When I learned the answer, I was not at all surprised…
15 minute read
October 10, 2022, 9:20 AM
Recently, a question that I had been wondering about for a long time was answered definitively. For many years, I had suspected that I had some form of autism spectrum disorder, and over the summer, I took myself in to be evaluated in order to finally get an answer to that question. And the answer is yes, I have Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1, which was formerly known as Asperger’s Syndrome. I kind of knew this all along, but I really didn’t want to self-diagnose and then act based on a self-diagnosis. I’m not an expert here, after all, and for something like this, I wanted to do it the right way. I never really discussed it much on here, but just about all of my friends who are autistic had suspected that I was autistic as well. They knew what they were looking at, and they saw it in me.
It certainly took me long enough to get around to getting diagnosed, though. I had wondered if I was on the autism spectrum for quite a number of years, and I had found Dr. Kara Goobic, a doctor who diagnosed autism in adults, about three years ago. I then kind of mentally filed it away for a while, as I had other things going on, though I did ask about other people’s experiences with Dr. Goobic on Reddit one time in a comment and got no response. Then this past spring, my curiosity about the autism question finally got the best of me, and I began communication with Dr. Goobic via email. We discussed what the process would entail, we determined that her practice was able to take my insurance, and we scheduled appointments around my work schedule. The first two sessions discussed my history growing up and as an adult, I completed some questionnaires (Elyse also completed one questionnaire asking about her experience with me), and then the third session was feedback and discussion. The appointments were great. Dr. Goobic and I got along quite well, and the various sessions went smoothly. And in the end, on the third session, which was feedback, I got a lot of different resources and such to check out, and overall, it was a very positive experience. I went into the sessions with Dr. Goobic with the assumption that I was doing this primarily for my own edification, and that from a functional/practical standpoint, having a diagnosis would change nothing for me other than making me a more informed person, and therefore, I had nothing to lose from it, and everything to gain.
The diagnosis confirmed what a lot of us had already suspected, so my reaction was something along the lines of, “Well, there you go.” That was exactly the diagnosis that I was expecting, so I was not surprised at all. A surprise would have been if the process had completed and it had turned out that I wasn’t autistic in some way. Regardless, it’s good to know what the name of the thing is, because when you know what it’s called, then you can do some research on the thing based on its name, and get a better understanding of what it is.
Continue reading…Categories: Autism, Childhood, Elementary school, JMU, Middle school, Myself, Work
Thirty years ago, we arrived…
18 minute read
September 5, 2022, 6:10 PM
August 31, 2022 marked 30 years from the day that my family came to Virginia, after having lived in Arkansas for the previous seven and a half years. Thirty years is a little less than three quarters of my life thus far. It just seems so weird to think about it that way. But it really does mark the beginning of an era in my life, because unlike more recent moves, the move from Arkansas to Virginia was a clean separation, leaving a lot of elements of my life behind and starting new in Virginia, especially in those pre-Internet days, when there was no social media to keep in contact with everyone. Additionally, having no family out there, I have not been back since we left. The moves since then were not quite as clean of a break as the move from Arkansas was. My 2007 move to Maryland was only me, and my parents stayed where they were. Plus, as it’s only a few hours away, I can go down there almost any time I want, including down and back in the same day. Then my 2017 move was local, so nothing else changed in my life other than the location of my house, and my commute to work. I just upgraded my living situation, and that was it.
The move to Virginia was the culmination of something that was a long time coming. My parents never really wanted to live in Arkansas to begin with, but it was a good career move for Dad with Scott Nonwovens, so they begrudgingly did it, and so we left New Jersey for Arkansas in February 1985. I remember Mom’s mentioning a number of times early on about wanting to move back to New Jersey. And in all fairness, that was understandable. Dad had something to do in Rogers, as he was the one with the job. Mom didn’t know anyone, and her primary role at that time was to take care of a newborn and a preschooler. She had left everyone she knew when we left New Jersey, and it took a while to meet people and form new relationships, though that improved once Mom got a job at the Walton Life Fitness Center in Bentonville. We also didn’t get along with our next door neighbors on one side, as their kids were out of control. That ultimately led to something of a falling out. We put slats in our existing fence on that side so that we wouldn’t have to see them when we were in the backyard, and they built an entirely new spite fence on their side so that they wouldn’t have to see us. The neighbors on the other side were a retired couple, and they were awesome.
