An Old Client Found; An Old Problem Persists.

The other day a child fell from a sixth floor window in Seattle. It was a hot day.

In my book I briefly touch on three "window fall" cases we handled in the early 2000s. I mainly tell the story of how my sister Ann's creativity and persistence helped expose one defendant's dishonesty--something that had become a pattern with that defendant. It happened the day before mediation and probably had the result of doubling our recovery.

For several years all I could see were windows--sliding windows on the upper floors of mid-rise apartment buildings. I drove through town looking up, looking for better designs. That's autism for you. 

Also capitalism. The crap windows were cheap, and everywhere.

My mentor Paul Whelan is the one who made these cases feasible. He got the Washington State Supreme Court to recognize a product liability action against window manufacturers.

We then got a case in a nearby suburb where a toddler fell from an upper story window onto concrete and suffered horrible injuries. His family was in town briefly and were provided this apartment. In addition to a poor design, there was a known installation defect in the window that made it difficult to open or close. One hot day, our then four-year-old client stood on the window sill to wave to neighbors and fell through the screen.

Autistic perseverance brought me to the legendary Seattle pediatrician Abe Bergman, who kept track of all such cases that passed through Seattle's Harborview Medical Center. Dr. Bergman told us that it was a common problem when temperatures rose. Windows were opened, and toddlers, whose job is to explore the world, did so.

We asked our experts to design and build a "fix" that could be added to any such window. They came up with something any adult could operate but a toddler could not. It could be bolted on to any window sill.

Later we got another case involving the same property management company. They told us that second case was the first they had ever heard of. We told them about the other one. They kept lying until Ann got them into potentially deep trouble by finding another, right before mediation.

Anyway, yesterday, after reading the story of the recent tragedy in Seattle, I googled the name of the little boy who fell onto the concrete you see above--and rather remarkably I found a professor of mathematics at a famous university! He looked just like my client!

I wrote him an email, and this morning I woke to emails from both the professor and his dad. Both said that the money from the lawsuit allowed him to work his way to a brilliant recovery. It was one of the better mornings I've had.

Being autistic in a neurotypical world can be a pain. It's also a joy. 

But putting your autistic joy to work to help others--that's priceless.

Opening Arguments Podcast

A month or so ago I found a message on my phone telling me that a legal/political podcast called Opening Arguments wanted to talk to me about my book. I checked out the podcast on YouTube and loved what I heard and saw. The episodes I found were hilarious and serious at the same time. How else could a legal/political podcast react to the world we live in today?

Then I got an email from one of the hosts, Boston immigration attorney Matt Cameron. In a lengthy missive, Matt told me that he, too, is autistic and that he'd read my book and wanted to talk about it. I happily agreed.

A week or so later I dressed for the event (nice ironed shirt and sweatpants) and set up my laptop so as not to emphasize my double chin. Turns out this version of the podcast was not destined for YouTube, so I needn't have worried.

But what a nice hour. It's always sweet to talk to a similarly situated autistic person. We understand each other!

The podcast is easy to find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you normally find them. (I'm not a podcast person, so I can't offer much more help than that.) Here is a link to Opening Arguments' Patreon page. Click Here for Opening Arguments.)

One June 26 the book and I will appear on Opening Arguments' Book Club, for Patreon members only. Looking forward to it.

Passing

For a long time I passed as "normal." I had a wife, kids, car, a home, and a good job. Then, a divorce, a second marriage, another kid, more cars.

Normal, right?

I also had a profound secret--because my college years, which went on for a long time as I dropped in and out of different schools, were anything but normal. I spent them mostly alone. 

But I didn't talk about that, to anyone. And because my life appeared "normal," nobody asked.

Until my wife, Rebecca, a bit tipsy after a date, asked about my college girlfriends. I felt, instantly, as if I were plummeting down a dark, deep elevator shaft. I had no college girlfriends, at least not in any normal sense. A handful of spectacular young women tried to befriend me, and we did fine while they were in front of me, but I could never seem to hold on to them for more than days or weeks.  I fell into an instant, dark depression, made worse by all the years I had successfully avoided talking about the truth of my life as a young man--even with Rebecca.

From that moment on my life as a young man began to bother me more and more. I went home and thought about each of the young women I describe in my book. I felt I had wasted the best years of my life. I blamed myself for having been so alone. I hated myself for it. I felt utterly ashamed. 

So finally, after another five or ten years, I got myself to a therapist.

