If You Smell Something Funny, It Must Be Asperger’s

Yesterday Chris and I were doing what we always do — sitting on the recliners, dogs napping on or around us, and watching tv. I was fast-forwarding through a boring “Grease, You’re the One That I Want” when Chris suddenly grabbed my arm and turned to me.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” he said. “I was reading some article about a person with Asperger’s on boston.com, and you totally sounded like her.”

“What?” I said. “No way, don’t you have to be, like, super-intelligent?” I was thinking about a Wired article I’d read a year or two ago on Bram Cohen, the guy who created BitTorrent, who has Asperger’s.

“But you ARE intelligent,” Chris said. “More than the average.”

“I thought with Asperger’s, you had to be really smart in one thing,” I said. “I’m the same level of smart in everything.”

“Well, let me tell you about this article,” Chris said. “I mean, I don’t think you have a bad case of it, but you probably have a mild one.”

He went on to enumerate the symptoms, eyes glowing. Apparently the woman in the article had trouble functioning socially, couldn’t look people in the eyes when they were talking or she was talking, and focused on details.

“She even got great grades in high school but then just fell apart in college,” he went on.

I had to admit his description sounded like me.

“I wonder where I can go to be diagnosed?” I said.

Chris looked confused. “Why bother being diagnosed? What difference does that make?”

I thought about this. Now that he’d mentioned it, I couldn’t see what being “officially” diagnosed with Asperger’s would give me. Sure, maybe it would be a cool thing to bring up once in a while, but I was forced to admit that being diagnosed wouldn’t change my life at all. Having a diagnosis wouldn’t make me like people any more than I did.

That being said, I still went online and checked out the symptoms. For once, Chris wasn’t telling me that I was a hypochondriac, so I felt I had free rein to investigate my new disease.

My first stop was the website that I always go to for accurate, clear information: Wikipedia.

Ha ha! I’m such a riot! I’m just kidding you. People like my cousin write entries for Wikipedia, and every time Stephen Colbert mentions it, Wikipedia has to turn off edits on certain entries. So I did not go to Wikipedia.

Instead, I went to the National Library of Medicine. Okay, Health Information, then Medline, then Health Topics, Mental Health, then A… here we are, Asperger’s Syndrome.

I clicked on the link to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and found a list of “a core group of behaviors” used by doctors to diagnose Asperger’s Syndrome.

1. Abnormal Eye Contact. Check. When I talk to people, I have to remind myself to look at their eyes once in a while, but also to look away at carefully scheduled intervals, otherwise I just look kind of creepy.
    
2. Aloofness. Check. I am very aloof. I am the aloofiest aloof person there could aloofingly be.
    
3. Failure to Turn When Called By Name. Hmm….partial check. If I don’t turn around, it’s because I can’t actually hear the person calling me.
    
4. Failure to Use Gestures to Point or Show. Not a check, unless you’re talking about some random stranger whom I will describe to Chris by not using gestures to point at, in order to then say something terribly cruel and mean about that person. Usually, these cruel and mean comments are uproariously funny to myself.
    
5. Lack of Interactive Play. Uh… if playing the Wii counts as interactive play, then not a check.
    
6. Lack of Interest in Peers. Another partial check. Generally, my interest in my peers is limited to whether I can say something mean about them or what they think of me.
    

This was fun. I googled a few more sites, and found more symptoms.

7. At Times, Seems To Be Hearing Impaired. BIG giant check, especially from Chris, who complains that I can never hear what he’s saying. And it’s true, because most of the time I just see his mouth moving, hear some random noises, and wait to see if I’m supposed to make some sort of response before I say, “What?”
    
8. Lack Social Skills. Check! Did I know how to pick up on social cues? Was I able to start or maintain a conversation? Nope!
    
9. May Appear To Lack Empathy. Darn tootin’, I did. Unless an animal was involved, in which case there would be rivers of tears.
    
10. May Have Heightened Sensitivity To Loud Noises, Lights, Or Strong Tastes and Smells. Yes. Quite often, I had to yell at Chris to turn down the tv. And at night, I had to prop a bag of unused cosmetics against my alarm clock because the light from the clock bothered me. Also, I couldn’t count the number of times that I’d asked Chris, “Do you smell something?” and he replied, “I can’t smell anything.” Clearly, my olfactory sense was at least stronger than Chris’s, although not necessarily stronger than the average person’s.

For final proof of my Asperger status, I could take the Adult Asperger Assessment. But you had to register to take it, and frankly, I didn’t have the patience to register. I had a schedule to keep, peers to denigrate, and an alarm clock cover to knit.

Posted by: ssjane | January 10, 2007 | 11:08 pm
Posted in: This Life