Asperger's, which I never even heard of until early 1996, over ten years after my high school graduation, my teenage experiences would have been immensely better, and I may have well had those kind of fun times that I saw on TV sitcoms and in the "Archie" cartoons - that was my image of what high school was like as a young kid. Silly me.
Some of my old schoolmates and band mates may even be a bit surprised to see these words coming from me - during my last year in school I made various funny wisecracks and jokes in band that got me a little bit of social credibility.
As a result, my 12th grade year was a tiny bit better for me socially than my sophomore and junior years combined, but that's not saying much. It is like a last place baseball team losing by two runs in the last game of the season instead of 20 runs.
By making those cracks and trying to get laughs, I was masking my pain, I realize now. I was trying to give an image of having a witty sense of humor to hide the fact that I was emotionally hurting and damaged inside.
It is not my intention to paint myself as someone who suffered nothing but oppression in high school for no reason. If I did not have AS, if I was merely your garden-variety teenage boy, then I would freely admit that the rejection I suffered in those days was my fault. That the things I said and did that led people to tell me to "shut up" and shun me was my responsibility, and that I paid the price for my insensitivity.
It was my Asperger's condition, however, that caused me to say the inappropriate things I said and did, that led to my social rejection and ostracization. Unfortunately, by the time I first learned about the disability, when I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about a guy with AS whose experiences almost mirrored mine, it was over ten years after graduation, ten years too late.
In fairness to all of those fellow schoolmates of mine who treated me so badly, none of them knew about AS or aspies; I had no idea what it was. No one did. And not all of my classmates and band mates treated me like dirt either - there were a few that, while they were not exactly close friends, treated me fairly OK.
It may not have mattered whether those kids who abused me knew about AS or what an "aspie" was anyway. In my 10th grade year we had a guy in band, a senior, who was clearly autistic, more severe than me. He wasn't treated at all well by the others. Once I overheard a senior flute player, a prominent member who was not only voted our school's Homecoming Queen that year, but also ended up going to Stanford University, say that she auditioned for the wind ensemble - our top group - to get away from this guy.
Kids with developmental disabilities were not understood nor tolerated too well in school in those days, "retards" being the prominent term that NTs - Neurotypicals (people with no mental disabilities) - used to describe them. They were bullied and poked fun at in grade school and shunned in hgh school, like I was.
Looking back on it all, the high school that I attended, a large, competitive, comprehensive public school with almost 3,000 students, was probably not the best learning or social environment for me. It would not have been the right environment for most aspies, due to the social demands combined with lack of social skills common to those with AS.
Fortunately, today there are programs that cater to aspies, teaching them social skills and providing services and a nurturing atmosphere, which simply did not exist during my high school days over twenty years ago.
The lack of any programs outside of regular special education classes, combined with the lack of knowledge about Asperger's during my teen years, meant that my fellow aspies and I were going to suffer, especially socially. The swim-or-drown approach that many of the teachers at my school used was ill-suited toward my needs.
I would have fit in better, and have done better academically, at a school with a much smaller population. A place that was more nurturing, where teachers and students alike showed that they cared, where they were more open, accepting, and friendly, and where a more personal approach was used, where the philosophy would be, "We're going to do everything possible to see that you make it."
I want to state that as the years after high school passed, I understood more and more that my high school was trying to prepare us for life - my band director even said as much during my first band camp. I understood that the school I went to took a competitive, swim-or-drown philosophy because they wanted to see us succeed in the real world, a perfectly valid reasoning.
My Asperger's wouldn't allow me to see things that way at the time, though. I felt that the pop quizzes, the harsh testing, and the high demands were done out of meanness, to make me miserable. It was not until my second year of junior college that I finally started to "get it", that my work ethic - and my grades - started to improve.
As such, I felt fortunate that my final high school grade point average was 2.62. When graduation came, I felt like I had survived, that I had gotten a reprieve from the abuse and alienation that being an aspie had brought me.
Some people will certainly see this as the bitter ramblings of an oafish loser who can't just "get over" what happened to him as a teenage kid over two decades ago. They will say that I should "forgive and forget" and "move on". It is a logical and reasonable request, I'll admit that, but it's like the old saying goes, "Easy to say, hard to do."
I am glad, however, that there is more awareness of Asperger's Syndrome, and more support for those in school now who have this condition. That definitely was NOT the case during my youth and teen years. It is good to see the next generation of "aspies" get the nurturing, support, and services that I didn't get. I remain hopeful that it continues.
