Part 3 of Autistic Joy in Education. Theo & me talk autistic orgasmic learning. Cuz someone’s gotta…
👉 Podcast to come…
⏭️ Podcast & transcripts of Part 1 and 2.
So, Back in Bloomington. There’s stuff I left out… Til now.
Theo and me… Working on our third styrofoam cup of tea. I just finished telling my story about school years. Bullying by classmates, teachers, then at home… Hell, the whole damn Teacher-Parent system. I got a tad colorful…
But Theo didn’t offer similar stories.
“Um. I don’t talk about things like that.”
He looks down into his lap. Moments pass.
Me, worried. Did I overwhelm a potential friend… yet again?!
Soft, hesitant, Theo starts.
“No… not with others.”
Pause.
“I can’t relive all that stuff.”
It became crystal. Right then & zen. We shared a lotta traits…
We 2 autists? I’d say, process-oriented. Not goals.
Theo loved imagining test designs, coming up with new ways to operationalize hypotheses. Writing up papers? Or preparing for orals, for that matter? He kept putting them off.
For me, it was researching sources… I was a great grad assistant. I loved spending hours on LexisNexis. But I flunked out of two master’s programs. Incompletes after incomplete.
“I learned all the best stuff out of school.”
Theo’s hesitant smile got me. Like it was a wicked secret.
So, I totally Yes-AND-ed him.
“I’ve never learned well from another human. I’d rather steal from their example.”
Okay. So I’m old. I tell longer stories than Theo. Deal.
“There was this guy, Danny. Back when I was in a band.”
Sip. This tea is living proof that sugar can not fix everything…
“He was a singer-songwriter. Accompanied himself on guitar. So, one night, we’re gigging with him. At Jake’s. He’s singing a heart-wrenching blues about some breakup.”
Sip.
I wink. Broadly.
“Here’s my steal. Danny’s fingers are jumping up and down the neck. Playing low bass riffs for sad lyrics. Then high up-the-neck licks, for a little melody comment between lines.”
I take one last, luxurious slurping sip. Timing is every, single, thing. Music or Life.
“Never asked him how. Never looked it up on YouTube. Took six months, practicing hours every day. Note by note. By ear… cuz that’s my brain. But I nearly built a career on doing the same. Mebbe with a little palm muting…”
Theo doesn’t laugh out loud. But I’m digging the shy, wry grin. He talks about not learning well from humans. Brings up computer-assisted education.
“I didn’t feel like I was competing with teachers.”
Which blew my mind.
I never knew why, but there was always that sense of friction. Whenever I worked with a teacher or mentor… Even the guy giving me guitar at 13.
There IS something. Mebbe not competition. Mebbe status. Power. Something else I don’t grok…
So, maybe… I’m a freak example.
One weird guy who couldn’t make the American educational system work for him. A long, long time ago… From a generation far, far away…
Or then, mebbe I am the Bad Seed that Mom spent her life hinting I was.
But then, there’s that universal chord. Those startling autistic similarities across generations… nations… intersections. They convince me that either some of you know what I’m talking about…
Or need to.
So, I’m gonna end this tale with a snapshot of what education could be. For an autistic child. No matter what their “tested” capabilities…
If we can just find a way to tap into the autistic joy… and passions… that they were born with.
Imaginary Title Screen: “Autistic Orgasmic Learning.”
“What the fuck was THAT…”
Okay. So I’m in 4th grade. Still in Catholic parochial school. Never said any such thing… back then. But it’s a precise transcription into adult-ese… of what I felt.
I get excited. Wave my arms. Start bouncing on my butt. Up and down on the sofa in front of the coffee table. I’m breathing hard… gasping… I shudder… and…
I moan. A weird, high pleasure/pain moan. My head snaps back. My eyes close…
Ya know… Like good sex. That first time.
A flash of bright, white light. My eyes jerk open. But I can’t see anything through blinding fog. Slowly, the room fades back into focus…
That’s the day.
The exact moment.
Autistic-as-fuck-dot-me got addicted to learning. I mean a hard-core… dope-sick… sell-your-dog-to-get-well… learning junkie.
Cuz after 2 hours alone. Frustrated… Pulling-my-hair-out-and-staring-at-the-follicles anxious… Trying to wrap my grade-school brain around binary numbers…
It suddenly… Snapped. Into. Place.
We’re gonna talk Autistic Joy again…
Like some autistic characteristics… it’s a lot like what many humans experience. Amplified… and turned just 5 degrees toward “Different.”
