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Day 216: Let the Grumpy Lady Pass

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Let the Grumpy Lady Pass

“Guess what happens if you eat a raw snail? They have a parasite that goes into your brain and eats it. And our brain is not prepared for snail parasite. And you can’t defend it. It’s pretty much if you eat a raw snail, it’s all up to the snail if you live or die. If the snail has the parasite, you die!”

I am looking at snails with new eyes now, since my son’s enlightening comment on parasites. I have also reassured myself over and over that the chances are null that I will accidentally eat a raw snail and die from parasites eating my brain away.

Words are powerful, how they can alter the way you once viewed a person, place, or thing….even snails. Words can change the course of a life, too. Certainly happened for me. Just yesterday, in fact.

It was early afternoon, and I was strolling down the aisle in my favorite grocery store, when I spotted a blonde mother with five children. The oldest of her children, a young girl, was carrying her plump baby sister. The other three youngsters were little tots, all boys, ranging in height by a couple of inches from the next.

I stared, because that’s what I do when I’m processing. And about a dozen thoughts traveled through my mind all at once. I examined the mom’s facial expression, and instantly wondered if she was happy or frustrated with the shopping excursion. I noticed two of the boys had little shopping carts and that as a collective clan the family had barely gathered any groceries—just a couple bags of snack food. I evaluated and reevaluated, concluding that the mother enjoyed the attention of onlookers watching her shop with her little crew of miniature hers. In fact, I am quite certain she liked the attention. There were several of us shoppers trying to maneuver around the cute little ones, a line of about five or six of us squeezing our way down the aisle.

I was still watching and evaluating as I crept my cart forward. When I was near the mom, she eyed me closely. Then she turned to her troop and said, “Wait,” putting her arms back in stern gesture, “Let the grumpy lady pass.”

Immediately my right eyebrow shot up. Had she meant me? I was fairly certain she had. I rolled my eyes up and gave a quizzical expression, and then moved onward. A few steps ahead, I stopped to retrieve a can off the shelf. I noticed another lady standing close behind me. Feeling extremely self-conscious, and a bit flustered, I said, “Oh, I am sorry, if I am in your way.” She said, “No problem at all. But maybe you can help me find the artichokes.” I did. We scanned together, and I pointed them out with my over extended finger, while smiling big and glancing the direction of the meanie mom, as if to say, “See, how cheerfully helpful I am!”

Five aisles later, and I couldn’t get the meanie mom out of my mind. Was my expression seriously that sour? For a moment, I wished I was an always-smiling golden retriever.

By the time I reached the last aisle, my thoughts were still wrapped around the incident. By then, I had rationalized that the meanie mom wasn’t a very patient woman, and certainly wasn’t showing an effective example of behavior to her children. But I also reckoned she likely was juggling a full plate and was having a tough day. I also decided, with a mischievous little smile, that her husband, if she still had one, probably didn’t like her.

At the checkout area, I found the safest checker I could—a round-faced, middle-aged woman with a friendly natural grin. At the end of any shopping excursion I don’t look for the shortest checkout lines, I look for the least-threatening face. Typically, I chat it up with the grocery checkers as they are scanning my items. Conversation helps the time go faster, and alleviates some of my anxiety. Not much makes me more self-conscious than a line of strangers watching me; especially when they are waiting with those daunting expressions, seemingly cursing my high-piled grocery cart and wishing they’d chosen another route.

“I hope I don’t look grumpy,” I said, as I approached the checker and eyed the nametag Marge on a purple blouse. (Interesting conversation starter, don’t you think?)

I then explained, with rapid fire, what had happened on the aisle with the meanie mother. Marge smiled and responded kindly, and we bagged the groceries together. I told her about my Aspergers, and the man at the park who gave me his number as a result of my practice smiling, and she told me about her grown son with Aspergers. Turns out she homeschooled her son. He is now twenty and doing very well. We exchanged a lot of information and support in only a few minutes. I dodged the evil glares from the people in line. We were packing up the groceries rather slowly.

As Marge was bagging up the last of the food, she looked up at me, and said, “The main reason I homeschooled my son was because when he went to school he had to become someone else. He couldn’t go to school and be himself and still be accepted. He had to let go of who he was. God made my son in perfection. I wanted my son to be able to be who God intended.”

A bell went off in my head right then. My middle son was struggling in middle school even though  he was attending part-time. His anxiety was very high and depression was setting in.

I decided then and there to not send my son back to school and to instead homeschool him fulltime.