I liked that first therapist. I spent days before my first appointment carefully scripting a full disclosure of my life and times. I did a good job rehearsing. I poured it all out in the first session, brilliantly, flawlessly, beginning to end. At one of the next sessions I arrived laughing, because I realized that I had left Chuck Berry out of my brilliant soliloquy. I brought a 200 page manuscript as a visual aid. A few years earlier I had written a memoir about my fixation on the man! She took it home to read a bit. But though she now had all the evidence anyone should need this classically trained psychologist was never going to see that I am autistic. She was looking for trauma and abandonment and avoidance to explain my solitary life.

Luckily, Covid intervened and I stopped seeing her. I tried again a few years later, with a new psychologist. It took the new person ten minutes. She sent me home from my first session with with a book on neurodivergence. 

The rest of my diagnosis took four or five weeks. I spent hours online, at the library, and doing whatever else I could think of to understand what it means to be autistic.

What a blessing. For the first time my entire life, including my "college years," made perfect sense.

And instead of blaming myself, I began to applaud myself for having made the best of a tough situation. I also saw the many lucky breaks I'd had that helped me find my own small successes in life: a dysfunctional but loving family with built in playmates; a wonderful, tiny high school; three years in a foreign culture that didn't notice my quirks or differences; an accidental career that allowed me to use all of my autistic talents and charms; a mentor and champion who supported me in the workplace; and above all, a loving wife and family who accept me despite my quirks and perhaps in part because of them.

Strangers in a Strange Land

When I was an older teenager, the social world was a complete mystery to me, but I didn’t know. Only by looking back, with the hindsight of autism, do I see all the mishaps and misunderstandings.

As a young twenty-something, things got worse and I did know—or at least, I knew that something was wrong. I would see collections of unremarkable young people roaming the streets together and I knew that, for some reason, that life of camaraderie and romance was not available to me. I kept calm and carried on.

By the time I went to West Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer things were changing a bit. I managed to infiltrate the outer perimeters of the American trainee group, but my biggest progress was with the African teachers who were training us. We had some wonderful discussions.

Months later, in the village where I was posted as the lone American (or non-African, for that matter), I started becoming what I have called fully human. Africa was the only place after high school (or since) where I ran with a group of friends. Africans couldn’t spot the subtle quirks quite as easily as Americans. To them nearly every foreigner seemed a bit silly and odd, so I didn’t stand out. Also, I knew I had to learn a whole new set of social rules from scratch, and worked deliberately to do so. 

Of course, it wasn’t all easy. My story about the doors shows that even in Africa I had a certain amount of social trouble, but those difficulties had little or nothing to do with being autistic.

Before my diagnosis I told a few people that it took me decades to learn to operate my hard to operate personality. That was true. I’m still learning. But it’s not really my “personality” that is difficult. What’s hard to navigate are the social rules, and cues, and expectations.

The first time I slept with a woman (girl) she had to start unbuckling my pants for me to understand what she wanted and what was happening. 

More than fifty years later I’m a quicker study, but it’s still hard.

I still feel lost in social situations others seem to understand. I often feel confused. I’m alone way too much and too often. And because I’m autistic (and human) I ruminate over these things endlessly, as I’m doing here.

If you happen to find this and feel similarly, please comment and follow. We’ll do better together.

If you find me or another neurodivergent person a little hard to understand at times, remember: we’re foreigners in a land and culture we find bewildering. Instead of looking at us as odd, look at us as strangers in need of a hand.

Sometimes Autistic People Need a Bit of Instruction in Social Matters that Come Easily to Neurotypical Folk

In my story about doors I hint at how confused autistic people often are by social cues, gestures, facial expressions, small talk, and unspoken social rules that "neurotypical" people come by instinctively. Especially early on, because we do learn, if only by trial and error.

In my book I tell how I accidentally rebuffed various people who tried to befriend me, romantically and otherwise--how I failed to recognize gestures and meanings, or how I failed to act when it was my turn to move the relationship forward. For me, social interactions were essentially happy, random events. I enjoyed people when they were in front of me. They enjoyed me. But it took years of trial and error for me to begin to understand my role in keeping them in front of me. 

One person stood out, because I actually pursued her. When I wrote my book I couldn't explain the difference in my behavior. But recently, I remembered an important small event that I didn't bother to put in the book.

I had met this person at dinner in our dormitory. She came and sat with me. That was the only time in two semesters that anyone other than my roommate ate with me. 

We hit it off immediately. She had a sardonic sense of humor. I remember walking back to the dormitory joking about all the other residents. (The ones who never spoke to me or ate with me!)

We spent a lot of time together over the next several weeks, and even went on a couple of dates that I suggested.