All kids love learning new things… that interest them. But there’s something unique about the joy many autists feel learning…
And I don’t mean school learning. I mean exploration on your own. Teaching yourself.
If you’ve ever known an autistic child… OR adult… for sure, you’ve witnessed it.
A kid jumping up and down.
Waving his arms.
Repeating the same exact phrase. Over and over.
Giggling in a library… knowing he must be quiet.
But he just found a new book on Gigantoraptor.
Filled with detailed illustrations….
And they got the feathers right…
He’s gonna explode.
Junior High was full of names for it. “Nerdgasm.” “Spazz out.” “Geeking out.” “Being a dweeb”…
Let me tell you about my most intense buzz.
It was just after my 10th birthday… 1963. I pestered my parents for weeks… for ONE present.
A Digi-Comp I.
It was a real, functioning binary computer… made from plastic. That you cranked. I mean, by hand…
I HAD to have one. See… Boy’s Life, the Cub Scout magazine? It carried a full-page ad on this mechanical computer…
And I always thought arithmetic was just stupid memorization.
Don’t get me wrong. I tried HARD to conquer every task handed to me. Always did. I was driven to be a “good boy.” To please parents & teachers.
But I’ve never been able to fight my autistic nature. No matter my good intentions. I fight my nature. My nature always wins.
Zero interest always equals zero effort. Throughout my Life. Like a lotta autists…
Anyway… We’d begun Base-8 arithmetic in school. All the rage for a year or two… like all the other 17 incarnations of New Math. Since then.
Cuz… Programming.
“The Career of the Future!!”
And everybody knew MODERN computers thought in base 8… Which they did. For a few years.
Mebbe I was a bright kid. But I could NOT make the switch to base 8 from base 10… except through grinding memorization. I hated multiplication tables.
Mindless. Mindless. Mindless…
Until… I realized that I could play tricks. Sneak up on answers faster and more easily than memorizing endless tables. Say, 9 times 7… it’s really just 10 x 7… minus one 7… so it’s not 70… it’s REALLY 63.
If I could make a game of something…? Like creating an algorithm to do squares in my head? Then it was fun. Learning from a teacher…? Not so very much.
But I could not think my own way out of the switch from counting 1 to 10… to counting 1 to 8. Total block. For weeks.
So Digi-Comp I was my hail-mary pass. I’d get the computer… program it… then polish off my homework. Without suffering.
Get parents and teachers off my back.
More time for
Growing my paramecia from pond scum.
OR squeezing maximum altitude outta
My pump-action,
Baking-soda supercharged,
Water rockets…
Ya know, cool stuff.
So here I am. Sitting in front of my last hope. My own real computer… that I snapped together on the coffee table.
BUT it actually… takes work… to understand and program the damn thing. Even if it did come in a game box…
Sigh. Who knew?
More work than Base 8 was in the first place.
Throbbing headache. Tight nausea. I start beating my temples with my fist.
I can’t believe this. I’m way smarter than this. The other kids are getting it. And I’m way smarter than them.
I’m alone in the house. I let out this guttural scream… aimed right at the instruction manual. Cuz it felt personal. Like someone was doing this to me… on purpose.
I’m looking at four sets of 1’s and zeros — 001, 010, 100, and 111. The 001 means 1. Okay. Got that.
But add 1 + 1, and you get 10… which “really” means 2?
The 100 means, what, 4? Get, this… hundred-and-eleven means… 7…!?
And someHOW this relates to Base 8?
And is going to do my homework for me????
Then, a curious thing.
I sneak up on the 10… and remember the old “carry the one” routine.
So I take a 1.
If I add another 1…
They don’t both fit in the first column.
So I carry the one into the second column…
And the second column, 10…
Is REALLY a 2 on Bizarro Binary World!
So 11 would really be the secret identity of 3…
Whammo.
The light bulb. Goes. Off. Like a firecracker in the top-back of my head.
Next day? I ate arithmetic class alive…
I’ve talked with other autists about the joy of learning.
Lots of similar stories. Less intense, mebbe. But that internal craving for learning something new?? Part of pretty much every autist I’ve ever met. So far.
And in many ways, as exotic as it may sound… it’s what every human experiences. Just amplified. And twisted about 5 degrees into the weird…
We are hard-wired for joy.
Autistic or not.
Every “good” thing you do….
Eating,
Sleeping,
Shitting,
Making babies,
Helping an old lady cross the street,
Solving problems… and….
Learning something useful to you…
Comes with a little shot of joy juice. Nature’s reward for a job well done. You know what I mean…
That rush you feel?