Later that day, as I calculated the probability of choosing the one checker out of a few dozen that so happened to have homeschooled a son with Aspergers, and as I processed that typically I would have not mentioned my Aspergers to a checker at a grocery store (had I not been upset), I smiled to myself about that mother and her five string of words that had changed the course of my life: Let the grumpy lady pass.

© Everyday Aspergers, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. https://aspergersgirls.wordpress.com

Day 72: Lessons Learned

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Lessons Learned

1) When a young man says, “I’ll call you,” the statement is often equivalent to “See Ya.” It’s another form of goodbye, where you never see the person again.

2) Just because a man goes to couples counseling with you doesn’t mean he’s not married and also going to couples counseling with his wife.

3) People will most definitely look away and cringe, if you share up close photos of giving birth or breastfeeding. Then they won’t want anything you offer them to eat.

4) When you are a restaurant hostess at a popular night spot, even if your boss says to be honest with the customers about the wait time for a table, do not smile and say: “That will be about 137 minutes.”

5) If one hairdresser tells you that you should always wear bangs, that doesn’t mean you have to wear bangs for the next five years.

6) If a dentist says, “In order to blend in your dead front tooth with your other teeth, the best method would be dyeing all of your other teeth darker,” run and don’t look back.

7) When the orthodontist tells you, as a teenager, to wear the headgear and neckgear for your braces to middle school, don’t!

8) If a boy calls you cow eyes, don’t go home and cry, punch him.

9) When you are little, don’t wear the same hippy dress you love two years in a row for school photos.

10) Don’t play tunnel tag in the short, Italian wool dress your grandma gave you , unless you wear shorts underneath.

11) Tell your mom when you get your period. Don’t wait three months, and don’t use the free, plus-size, super absorbent, expandable tampons that the gym teacher passed out!

12) Don’t buy life insurance and agree to automatic payments from your bank account, and then wait three years to research if the company exists. It doesn’t.

13) If you have just given birth, and you are sharing a hospital room with a new mother who talks nonstop on the phone into the late hours of the night, complain.

14) If you are an elementary school teacher, and spend three hours on a letter of recommendation for one of your fifth grade students, make sure you spell the student’s name correctly, especially if you don’t want to irritate the parents.

15) While a student in middle school, don’t draw pictures of different boys’ body parts, label them with names, descriptions, and insults, and then leave the illustrations behind at your desk on accident.

16) Even if you have dyslexia, don’t put the spelling words for the test inside the pleats of your cheerleading skirt. You will greatly disappoint your teacher.

17) If you have big ears that stick out, and people laugh at them, wear your hair down until you have high self-esteem.

18) If Italian in America, pluck thick Italian eyebrows, and remember Italian only has one letter l.

19) Don’t save a drowning honeybee in a swimming pool; sensing danger, he will buzz super loud warning his friends. His friends will land on your arm and sting you!

20) When a fake blonde, with a fake tan, and fake nails tells you, “You would look pretty with highlights in your hair.” Don’t say, “I prefer the natural look. I don’t like fake things.”

21) If your boyfriend’s mother invites you to a private lunch, with just you and her, and then says in confidence, “Don’t date my son. You are too good for him,” listen.

22) If you have the flu, and are ghastly sick, don’t beg your boyfriend to take you out-of-town to meet his parents for the first time.

23) Don’t date your weight-lifting trainers. Just don’t.

24) If you are getting a haircut as a teenager, and the hairdresser ignores you long enough for your wet hair to dry, before she returns, leave.

25) The movie Fargo is not a good first date movie.

26) Ask Dad before rearranging his entire dining room and living area.

27) Ask Dad before bringing the puppy home.

28) If you are going to miss one day of college for a funeral, you don’t need to write a letter and then cry to the professor in the hallway, in order to be excused.

29) French classes in high school and college are useless as a second language when you live in California.

30) When you have a long-term boyfriend, and you meet someone at the public swimming pool, you don’t give another boy your phone number and say: “I have a boyfriend, but let’s be friends.”

31) When a young teenager says he’s going to travel from his town 100 miles on his bike to come see you, he might just do that. Better to tell him ahead of time, you have a boyfriend and you aren’t interested.

32) If a young teenager says he’s going to drive his car across country to see you as soon as he gets a job, his license, and a car, probably not true, regardless of what he promises.

33) If you write enough letters to a school district office about the hard water from the sprinkler system damaging the paint on your new red Mustang car, when you park in the parking lot at the school where you work, the district will pay for all the employees to have their cars detailed; however, the superintendent of the district will not smile at you ever again.

34) If you consume too much Excedrin, iced tea, and soda at the same time, you will have a caffeine overdose; and to avoid a thousand dollar hospital bill, you will have to convince the health insurance company the trip to the emergency room wasn’t due to a panic attack.

35) If you’re a teacher and the principal says to you, “You should choose between raising a family or being a teacher, you can’t do both well,” sue him.

36) If an acupuncturist tells you about his failed marriages, his mortgage, his childhood, his parenting woes, and then spanks his wife on the butt in front of you, all while you are under treatment atop the table, don’t go back to that acupuncturist. And don’t feel guilty about not going back.

37) Doctors are practicing medicine.

38) You will offend a LDS person by calling them LSD, even if you have dyslexia.

39) Not a good idea to say, “That pisses me off,” in front of an entire fifth grade class, when you are a teacher.

40) No amount of protesting and letter writing or phone calls will keep a principal from assigning you to teach seventh grade, instead of elementary school, if she thinks you are a good teacher, even if you cry and tell her you hated middle school as a child.

41) If you kiss a mean ugly man enough times, he remains a mean ugly man.

42) When you ask a boyfriend, “Should I get a shorter haircut,” and he says, “That depends.” And you answer, “That depends on what,” and he responds, “That depends on if you are planning to lose weight, or not,” run away from the relationship.

43) The joke: When you’re dancing with your honey and your feeling kind of funny, and your nose is kind of runny, but it’s not, isn’t funny after the age of ten.

44) Don’t read your personal diary to fickle teenage girls.

45) When you are a kid, don’t announce to your seventh grade class you are wearing your first training bra.

Day Forty-Three: Sam Craft’s Lament

| Aspergers Girls

You know what’s great about this blog? Don’t think too hard.

Answer: You never ever know what to expect!

You know what? (Again don’t think so hard.)

I never know what to expect either!

Isn’t that fantastic?

Just nod.

For instance, I thought I’d be writing about the blustering Winnie-the-Pooh day outside, with fallen trees and cresting waves on the Puget Sound. Instead, I end up comparing my experience at the university with the impaling of a vampire. How cool is that?

Just to be completely honest, before I type on, I’ve been working very hard at out-witting my own dang rules. Having seen the dilemma of me against me, I’ve decided to lighten up some. Today, I’m quite gleefully typing in my pajamas and socks. Who wants to get showered and dressed to blog? Who was I kidding?

This is good, or rather beneficial, this rebel mood I’m in, because today is the big day I’ve been both anticipating and dreading, for around three or more weeks. I’ve lost count. And it’s not worth my time to look at the calendar. I’ve spent enough time and energy on this whole university blowup event.

That’s what I’m calling the happening: a huge blowup. Blowup as in filling up a balloon with so much helium that it bursts. Blowup as in a tire’s thread worn to the bone causing the tire to bust. Blowup as in a restless volcano blowing its top!

I’m pretty darn proud of myself that I haven’t blurted out all that transpired in black and white on this blog. I like the mysteriousness surrounding what I have offered, and the respect I’m giving the villains.

I’m feeling okay about calling them villains, even though I know we are all God’s (Universe’s, String Theory’s, what-have-you’s) creatures.

I know these people have taught me plenty; especially about how I don’t want to lead and teach like them. And I know these lessons will carry me far, that the experience has already given me that extra sheet of armadillo-layer across my soft-bellied-sensitive-tummy.

Still, something feels so delightfully good about calling them villains.

Some words for villain are anti-hero and contemptible person.

I picture a little ant with a small red cape that reads HERO going up against a grotesque giant in a huge white nappy (diaper) that reads Anti-Hero. And I envision the ant winning by some divine intervention from the Roman Gods.

I like the term beyond the pale, too. It’s a word related to contemptible and means an unpardonable action. I believe I am in the right to say the professor was beyond the pale.  He was outside the acceptable and agreed upon standards of decency. And dang it, if I have to constantly adjust my actions and phrases to make others feel comfortable, then he ought to have at least had decency.

A little word origin lesson, as I’m a teacher at heart, and always shall be: The pale means a stake or pointed piece of wood. Think vampire. I’m thinking a sexy vampire. Pale is in the word impale, like in the Dracula flicks. A paling fence represents an area enclosed by a fence; so to be beyond the pale is to be outside the accepted home area, or designated safety zone.

Fenced areas or regions were set up for people for safety, such as when Catherine the Great created the Pale of Settlement in Russia.

So the message is: “If there is a pale, decent people remain inside the pale.”

Look what Crazy Frog Found!

By the way, my professor, he jumped the fence.

Now I’m stuck on word origin again. I just reviewed the origin of flipping the bird, ducks in a row, and, you might be happy to know with all my rambling, I’m reviewing that’s all she wrote.  Okay, done.

Last night I dreamt that I parked my ten-speed bike in front of a quaint neighborhood house. When I returned to retrieve the bike, I found it broke into two (repairable) parts. I knocked on the door of the nearby house. An older man answered. (He looked like my professor but way uglier.) The man explained that he took the bike apart because I left too much of my bike sticking out in his driveway. I hadn’t. He then offered to fix the bike for a large sum of money. I knew he was applying trickery and trying to gain from my loss. I declined, and instead had him carry the pieces into my van. I drove away.

Hmmmm? I wonder how my subconscious is feeling about my dumbass professor?

Another thought: How in the world can I produce such deep felt all-loving, nonjudgmental prose like The Wounded Healer and On Leadership one day, and then turn around and have the audacity to call a professional a dumbass?

Oh! I’m raising my hand! I know. I know. Call on me!

Answer: Because I’m human (just like you’re human, I hope), and I refuse to act like I’m not human to earn some semblance of self-manipulated respect. Plus, who hasn’t wanted to call at least one teacher in their life a dumbass?

Okay, just so you know Melancholic Little Me is still around, and obviously Sir Brain (as I’m still rambling). Little Me is carrying an index card that reads:

My Authentic Self: “…caring, nurturing, kind, creative, intelligent, beautiful being who doesn’t wish harm on anyone and wants to be the most beneficial light wherever she is.”

I said those words aloud during a group therapy meeting (in the college course I’ve dropped) when asked by the professor, “What do you wish to share in this group?”

But I didn’t share what I truly wanted to share. I had wanted to say, in group, how my heart had been impaled by two professors and by my classroom study-partner. That would have been authentic!

 

Who is Van Helsing? A protagonist in Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula.

Day Thirty-Six: Sea Turtle Style

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I’m once again on the verge of tears. Which, for me, isn’t that unusual. Though, in totality, I’ve likely cried 100 times more in these last two months than in the last few years. I’m upset and have gnawing-tummy pain.

The feeling stems from having had just left another message for the Dean of the College of Education at the university I am (I was?) attending. I’ve yet to be withdrawn from the class, even though I have decided to stop my course work. This leaves me in an unsettling position, without closure, and without finality. I’m an INFJ on the Myers Briggs test and an Idealist. What these personality traits boil down to is that I need !fricken! closure.

I’m so nervous inside. I’ve been waiting for the Dean’s phone call for over ten days. I was very social-rule-conscious about not calling her too much, after I received a slap in my self-esteem from one professor who told me my two (count them: two) emails stretched over the time of one week—seven days apart—we’re too frequent and urgent. ?? As loony as I think the professor’s judgment was, no matter, I’m hyper-sensitive about contacting anyone at the university.

I’m thinking it’s getting to the point that I ought to share what’s going on with you, only there’s a little part of me, probably Sir Brain, (as he is the push-over, and the token naïveté of my geek posse), who wants to not burn any bridges, not lay blame, and not rouse attention to the situation. LV is secretly hoping that we might attend a summer session at the university. Little Me, I’d like to magically transform into a sea turtle and swim off the coast of Maui.

No such luck.

I struggle with what I can share, what action constitutes grounds for taking care of myself and sharing MY story, and what is best kept in private. The dilemma in what to write in this blog all comes down to my tendency to over-share, and then eventually regret what came out. The hard part is not knowing if this Dean is going to be another authority-figure whose actions I interpret as inconsiderate, non-empathetic, and downright mean. I’m worried she won’t call, yet again, or that when she does call, I’ll be heartbroken. If you see two posts today, in your email inbox, consider me heartbroken.

I’m hoping for one post. I’m hoping the Dean’s call will be productive and positive. But in order to get my tuition back, I have to file a complaint. Or I could walk away silently (without expressing my concerns), withdraw, and be out the money.

Speaking my truth means putting other people in a bad light—which I dislike with a passion. I’ve always had a hard time disliking people, even people who might be considered as having done me wrong. I have trouble with understanding hate and retaliation. I understand extreme disappointment, agonizing humiliation, anger for circumstances, embarrassment, grief, and a host of other not-so-comfy emotions, but I don’t understand vengeance. If I had a little dab of vengeance in me, I figure I’d probably not have much trouble hanging out the truth of the situation.

Once, when I had to be a witness to a man standing trial, I couldn’t muster up any anger. Instead I felt sorry for him: the potential loss of his business, his embarrassment. And he was a man being accused by six women for misconduct, me being one of the victims. Still, I couldn’t feel anything but deep sadness for everyone involved.

I don’t consider this inability to have vengeful feelings a negative aspect of myself; I wish though, at times like these, I carried more of a warrior quality, and less of a wounded healer spirit.

Sometimes people say to let go, relax, give your worries to a higher power, take life day-by-day; sometimes I say those words to myself. The challenge is in having this brain. As I’ve shared, LV just doesn’t work like that. I choose not to medicate myself. I choose not to drink myself to oblivion. I choose not to partake in illegal substances. My body is too sensitive for most mainstream fixes. I can’t even have chocolate without zits or a full glass of wine without gastric pains.

I’ve tried (and still partake) in many alternative treatment plans—from acupuncture to supplements. Still, LV is always about. What works best for my mind (and body and spirit) is a good hot shower, keeping up with the house cleaning, exercise, yoga, sauna treatments, spiritual readings, solitude, uplifting music, healthy eating, getting out of the house and writing—those actions keep me running efficiently, without as much thought-clutter.

Only problem is, with university loose ends hanging over my head, I’ve had the motivation of a slug.

My husband is even worried. Which is stating a lot. He is that Spock-like type from Star Trek who deals with emotions about as often as I deal with revenge. For him to come out and tell me that he’s concerned about me, is saying something fairly vital.

So, as I’ve today, I’ve given myself a few ground rules. I know by putting the words in written form, smack in front of my face (and yours), I’ll hold myself accountable.

To Do:

  1. Start writing no sooner than 9:00 am.
  2. To do absolutely before I write: shower, morning chores, green-tea (shower and tea cuts down on physical pain)
  3. Check blog once in morning and once in evening, only.
  4. Partake in at least one of these each day: sauna, yoga, walk, or swimming.
  5. Take pool aerobics at least once a week. (Be a sea turtle!)
  6. Read spiritual books once a day.
  7. Call someone other than husband a few times a week.
  8. Partake in what I enjoyed before my diagnosis: coffee shop, second-hand stores, nature walks, educational classes, matinée, etc.
  9. Re-explore all the writings I scribed as a spiritual counselor.
  10. Be present and avoid sugar.

Right at the time I wrote number seven, one of my very best buddies called me from California, and she is booking a flight for a visit with me in April! I love how the universe works. Going to follow my rule number three right now. Look forward to touching base soon. Time to crawl out of my shell and face the world again—sea turtle style.

Sea Otter Taken on a Recent Boat Trip

Day Thirty-Four: A Lonely, Heart-Broken Pillow

| Aspergers Girls

Day Thirty-Three’s post was a superb example of me strung out on coffee. I’m assuming that the majority of viewers scanned down the entirety of the post, mumbled, “Crap, this is long,” and got the heck out of dodge. Or, they stopped right around the time I was rambling on and on about how I’d posted a video clip.

Now I’m tempted to copy and paste the bottom portion of Day Thirty-Three (awesome number 33 is, by the way), because the content, in my not-so-humble opinion, is very interesting, like the part when I express how I feel sorry for isolated globs of toothpaste. You might want to see the last part of the post, at the very least. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the gross-factor. Just saying.

I also am remembering my blog rules; and thought I should, (nasty sh word that it is), remind my readers (my friends, my good buddies, my pals) that there really are no rules in blogging. Just incase someone was thinking my powerful prose, I spat out while inebriated (smashed out) on coffee, was inappropriate in length. (Did you know coffee is not made from a bean but from seeds? Who knew?)

I love that there are no rules in blogging. Still I find myself doing what I always tend to do in walking life: analyze others’ style, breadth, subject matter, and quality. But then I reason, with LV (little voice in my head), that the act of Me breaking full force out of this self-inflicted mold, that of the Jell-O-mold of a fear-based conformist, is exactly why I am authoring this blog in the first place! (Now I’m picturing green Jell-O; now cellulite; now thinking I shouldn’t have had that apple fritter and cheese puff yesterday.)

For today, before I ramble on any further, or let Crazy Frog and Brain escort us on a three-hour cruise to cellulite land—as enticing as that sounds—I wanted to share a bit about my college experience. While you venture down melancholic lane, I’ll be heading upstairs to steal some sips of my husband’s coffee and watch the telly. (LV still has that whole British dialect going on from yesterday.) I’m wiping my tears after this one, so consider yourself forewarned.

A Lonely, Heart-Broken Pillow

Through the following seasons, the sharp point of fear worked its way into me like the microscopic barbs of a seed-bearing foxtail.  I was confused and greatly disappointed.  I believed with the coming of adulthood, by at last leaving my mother’s house and striking out into a different land, life would somehow get easier.  I expected the load I’d carried from my childhood to shed itself in layers, to ultimately fly away effortlessly, to disperse across the sky like the seeds of a dandelion… (The rest of the story is in the book Everyday Aspergers.)