Meanwhile, the education situation in Rogers had really come to a head. I had just completed fifth grade, which was my worst year from kindergarten through high school, without question, and that had followed third and fourth grade years that were pretty rough as well. My parents had gone about as far as they could with the school system, and no one was looking forward to another year at Bonnie Grimes Elementary. I was also hearing all kinds of rumblings at the time from my parents about changes afoot. One was that we would not be returning to Grimes Elementary again, and I was also hearing things about moving, which made me think that something big and life-changing was coming, but nothing concrete as of yet. It had been rumored that Scott had wanted to transfer my father to their corporate office in Philadelphia, and so it seemed like we would probably be moving back to New Jersey, as Mom had wanted all along. I didn’t want to move, because unlike my parents, Rogers was pretty much all that I knew, and I was used to it.
Categories: Arkansas, Childhood, Middle school, Stuarts Draft
Yes, I really did meet Andre the Giant back in 1991…
4 minute read
July 26, 2022, 7:42 PM
Back in the summer of 1991, my life was quite different than it is now. We lived in Rogers, Arkansas back then, and I had just completed fourth grade. My father worked as a quality manager for Scott Nonwovens (now part of Berry Global following a series of acquisitions over the years). My mother worked as a fitness instructor at the Walton Life Fitness Center (WLFC) in Bentonville, i.e. Walmart’s corporate fitness center. That job of Mom’s provided a lot of benefits for the entire family, as we all got access to the fitness center facility, of which we made good use. We were there so much that the fitness center almost felt like a second home at times, what with my taking swimming and Taekwondo classes there, as well as a little fitness camp called “Kids Kamp” during the summers.
One of the benefits that came with the fitness center as far as Mom was concerned was the Walmart employee stock purchase program. I participated in it when I worked for Walmart in the mid 2000s, and as far as I know, the company still has this program. Basically, you elected to set aside a certain amount of money per paycheck, which was then used to purchase shares of Walmart stock in your name. As such, you were afforded all of the rights and privileges that came with being a shareholder, such as voting on issues presented to the shareholders, as well as attending the annual shareholders’ meeting. Back then, Walmart was a much smaller company than it is now, so much of the annual shareholders’ meeting occurred at their corporate headquarters in Bentonville.
One part of the Walmart shareholders’ meeting, at least at that time, was a trade show. A bunch of companies that you’ve probably heard of if you’ve ever shopped at Walmart had booths set up and they were showing off all of their new offerings. In 1991, this was held at the Walmart corporate office (in 1992, it was held in a former Walmart store nearby that they had recently vacated following a relocation). Among various things that we saw there, I got to take a Super Nintendo for a spin and play Super Mario World for the first time at the Nintendo booth, about two and a half months before it was released to the public. I remember being surprised to see so many different buttons on the controller (six compared to two on the original Nintendo), and seeing Mario do two different kinds of jumps, i.e. the spin jump and the regular jump.
The things that we rationalize as children…
8 minute read
November 22, 2020, 10:39 PM
Sometimes it’s fun to think back about what mental connections you made in younger years that you probably should not have, i.e. rationalizing things based on incomplete or wrong information. I want to say that I’ve always filled in gaps and such myself, and when I eventually learn the truth, it always makes me laugh to think about what I had once believed.