When the RIGHT jigsaw puzzle piece jumps out at you… after you search for an hour?
Guessed that spelling contest word… and won?
Eliminated the last false suspect in Clue?
Solved those cool SAT logic problems…?
Hell… For me, any multiple-choice test… IQs, the WAIS, GEDs. Every question… one bingo after another. HIGH on dopamine. Orgasmic.
SO…
Mebbe I never experienced that moment of learning again. With such clarity and ecstasy.
But each and every time… There’s that faint echo. Like chasing the ghosts of your first monster rollercoaster or your first kiss…
The excited squeaks. Flapping hands. Jumping up and down…
Ecstasy.
Look… Not every autist experiences this pleasure the same way. But imagine that kind of intensity… that kind of joy… harnessed.
There are times… I think there’s nothing we autists can’t do.
So, it’s time to give you my takeaways.
A little bit about how I learn. I have no training in educational theory. But I hope I give you some clues that educators will know what to do with. Here’s me learning…
I experience thinking as a language of images, sensations, feelings, and metaphors.
More than words, sentences, logic, symbols.
My memories? Not facts, words, judgments. They’re more like dramatic scenes.
With location shots,
Characters,
Lighting,
My costume,
Weather,
What I felt.
I relive them to remember.
And I process thoughts almost like manipulating physical objects.
Numbers are like blocks that snap together… fitting like Legos.
Music, in my mind, vines & intertwines in space.
I remember language more clearly when I handwrite… or make notes in book margins.
Things I can touch… or imagine I can touch… are most real to me. Memorizing symbols? Words? Nah.
Get me into the process. The sensations.
To some autistics, some of this will sound familiar. Like, doesn’t everybody…? Others are more at home with symbolic logic.
I learn differently than other folks. I need to understand. Or I can’t remember.
I need to co-invent. If I don’t understand something from the inside… it doesn’t exist for me.
I learn new “categories” of knowledge slowly.
Like switching to base 8.
Switching from clock faces… to digital clocks? What a freaking nightmare.
But.. once a new area opens up to me…
I seem to associate the skills and concepts with other related knowledge more rapidly than most folks.
Even come up with new solutions… supposedly “thinking outside the box.”
Take Music, Art, Literature, Cinema…. Rhythm,
Texture,
Line,
Shading,
Repetition,
Variation,
Direction,
Structure….
Really, it’s all pretty similar. I switch from one to another.
For some, it’s the same with math.
The joy of learning could be the same for autistic astrophysicists… as for autistic guitarists.
Director Tim Burton might be autistic. He made Edward Scissorhands and the Nightmare Before Christmas.
Physicist Albert Einstein might be, too. He made Relativity. And shows up on the Brainyquotes website. A lot.. .
But how we individually explain the ecstasy of the learning process? To ourselves… and others…?
Probably, it’s different.
How can we help today’s autistic kids…
To NOT get lost in the system… like I did? Whatever their capabilities… whatever their special passions?
We need an autistic education centered on autistic natures.
Engaging the power of autistic specializations and passions…
And then building further. Using those skills, concepts, similarities… to teach NEW areas. Not trying to make autistic brains learn like other brains learn.
Providing structure to learn by… doing. Using the joy of process… rather than goals. Ya know, like multiple-choice tests. Or competition ranking.
I was gifted…
BUT I was the freak. Because my disabilities were invisible.
What school expected of me? More than I could handle.
There is no question. I came from privilege. Race, class, intelligence… you name it. And yet, I was disabled.
Even if so many of you listening… or folks you care for… are even more disabled. At least as far as today’s schools are concerned. Or universities. Or business offices.
For myself, I don’t compare disabilities. It’s not a contest.
I failed to thrive. Other “gifted” children fail to thrive. I have no clue who suffers most. Does it matter?
Look, there are groups of kids… for various reasons… that education marginalizes. Kids are suffering.
Address their needs.
School isn’t a triage unit on a battlefield. We don’t prioritize who survives, who doesn’t…
At least, I pray that we don’t.
You see a kid in pain? Deal with the pain.
I thought I’d end on an important side point…
I write about childhood experiences. A lot. With purpose. It’s a great meeting ground. Who doesn’t love kids?
So, parents of autistic kids, professional caretakers, and adult autistics…?
When we share notes…
Childhood memories,
Experiences,
And our thoughts on them…
You get a peek into that mysterious world your autistic child inhabits. The joys. The wonders. The fears. The challenges. The victories.
AND… honestly?
I write about kids cuz I get to turn again and again to my earliest memories. To recover my own natural joy.
May this generation never lose it.
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