"Wing it, boys!" (My Struggles With Autistic Inflexibility.)

There's a wonderful story told by Keith Richards in Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, a movie about my oddball hero, Chuck Berry. The story includes what might be the first rock and roll instant replay.

We first see the scene play out live. An all star band is backing Chuck at his sixtieth birthday celebration in St. Louis. Things are going great when a happy Chuck finds Richards, mid-song, leans into his ear, and says something. Richards laughs and shakes his head, No! Chuck, surprised, laughs, shrugs, and moves away to continue the song. Although the band never misses a beat you can hear a minor musical fender bender when Chuck hits a bad chord during the encounter.

After the show a drunk and exhausted Richards explains that Chuck told Keith mid-song that he was switching keys. Richards says something like, "After weeks of rehearsals, he wants to throw it all out the window and say, 'Wing it, boys!'"

It's something I loved about Chuck Berry. On stage he was constantly winging it, often with musicians he'd never met before climbing on stage. (But he'd rarely been told "no" before.)

I bring this up because I often have trouble winging it. It's one of the many, many ways I'm no Chuck Berry.

I never knew much about autism until I began researching it when I was "diagnosed" (hate that word) at sixty-five. But I remember once, with my very first band, learning something important about many autistic people. 

We were a lousy but enjoyable little band--two older guys, two attractive young women, with a song list to die for. I started playing music on stage in my mid-fifties and I was still at the stage where every song we played felt like a minefield. We had tons of fun, but things often fell apart. Our fender benders were train wrecks.

One day our singer got us a job filling in for an established "gypsy jazz" band at a local club. The band we replaced was headlining the show. We were not established and did not play anything approaching jazz, gypsy or otherwise.

When we arrived we learned that the booking agent put us in as headliners and expected an excellent touring band to open the show. These folks had records! They played four or five shows a week at bars and clubs all across North America. They were amazing. We were not.

We told the booker, "Hey, we should open. These guys are way better than us."

He refused. The more we argued the more adamant he became. We were replacing the headliners so we would be the headliners.

Later, our singer, who knew the show booker, explained.

"He's autistic," she said.

I didn't know then that many autistic people have trouble with flexibility. We don't necessarily like surprises and sometimes need to mentally prepare for change.

I didn't suspect this of myself, because I often love to be surprised, and love to be in new places. I also prided myself on being able to instantly adapt to major changes in my former work as an attorney. Minutes before my very first trial was to begin a very experienced attorney for Ford objected to every one of the exhibits I planned to use in my opening statement. But I knew the facts better than him. I walked over, grabbed several of his exhibits (we hadn't objected) and used them to tell my story.

I was an expert attorney in my field--due in part to autistic strengths that trumped my autistic "deficits." 

As a musician it's a different story. I have some humble musical gifts, but I have definite, less humble limitations--and when someone tries to change things at the last minute, I get thrown for a loop.

Sometimes it's easy. If a singer turns to me and tells me to keep soloing beyond whatever we'd agreed to in practice, I can manage. But once I had a full meltdown because, the day before a Halloween show we had spent a couple of weeks preparing for, two of the band members insisted on adding two difficult new songs. When I tried to object they began berating me, and when one said I didn't want to play the new songs because "They're not Chuck Berry songs," I lost it. (Editors note: I don't play Chuck Berry songs, so it was doubly mean.)

For what it's worth, I learned both songs for the show, and even made a chart so that the bass player could follow on the more difficult one--but that was my last show with those three.

Today it happened again. Our drummer had to cancel a date a month or so from now. We had plenty of time to agree on a replacement for the show, and I know an excellent drummer who'd played with all of us in the past, but the band's newest member--an actual pro musician-- signed someone up without consulting me. 

I appreciate the hop-to spirit. I also know that it will create a frightening minefield for me that night. I will have to deal with unexpected new twists to the songs and a new person, unknown to me, on stage in front of a hundred or so people.

Maybe it's a good thing. If I had aspirations of becoming a real professional musician it would definitely be a good thing.  (But I have no such aspirations!)

I'm turning seventy soon. Music is not my true metier. I'm autistic. and I feel a bit like that autistic show booker who panicked when we asked him not to put us at the top of the bill.

But I will get through it. It's what autistic people have to do every day.

Is It "Late" Diagnosis When You're Over Sixty? (I Don't Think So.)