Right offhand, I remember how I used to think that “gross” was spelled when I was a child. Now mind you, I had never seen the word written down before, but I had heard my mother use the term plenty of times. I like to think that I had a fairly decent grasp on the English language even as a child, so I took a good guess. In my mind, I thought it was spelled “groce”, which to me makes a lot of sense. After all, “grocery” has that spelling, and is pronounced the same way. And words that end in -oss are typically have an “aw” sound for that vowel than a long “o” sound, like boss, cross, gauss, and moss. “Gross” doesn’t fit. I remember when I saw the word in print for the first time, and was informed that it was “gross”, I remember thinking, oh, that’s how it’s spelled? Weird. “Groce” still seems more logical for me, but clearly, I’m not going to win this one. I do tend to say, “G-R-O-C-E gross,” as in spelling it out the way I think it should be spelled and then saying the word, when the situation merits it. You may recall in a Journal entry about soda from 2017 that I used this phrase. That’s where it comes from.
Then there’s the opposite situation, where there were words that I had seen in writing but had never heard pronounced. I remember reading about bones in Charlie Brown’s ‘Cyclopedia, Volume 1, which a children’s book all about the body. It was a good book, and I learned a lot from it. About bones, they said that while the outside of our bones are hard, the insides are “soft and spongy”. I had never made the connection between this word and a sponge before, and so I assumed that it was pronounced in a similar way to bong or thong. I also assumed based on context that “spongy” was something related to softness, and so I was able to work around the unknown word well enough and keep it moving. When Mom eventually set me straight on the word, it suddenly made the passage in the book make a lot more sense, but I admit that I missed my original pronunciation.
Categories: Childhood
Of all the words to split hairs over…
6 minute read
August 24, 2019, 9:18 AM
I’ve got one more school story for you. I figure that I’ve told this one so many times to various people that it’s worth putting in Journal entry form and getting “on the record” once and for all. It also demonstrates just how toxic the situation was in 1990 at Bonnie Grimes Elementary School in Rogers.
Fourth grade, as I’ve indicated before, was a pretty rough year. This particular incident occurred in late October. I was in the car rider line after school, waiting for my ride to church for the after-school program that I participated in on Wednesday evenings. The teacher on car duty was Vicki George, the speech therapist, i.e. the person who worked with the kids that had speech impediments. Having no speech impediments myself, I never worked with Mrs. George in an official capacity. My only interactions with her were when she was supervising other kids, i.e. lunch duty, bus duty, car duty, and so on. My interactions with her were generally negative, because she was a real stickler for behavior – more so than the regular teachers – and as such, on several occasions, I got nailed for stuff that I wouldn’t have gotten nailed for by anybody else. I generally tried to avoid her, but sometimes our interactions were inevitable. I don’t remember how I managed to piss her off on this particular occasion in the car line, but somehow, I did, but in any case, it was something really minor (and what I did isn’t relevant to the rest of the discussion). I remember that she told me, “I’m giving you a yellow slip,” i.e. a report about a disciplinary matter, just before my ride showed up and I left.
I thought nothing of it, and the next day, I got a copy of my yellow slip. Okay, then. I didn’t hear anything else about it for a while, so I figured that was the end of it.
Categories: Childhood, Elementary school
Crossing the line from punishment to just plain mean…
7 minute read
May 29, 2019, 10:26 AM
Sometimes, in reflecting on childhood, you remember an incident and think, “Wow, that was really messed up.” And then the more that you think about that incident, the more messed up you realize that it was. Such was the case of a punishment that I received from my mother in November 1990 that, based on the way it all happened, was just wrong. Before I begin, though, I should note that my parents did a great job overall in raising my sister and me. But this one was wrong in so many ways. And my mother likes to bring this one up in conversation, and speaks about it as though she’s quite proud of herself for it, despite how hurtful it actually was.
Back in late 1990, I was in fourth grade. For context, recall that I did not have the best relationship with my elementary school, as it was clear that they weren’t equipped to handle someone like me (I briefly discuss this in the Mrs. Bradley Journal entry). Because of that, I had a bit of trouble in school, and things were starting to come to a head with my relationship with my fourth grade teacher. So getting punished was something that I was accustomed to.