In the other romantic interactions I describe I took little or no initiative. I just enjoyed the fruits of my own passivity.

Why the difference?

Sometime soon after our dinner together, the young woman saw me talking to my roommate in the lobby. She stopped and talked to us. Then she told me, "You should come up and see me sometime. I'm in room 204."

That's all I needed. I watched her run up the stairs. My roommate said, "Peter's got a little hottie!" (He knew this was a very rare thing.) And, without answering, I darted up the stairs behind her.

The only other time I received anything like instruction in social interactions was during my Peace Corps training. I describe it in the story about the doors. I learned all the rest by trial and many, many errors.

But I did learn.

What Happens to Autistic Special Interests?

What happens to an autistic special interest once you lose interest?

I don't have to worry about my interest in Chuck Berry. I always compared his career to that of Sgt. Pepper. "He's been going in and out of style, but he's guaranteed to raise a smile." Even if my own interest waxes and wanes, he's eternal, and his music is always there to remind me.

I remember a lot of intense interests that never clicked. As a child I wanted a croquet set until I got one. We played once. As a young teenager I was under the influence of nearby gold country and very briefly explored things like gold panning and horse-shoeing. I remember reading avidly about pigeons, for about a week. I tried building a telescope. Did not succeed. I was a photographer for a year or so, and then a movie-maker.

When I became an adult I found, quite by accident, that my legal cases became intense special interests. The exploding trucks of my book title (My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big-Daddy of Rock and Roll) were by far the most intense, but every case took me over for a time. For months I'd think only of childproof bottle caps. For years I would be obsessed by upper floor windows that provided deadly exits for toddlers. Whatever car had most recently injured a client was all I could think about until the case ended.

But when the case ended, I forgot it all, except for a few "war stories." I was on to the next one.

A few years ago I retired from the practice of law. I've found nothing to replace it. The way I practiced law it satisfied a thousand of my itches. I could be speaker, writer, teacher, movie-maker, thinker, artist, comedian, and all the while extremely, exuberantly autistic.

For a year or so I've been dabbling on another case. My work was supposed to be part time and behind the scenes. It has been fun--until a series of events threatened to put me back into the driver's seat of that case. And what I realized, in a heartbeat, is that I am no longer that person. The lawyer in me has left the building. That case--whatever its merits-- could never rise again to the level of interest that it once would have inspired in me.  

I hope I continue to find intense new interests. A few years ago I found an interest in neighborhood birds that continues, slowly, to grow; but it will never be like Chuck or the pickups. Same with Italian; I became intensely interested for a while, but now that interest has passed. 

Do we outgrow our special interests? Do we outgrow our need for special interests?

Do we just grow old and become less interested?

I hope not.

I hope a week from now I'm thunderstruck by something fantastic and new.

"Your Door is Always Shut." A Perfect Analogy for Autistic Confusion with Neurotypical Social Rules

One of the things that is difficult to explain is the difficulty many autistic people have understanding things that "neurotypical" people comprehend instinctively: social rules, social cues, facial expressions, unspoken meanings. We eventually learn, but it takes us longer. Think of us as strangers in a strange land.

That might be why I love being in strange lands, far from home. It feels normal to me, but a more interesting form of normal.

When I joined Peace Corps in 1980, I moved to the West African nation of Togo and fell in love with the people and culture. But it took several months for that love to really take hold. I was infatuated instantly, but then fell into a dark place, because, as usual, I found myself very much alone, despite my best efforts.

And then an "aha!" moment. I learned a simple rule of local behavior--a social rule that Togolese understood automatically but that I and most foreigners were oblivious to. 

It is a perfect analogy to an autistic person's life before trial, error, and painful missteps teach us the rules everybody else knows.

Here's an excerpt from my book, My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll:

I am determined to make friends.

During our training, a departing second year volunteer dispensed some good advice. She encouraged us to seek out important people in the village and do our best to make friends with them. 

“These people will really help you when the time comes that you need some help. So, when you meet them, invite them to visit. And be ready for them. Have some beer or soft drinks and some snacks.”

I try. I have just finished three years where I was more alone than I ever have been or ever will be, but suddenly I am Monsieur Sociabilité. I walk through town like the stranger in an old western. Eyes follow me everywhere. Babies see my bizarre skin tone and hair and burst into inconsolable shrieks of terror. I shake many, many hands. I ask about people’s jobs, wives, homes, and children. I buy rounds of beer and pamprankou—a fermented drink made from raffia trees that smells to me like Cheerios left too long in a bowl of milk but that has advantages beyond the gentle buzz it provides. 

