I read a poignant incident on having social and attentional difficulties. A young girl of about 7 had just moved into her new house. She was very pleased and thrilled at everything. She was outside when the mailman bought the mail to her house. She was pleased to have a new mailman and to be getting mail at this new address. She skipped up to him and said in an excited, friendly voice," 6 times 7 is 42!" We can all imagine the difficulty the busy postman had in understanding that the girl was being social and friendly.
Similarly, Tim Page, Pulitzer prize winning music columnist, relates to his autobiographical gem, "Parallel Play: Growing Up with Undiagnosed Asperger's", how his mood took a nose dive during a class discussion of his 2nd grade field trip. He had been curious about whether his town's main road intersected another important highway or not. The field trip was his chance to watch carefully. He had watched carefully, and just as he had suspected, the two road did intersect! He saw that they passed the very highway on the way to the next town! But when his classmates eagerly answered the teacher's questions about what they had observed on the trip, he saw that once again, he had paid attention to all the "wrong" things. He had noticed none of the items they mentioned and none of them mentioned the geometry of the local roads.
Who in the world would express friendliness by stating a multiplication fact? Why in the world was a little 2nd grader aware of and interested in what roads led where? Another place in our lives where we learn and use habits without even noticing we are (or aren't). It seems that when we pick up the same things that others us do, and pick them up in the same way and at similar times, we fit in with others better than if our gifts differ and we hear a different drummer. Yet, how are we to know what is the right thing to attend to? How are we to know that we are running on different tracks? Some of us are just different. The difference may be painful, or even sometimes confer an advantage, but we are different.