                                             

I have sometimes smiled when I've read someone was "late-diagnosed" as autistic at the age of twenty-five or thirty. I smiled because I was first "diagnosed" as autistic when I was sixty-five and a half! (The half year is oddly important to me. It makes my late identification seem even nuttier and more extreme.

But I've come to realize that I'm likely the norm for autistic seniors, and that my diagnosis, though late in life, was pretty much right on time.

I also realize that the twenty-five and thirty year olds are right. They probably should have been identified earlier.

Very few people in their sixties or seventies today would have been identified as autistic as children or as young adults--especially those of us who would for a time have fit best under the Asperger's label: autistic people with verbal skills and normal intelligence. 

We weren't seen as autistic--we were just a little odd. Two friends who have known me for decades told me exactly this. "I didn't think you were autistic. I just thought you were weird!"

Like most autistic people of my generation, I went through life with some painful mysteries and some mysterious strengths and successes. In love I figured I was just unworthy. At work, in my accidental legal career, I figured I had some sort of nearly magic power. Neither thought was true, but my odd life, my odd interests, and my oddly successful career sure made a lot more sense once I began to autistically study what being autistic means. (If you're currently on the same quest, may I recommend my book, My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll.)

Anyway, I think I finally figured out how to make this blog visible to search engines, which had been studiously ignoring it. (My Chuck Berry blog, GoHeadOn! [goheadon.blogspot.com] remains on fire nearly fifteen years after I stopped posting. Same platform. I figure the magic there is Chuck.)

But since I've figured out how to make My So-Called Disorder visible, I'll be posting more often, throwing things into the void, and hoping they catch an eye like yours.

A Review of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll by Chuck Berry (and Mathematics!) Scholar Dietmar Rudolph

There was a time when I couldn't get the web browsers to find this blog, but I may finally have cracked the code, which means I have some catching up to do!

Some time ago Chuck Berry scholar Dietmar Rudolph reviewed My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll. You can find his review by clicking here. 

Dietmar is the author of a website called A Collector's Guide to the Music of Chuck Berry that was indispensable to me when I was doing GoHeadOn and, indeed, would be indispensable to any autistically inclined Chuck Berry fan. 

But I'm only now learning that Dietmar is, of course, a lot more than a Chuck Berry scholar. HIs rather remarkable CV can be found HERE.

Thank you Dietmar!

An Autistic Person Meeting Folks for the First Time, Fifty Years Later

My wife and I once participated in a 10k run at the last of the five universities I attended to get my BA. It was the first time I visited the campus with her, and I felt nostalgic. 

"There was a giant, wall-sized photograph of the entire United States in that building," I told her, (forgetting that that satellite images of the entire Earth can now be summoned on any phone). 

But as we marched along I realized how different my nostalgia was from the memories of those around me. Hundreds of alumni were converging to participate in the race. Many wore school colors. They were laughing and talking with lifelong college chums or a person they met on campus and later married. They were remembering frat parties, dances, football games, sex in the dormitories, wild times on and off campus. 

Me? My fondest memory was giant, black and white composite photograph of the United States. 

I loved my college years, but they were different. I spent my college years alone. I explored the libraries and bookstores. I went to plays and movies. I visited art museums and galleries. I read. I listened to music. I taught myself guitar. I wrote. I went to class. I worked. I went home--early on to a dorm room, and later to apartments, where I saw no one and received no visitors.

I suppose I shouldn't exaggerate. I made one good friend during my freshman year. And on a year abroad program I got to know the names and faces of a hundred fellow students but at three other schools I attended I never met or talked to a soul for more than a few minutes.

I was undiagnosed autistic. School was easy. The social life was impossible.

In those days I wrote lots of letters to my family and to my high school friend, Greg. In those letters I described the people around me as dummies and snobs. I tried to be funny about it, but my bitterness was palpable. I had no explanation for why I found myself alone in large groups of happy people.

There's no way for me to mend relations with people at four of my five colleges because I never learned their names. But for a decade now I've been attending reunions of the year abroad program that I attended in the mid-1970s.

The year abroad program was different. It was a small group. We flew abroad together. We travelled together. We studied together. We lived together in small rooming houses. A lot of us drank together. I wrote about the experience HERE. In some ways I knew those people like the back of my hand. I knew their names and faces, the way they talked and laughed.

But I didn't actually know them, and they didn't know me. They saw me as inexplicably quiet (except in my own rooming house, where I was inexplicably loud.) I tried for a while to fit in, and to some extent tried to join in, but without much success. For the most part I simply observed.

