The strange truth? The System built to credential genius… was standing on my neck.
Cold open:
I’m headed out the door of Algebra. Mr. Connor gestures, “C’mere.”
Yeah. I shuffled over. Slumped shoulders. Attitude.
“What.”
“I’ve seen your records. Your test scores.”
He leaned in. Shifted his glasses to the top of his head. He meant business.
“I don’t believe ’em. You’re not that smart.”
Ouch.
I don’t even like telling this story to you…
This is Part 2. In Part 1, I met a homeless man named Theo… who dropped one quiet thought that cracked my world open. “Maybe genius lies elsewhere.” This is what happened next.
7th grade, “You’re not that smart.”
I’m headed out the door of Algebra. Mr. Connor gestures, “C’mere.”
Yeah. I shuffled over. Slumped shoulders. Attitude.
“What.”
“I’ve seen your records. Your test scores.”
He leaned in. Shifted his glasses to the top of his head. He meant business.
“I don’t believe ’em. You’re not that smart.”
Ouch.
I don’t even like telling this story to you…
I’m gonna give you a day in my junior high life. Okay… not really one day. A mishmash of days. To make a story.
I dash down the hall to beat the bell for algebra. I dodge two guys and a girl who think it’s funny to try and trip me. But tight-end Steve body-checks me. Shoulder-to-shoulder. My books go everywhere…
“Hey, what happened to your shirt?! HaHaHA,” to an eruption of girlish giggles from kids streaming by as I pick textbooks up.
Two periods ago, some kid had screamed,
“Fairy loop! Fairy loop!” and ripped the loop off the back of my Madras plaid shirt. Left a big hole.
I say nothing. But my teeth are grinding. I feel nauseated. Again.
I make it into class. Maybe we were doing quadratics. I don’t remember. Cuz… within 5 minutes I’m fighting sleep.
I use all my usual tricks. I try staring at the sweeping, red, secondhand of the class clock. Yeah, seeing how long I could hold my breath. Nothing spectacular, mebbe a minute 50.
After about 10 minutes trying to set a record, I switch to counting my heartbeats. See, I was reading yoga philosophy… Krishnamurti, Yogananda…? I want to see if I can slow my heartbeat, ya know like yogis do. Seems like, I remember getting it from about 80 to 60.
That actually made the time fly for a while.
Then I’m doodling. I used to do these weird maze-like patterns of intricate, intersecting lines. Pages of ’em. My hand would cramp gripping the Bic pen…
“Mister. Knapp.” The whip cracked from the teacher’s desk.
I glance at the chalkboard.
“C squared.” I was right.
But Old Man Connor ain’t done. “What are you doing there.”
He doesn’t care that I’m right. Which never makes sense to me. Cuz it’s never about being right. Even when I’m “wrong.”
“I think better when I’m doodling.”
“Well, in MY class… learn to think without doodling.”
“Yes, Mr. Connor.” So I go back to counting my breath…
On the way out, he corners me.
“You’re not so smart.”
My memory is a little hazy. But replaying the scene as an adult, I believe he wanted to motivate me. My quizzes were sloppy. Lots of mistakes. He thought I was a lazy kid who wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.
Turns out… he mighta been right.
“You think things come easy to you.”
He glares a moment.
“You gotta drill.” He was big on drilling.
“Like any student. You actually gotta drill.”
He didn’t know it. But I was barely functioning by this point in my pre-teens. So all that I and my inner trauma heard was…
“You’re not smart.”
See, January of 7th grade, I left a substandard parochial school in Minnesota.
My father took yet another promotion. So… we moved. My fifth school system. Making me the “new kid,” yet again. In a well-funded public system of a wealthy suburb of New York.
Quick snapshot of the culture. Roger Stone, the dirty-tricks guy for Nixon and Trump? A few years later, the class ahead of me elected him senior class president. Maybe student council… I forget.
That’s the tank they dumped me into.
Junior high, in that school? The puberty hormones were making us all crazy. And kids my age were splitting into cliques.
But me?
A stranger.
Weird.
A loner.
Awkward physically.
And socially.
Portrait of a young autist as “The Boy without a Clique.”
The peer bullying was horrific. For years.
When I say my previous school was “substandard”… I was 6 months to a year behind in coursework when I transferred.
I was drowning in French… AND Math. Which freaked this supposed “smartest-kid-in-the-room” kid totally the fuck out. I was totally crashing.
HOW COULD THIS BE? Everybody says I’m smart.
But in this chaos, I caught the eye of one science teacher. Mr. De Vraies really believed in me. He fought the Administration for me. He got me bucked up to the honors track…
Which meant honors kids had already covered all of 7th-grade math in 1st semester. But I joined them in January. Way behind. I had to learn all 7th grade math, and the first month of 8th… right now.
Connor just handed me the textbook and told me, “Catch up.” No tutors. No review classes. Just read.
Sink… maybe swim. I was fucking overwhelmed.
Who cares what my fucking IQ is? So fuck Connor and his fucking drills.
He really popped my cork. A rage meltdown. Days of recovery. Absent from school.
“Sick.” We used that a lot. I almost had to repeat 4th grade cuz I was “sick” so much.
After years of this crap… I graduated in the top 10.
I aced every aptitude test. Ok, more like I A-minused ’em. But I went on to grad school. Many attempted careers…
But no one. I mean not one educator, not one guidance counsellor, not one parent, not one employer… thought I “lived up to my potential.”
Cuz not one of them would admit to what they were seeing right in front of their eyes.
I could only function… at best… a couple days a week.
In and out of crippling depressions. Frustrating bouts of not being able to speak, because I became mute under stress. Couldn’t meet deadlines, prioritize tasks, and on and on and on…
Between the natural differences of my autistic mind…
the effects of an abusive childhood…
and frankly my social, sexual, and physical abuses at school and home…
This was all the potential I had left.
Further Conversations with Don Theo: MORE Autistic Joy in School?
So, Back in Bloomington.
Theo and me… Working on our third styrofoam cup of hot tea, trying to keep warm in that frigid cafeteria. I finish my story about school years. I get 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?!
Theo adjusts his knit cap. Clears his throat.
Soft, hesitant, he 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 two autists? I’d say, process-oriented. Not goals.
Theo loved imagining test designs, coming up with new ways to operationalize hypotheses. Typing up papers? Preparing for orals, for that matter? He kept putting them off.
For me, it was meeting paper deadlines… Flunked out of two master’s programs. Incomplete after incompletes.
“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.”
I slurp tea, then say, “Like that skinny girl instructor trying to teach me guitar from Mel Bay books. I couldn’t learn from her… on paper. Music, in my mind, vines & intertwines in space.”
Okay. So I’m old. I tell longer stories than Theo. Deal.
“But, 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, ‘Barely Alive.’”
Sip.
“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, slow, slurping sip. Timing is every, single, thing. Music or Life.
“Never asked Danny how. Never looked it up on YouTube. Took six months, practicing hours every day. Note by note. By ear, by feeling… cuz that’s my brain.” Drama pause. “But I nearly built a guitar career on doing like he did. Different registers making different voices. Add a little palm muting…”
Get me into the process. The sensations. The hands on.
Theo doesn’t laugh out loud. But I’m digging the shy, wry grin. He too 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 that music-store instructor 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… A generation far, far away…
Or then again, mebbe I am the Bad Seed that Mom spent her life hinting I was.
But then, there’s that universal chord. Something we neurodivergents hear. Those startling similarities across generations… nations… intersections. Which convinces me that either some of you know what I’m talking about…
Or need to.
And 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 encourage the autistic strengths… and passions… that we are born with. Instead of trying to bootcamp drill them out of us.
Imaginary Title Screen: “Autistic Orgasmic Learning.”
“What the fuck was THAT…”
Okay. So 5th grade. Same Catholic 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 white fog. Slowly, the room fades back into focus…
That’s the day.
The precise 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 learning & Autistic Joy…
Like some autistic characteristics… it’s a lot like what many humans experience. All kids love learning new things. But for me it’s turned up to 11… and turned just 5 degrees toward “Different.”
And I don’t mean school learning. I mean exploring on your own. Teaching yourself.
If you’ve known autistic kids… OR adults… 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.
My 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. About 5 months before Kennedy gets assassinated. 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 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 no matter my good intentions. I fight my nature. My neurodivergent nature always wins.
Zero interest always equals zero effort. Throughout my Life.
Anyway… we were supposed to be learning Base-8 arithmetic in school. All the rage for a year or two… like all the other 17 incarnations of New Math since.
Cuz… Programming! “The Career of the Future!!”
And everybody knew MODERN computers thought in base 8… Which they did. Til they didn’t… a few years later.
Mebbe I was a bright kid. But I got stuck at grasping binary. Which Mrs. Beonard insisted was the easiest way to work up to Base 8.
Which meant grinding memorization. Arithmetic was mindless… mindless… mindless…
I need to co-create, co-invent. If I don’t understand something from the inside… it doesn’t exist for me. Like binary right now…
Like way back in 3rd grade… when I realized I could play tricks to multiply. Sneak up on answers faster and more easily than memorizing endless tables. Say, 9 times 7… it’s really just 10 x 7… take away 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 way through making numbers from just 1s and 0s. 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 & vinegar supercharged bottle 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 ones 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????
For me, numbers are like blocks that snap together… like Legos. And these binary puppies just don’t fit.
Then, a curious thing.
I sneak up on the 10… and remember the old “carry the one” routine.
So I take the 01.
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…
That’s my pattern my whole life. Across all kinds of learning… music, art, coding, you name it. I started out slow. But then suddenly rocket ahead of everyone once it clicks.
Confused a lot of teachers along the way.
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. Turned to 11. Twisted 5 degrees…
We humans 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 at that spelling contest word… and won?
Eliminated the last wrong 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 rush in a moment of sudden insight 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… I don’t know that every autist experiences learning new shit like this. But imagine any of that intensity… that joy… harnessed.
There are times… I think there’s nothing we autists can’t do.
“Maybe… it’s elsewhere…?”
The thought popped up again at 58, when thinking about my third wife. Who could write songs and play guitar like a sonuvabitch… that folks hoot and holler through then demand more. Taught herself by ear. No instructors.
And again when we met homeless Mike on the Bike. He used to bring us presents from back-alley Bedford dumpsters. Then tell poetic tales. Sharing his deep life lessons on our rent-subsidized porch.
And when I catch Theo lurking in a dim back corner of my mind. Me hoping he found that dream janitor job… that gave him space to puzzle out big thoughts.
It comes to me in those times. Like a lightning strike. Behind my eyes. A crack of thunder. A straight-line wind…
Maybe genius is everywhere.
This is humbling. And, invigorating.
T.B.H.… I battle internal ableism every day.
I have trouble remembering that not everyone thinks as I do…
There was a time when I thought I was the smartest guy in the room… pretty much every room I happened to be in. Cubicle. Speaker’s podium… Kitchen table.
After all, I was gaslit by teachers my whole life. Boot camped from kindergarten to grad school.
Only Genius matters.
Only read the geniuses.
No one else matters.
And I bought the lie in spades. Cuz It’s all I knew. So, I hyperfocusedly craved being someone who mattered. Anything less than a Nobel Laureate meant failure.
They lied. They gave me a role model no one can achieve. Hard work or not.
And I failed.
Maybe my teachers, the Gatekeepers of Capitalist Culture told themselves they were inspiring me to awesome heights.
But the true result?
I believed it was my fault.
So I bought more education… and earned more failure.
Then I bought therapy,
meds,
High-tech gizmos,
self-help systems,
webinars…
that I also failed at.
Followed by homes,
cars,
and more gizmo.
Trying to fill the hole of need they created.
But Age humbled me.
Over time I realized I may have unusual talents… but also unusual deficits. A real spiky profile.
I’ve worked with billionaires… who invested in me… and tossed me aside. I’ve been humiliated talking to Bill Gates, Bill Joy, Larry Ellison.
And I’ve lived on the street.
Genius IS… everywhere.
Nothing to do with class.
Nothing to do with education.
Gender.
Race.
Maybe it’s there in every moment.
With anyone.
IF… I’m clear enough to see it.
You and I began being born 13.6 billion years… or some other falsely precise number of years… ago. Cuz change one moment in that time stream? You, me, and the world around us don’t exist.
That unimaginable complexity…
Maybe genius
is a property
of the Universe.
Maybe we call it
into Being…
between us…
As we talk together.
Or…
Maybe all that really matters
is the genius you can see
in this exact moment.
And, possibly…
how you could see more…
in the next.
No matter if
you see it fast… or slow.
Or have words…
What an odd comment…
Honestly, that’s all I thought in that moment. Perhaps too caught up in my own shit, I dismissed it. Minutes later, we finally take the staff’s hint, gather up our stuff, and head out the door.
I never saw Theo again. Ever.
“Maybe… it’s elsewhere…?”
- If this excerpt grabbed you… more here: The Book: Frag by Frag.
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This is Fragment 13 of my upcoming autobiography, Autistic Noir, arriving Fall 2026.
I’m building a book out loud. Frag by frag. Just like I lived it.
The Next Act
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Why I Write My Autobiography
I’m only an expert on my own life. Born 1953, diagnosed at 63. Your mileage will vary.
Individual marginalized voices speaking truth out loud? They build bridges to mainstream readers. Think Malcolm X. Think Maya Angelou. Think Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness.
This Fall, I hope to deliver that kind of impact, that power with Autistic Noir: My Autistic Life is My Art. For our neurodivergent community.
Since 2019 I’ve published a quarter of a million words. Over half the size of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Gotta be a pony somewhere in that shit.
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