“Ça fait bien pisser!” says the elder Mr. Dando, with a happy smile.

The remark is as befuddling to me as when Terri showed me her contraceptives. I smile, nod, and finish my calabash, confused but at least confident in the knowledge that I will “piss well” tonight.

Lots of people introduce themselves to me. Lots of people accept my offers of drinks. I like to watch them pour a drop for the ancestors before taking their first sip. I learn the pleasure of sodabi, the homemade gin distilled from palm wine.

The two villagers who are friendliest to me are the Dando brothers. Both Dandos have children in the school where I will teach. One of the Dandos is the “catechist”—the man who guides the Catholic congregation through Sunday services when a visiting priest isn’t available to say an actual mass. I will learn that in addition to being a devout Catholic, he is a firm believer in the local gods. He gives me some hope when he asks if I speak the local language. I tell him no. “You’ll learn it. When you play with the girls, they will teach you!” I listen with interest. Maybe the future government minister was wrong about the girls. I invite both Dandos to my house. “How about Sunday, after mass?” I ask the catechist. 

“I will come!” he responds dynamically.

I prepare for the visit. I buy soft drinks and beer, peanuts and cookies, and even a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label Scotch whisky, which, like Quaker Oats and Marlboros, is available tax free everywhere in Togo, including Death is Better.

I wait. He never comes. I crack open the bottle of Scotch and follow a shot with a slug of warm beer from the bottle.

This sad scenario repeats itself a dozen times. I invite various teachers and “fonctionnaires.” Ils ne viennent pas. I invite the Dandos again and again. They don’t come. 

In Seattle I had been alone for a reason. I invited no one. Here I am doing everything I can to be more sociable. The foreign language and culture somehow free me to do so. I am becoming a new person, but with the same old result.

Even the teachers at my school don’t visit. They are friendly at work, but aside from my school director (friend of the future minister) they never come by, despite my invitations, and even the director only stops once or twice to say hello and check on me. So even though I am learning to reach out to people, it is not working. It’s like the pretty young woman I invited to the basketball game, but 100 times over, and makes no sense to me.

I decide to finish the school year and go home. In letters home I call Death is Better “Better Off Dead.”

Then one day some newly minted teachers are assigned to our school. I see them congregating with the other young teachers in front of a house on the main road where several teachers live. I decide to make one last effort to be friendly with my colleagues.

One of the new teachers is an excitable man named Dadjo. Dadjo has an almond shaped face, facial scars, and heavy duty black-framed, Bo Diddley-style glasses. He shakes my hand with gusto and snaps my middle finger as he lets go.

“And do you all hang out with Monsieur Pita?” Dadjo asks the other teachers.

A quiet, polite teacher who has been around since the start of the year shakes his head and gazes at me.

“Mr. Peter likes to stay by himself.”

This pisses me off. How can he say that after all the efforts I’ve made, for the first time in my life, to meet people? How can he say this after I’ve waited, time and again, for him and others to respond to my invitations.

“I like to stay by myself!” I repeat, nearly hissing. “That’s not true. I invite you to my house all the time! You never come!”

I think these are the first angry words I speak in Africa—but I’ve had it.

The professor looks as befuddled as I feel, and a bit sad at being so maligned.

“I come to your house every day,” he responds, shaking his head. “The front door is always closed.”

And then I see it—a vision of startling clarity—how so many doors in the village are wide open so much of the day, with only beads or a sheet of light cloth to keep out the hot sun and flies. 

How visitors approach those open doors clapping their hands to get the attention of people inside. 

And how I, like any good American, go home every day and shut and lock my front door.

I understand, for the first time, that I simply haven’t known or understood a cardinal rule of Togolese sociability.

I return home and leave my front door open. All afternoon and evening I am besieged by visitors. The teachers. My neighbors. Children from school. The Dandos. Dadjo.

And it is like that every day for the remaining two and a half years I live in Death is Better. 

After learning about autism and the difficulty many autistic people have understanding neurotypical social rules, social cues and facial cues, I see this as a nearly perfect parable. My inability to understand how the social world works has had definite consequences. I failed with girls in college not because I didn’t care, and not because I didn’t want to be with them, and not even because they didn’t want to be with me. Each of the young women I’ve described here obviously did, at least for a time. I just didn’t understand the rules. I didn’t understand how things work.

But little by little I am learning, not only the rules in Africa, which are new for me, but the general rules of sociability, which are more universal—and Africa and its people will be a huge part of that education.