However, this particular punishment really took the cake, mostly because of how it came about, and what happened in the course of the punishment, and the lasting damage that it caused. In the fall of 1990, Mom had started openly tossing around the idea of cleaning out my room, i.e. taking all of my toys away, as a punishment. Mom brought it up on several occasions that she wanted to do that, and nine-year-old me was terrified of the prospect, because it felt inevitable that she would eventually do that, and I didn’t know how to prevent it because I was never told what transgressions would trigger such a punishment.
Categories: Childhood, Elementary school, Family
Finding my old fifth grade teacher on Facebook…
14 minute read
June 4, 2018, 2:30 PM
Recently, a very familiar name came up in my friend suggestions: “Sharon Payne Bradley”. In other words, this person:
Categories: Arkansas, Childhood, Elementary school
Yes, that is a star costume…
4 minute read
December 8, 2016, 9:48 AM
For this month, the splash photo shows child me wearing a star costume. I normally lean towards running a vintage photo for December, because December photos, owing to the Christmas elephant in the room, are typically harder to do than most because of that extra holiday element. I own very little Christmas junk, and so a new photo requires a shopping trip and some spending to do. That or I do the photo right in the store, as I did in 2008. The December splash photo had nothing to do with Christmas in 2012, 2013, and 2014, owing to some recent non-Christmas photos of me taken in those years, but in 2015, Christmas returned to the splash photo. However, I inadvertently duplicated my work in 2015, as I had run the same photo in December 2006 – a mistake that I didn’t didn’t discover until I did the prep work for this Journal entry.
For this month, my original plan was to run a photo taken in 1987, showing my sister and me with Santa Claus. However, in a routine check of the archives to prevent duplicates, I discovered that I had run it eleven years prior. So that went out the window. I went hunting in my scans of old photos, and found this:
Categories: Childhood, Christmas, Religion, Schumin Web meta
Spotted a zebra finch today…
6 minute read
November 7, 2015, 11:42 PM
So I was on my layover right before starting my last trip of the night, when a bird flew into the bus shelter, and ran right into the glass sides. The bird apparently didn’t hit very hard, because it never even appeared to act dazed. It was like the Chumbawamba song “Tubthumping“, in that it got knocked down and then got up again. And here it is:
So with school starting up again…
7 minute read
August 14, 2010, 9:18 PM
School in Augusta County starts up again this Tuesday, August 17. I think that’s a bit early, but there you go, I suppose. I thought it was neat when one year, they started on a Wednesday. That seems to make a quick first week that still has time to cover all the bases. Day one, you welcome everyone and visit all your classes to see what the teachers’ expectations will be and to get your textbooks. Then day two, you have the big assemblies so that the administrators can explain their own expectations. Then on day three, you have a fire drill (Virginia law mandates a fire drill once per week during the first month of school).
Meanwhile, I decided to take a look at a few school-related things just for the fun of it. One of the things I looked at was supply lists. I went to the Rogers Public Schools Web site, because I’ve always found some of their supply lists amusing. Specifically, I found the supply list for Grimes Elementary, which is where I went to school. And we find out that the tradition continues. For more than twenty years, Grimes has been emphatic: NO TRAPPER KEEPERS. Does anyone even use Trapper Keepers anymore? Now there’s another device that Grimes hates: wheeled backpacks. I would consider wheeled backpacks to be a good thing, as it brings heavy loads to the ground and on wheels, where they probably should be. Maybe Grimes has a deal with a local chiropractor, where they load the kids down with heavy stuff, make them carry them on their backs, and then get a kickback for every Grimes student’s back that the chiropractor cracks. Who knows.
Categories: Childhood, Elementary school, Middle school
Look what I found!
< 1 minute read
May 7, 2007, 12:06 PM
I’m going through and cleaning stuff out in preparation for the big move to DC, and I found this:
Categories: Childhood, Elementary school, Move to DC area