When I began to attend the reunions, forty years later, I inherited a batch of photographs taken by others. I only appear in a handful, accidentally, and off to the side. Once, looking at them, I teared up. 

It's been interesting to meet the other students forty and fifty years later, now that I have the skills to interact properly. I feel like I've met many of them for the first time. They are interesting people, with interesting lives. (Our year abroad was undoubtedly a factor; most of us have continued to travel and explore throughout our now long lives.)

I wish it had been easier to get to know each other then. 

I'm glad it's possible now. 

A Review by Joe Martin in Post Alley

A review of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll by Joe Martin in the Seattle online newspaper Post Alley (someday the puzzle motif will disappear!) If you've read the book, I'd love for you to leave a comment about it under the review! At any rate, thank you, Joe.

https://www.postalley.org/2025/12/23/a-new-book-autism-and-a-fulfilling-life/

Trop Parler C'est Maladie, Spark Launch, (and a Little West African Music)

I want to thank Chaya Mallavaram and Mike Cornell for having me on their wonderful Spark Launch podcast, which focusses on neurodiversity. (Find it HERE, or look for it on YouTube or other places podcasts are found.) In our discussion I talk a bit about my very autistic way of preparing for my first visit with a therapist--scripting and rehearsing every word I wanted to say. I didn't do that for Spark Launch, but I'm afraid that writing my book, writing several articles, and scripting several speeches about the value of neurodiversity had me overly prepared. (My dad would have called the result "diarrhea of the mouth;" my friend Dando Gabi would have said "Trop parler c'est maladie!") I talked too much, and should have settled in for more of a conversation. But in the end, good stuff was said by all.

By the way, I only learned recently that Gabi's wonderful phrase, "Trop parler c'est maladie" (too much talk is an illness) was from a song by Benin's Polyrthmo--a song I'd probably heard ringing in the background a hundred times--or may even have danced to a few times. Music was (I'm sure is) ever present in Togo in those days. 

(And speaking of Togo, I tell a good story from Togo in the podcast about when I learned the value of open doors--a nearly perfect analogy to like as an autistic person who doesn't understand the rules of the neurotypical world.)

Former Child, Still Autistic: Robert F. Kennedy Hasn’t Got a Clue

Talking recently about autistic kids, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said, “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

As a former kid and still autistic, let me say that maybe he got the baseball part right, because I was a terrible baseball player. Fly balls put me into a panic, and pitched balls evaded my bat most of the time. 

But I played baseball. Two years of little league, and as few games of schoolyard ball as I could muster. 

He might be right about dating, too. Looking back I realize I dated about as well as I played baseball. I went on my first dates when I was twelve or thirteen, but I didn’t make a habit of it for quite a while. In fact, I never made a habit of it, except with my wife. 

Still, I remain proof that, just as a man with a brain worm can become Secretary of Health and Human Services, an autistic kid and man can date.

Mr. Kennedy might also be right about the “job” business. I’ve had a dozen or so jobs and excelled at most of them, but the truth is, autistic people like me often prefer to start businesses of our own and to be our own boss. 

That’s not “holding a job,” it’s being an entrepreneur—a “lil’Elon” if you will. 

(I won’t!)

I’ve never published poetry, but I’ve written lots of songs and a book. Do those count.

As for the toilet, I must say my biggest fear is reaching a point in life where I have to use a toilet assisted. But I guess if I do, I’ll keep calm and carry on. It happens to the best of us—even us autistic folk.

But where Mr. Kennedy really got it wrong is that business about never paying taxes. He must be mixing up regular autistic people with the autistic billionaires he hangs with today. Being something less than a billionaire myself, I can tell you I’ve paid lots of taxes! DOGE can confirm this. They have the data. 

Maybe they’ll give the money back now that they know I’m autistic and bad at baseball. Let’s call it an administrative error.

As the saying goes, if you’ve met one autistic person you’ve met one autistic person. We’re all different. We each face different challenges in this neurotypical world, and some of us face more than others. I’ve had it good.

But the biggest challenge most autistic people face is the ignorance and prejudice of people like Mr. Kennedy.

April is Autistic Awareness and Acceptance Month. Our Secretary of Health and Human Services hasn’t got a clue.

Peter O’Neil is an autistic attorney, husband, father, grandfather, musician, writer, and the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll.