"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 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.

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.)

My So-Called Disorder: We Know We're Different Long Before We Know We're Autistic

It’s interesting to me how, before I ever knew I was autistic, I knew that something was going on that made me feel different. I told more than one person that, aside from family and a few close friends, I was “the most solitary person you’d ever willingly associate with—and that few willingly do.” I told several people that I had to learn to operate my hard to operate personality. I remember as a teenager and young adult watching all the socially successful teenagers and young adults, (including some really questionable ones), and realizing that that life was never going to be mine. I remember how much I appreciated the Togolese custom of avoiding eye contact during important conversations or when speaking to an important or elderly person. I remember watching various outgoing people meet me for the first time with gusto and then begin to pull back, spotting something odd despite my best attempts at gregarious charm. I remember a hundred times being told to smile, even when I was happy, and actually practicing a toothy smile in front of the mirror without success. I remember thinking there was a bit of magic in my ability make sense of complicated cases or to spot things in documents that others had trouble seeing. I remember when I learned it was more politic not to talk so much about Chuck Berry.

Peter O’Neil is the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll.

Neurodiversity in the Legal Community: Why Autistic and Otherwise Neurodivergent People Bring Value

I thank the Washington State Association for Justice for publishing my article on the value of Neurodiversity in the legal community.  You can read it by clicking HERE. It's a followup to an article I wrote 20 years ago in which I compared my skill working product liability cases to the Seattle artist James Washington, Jr., who carved stone and who once said, "If you love a thing, it will give up its secrets to you."

Washington worked mostly in stone, which he tapped and scraped until he found what he felt was always inside--usually something from nature that was also very spiritual.

I told my readers to return again and again to the documents and evidence of their cases until the case gave up its secrets. I told them to think like artists, intuitively. Now I realize I was teaching them to think like an autistic person.

 Peter O’Neil is the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll.

  

My So-Called Disorder: Accommodations are not a Charitable Gift to Autistic People

Thank you to The Seattle Times for publishing my op-ed, called My So-Called Disorder Made Me A Better Attorney. You can read it HERE.

Peter O’Neil is the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll.

My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big-Daddy of Rock and Roll

     It's a big deal, at the age of 65, to learn that you're autistic--a big enough deal that you might write a book about it. I found out, almost by accident, during my first visit to a young psychologist. Ten minutes into the visit she asked if I liked to read. Yes, I told her. Non-fiction? Anything, everything.

    "Well, I have a book I'd like to lend you."

    The book was Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World that wasn't Designed for You, by Jenara Nerenberg. I took it home and began my journey.  Here's an excerpt from the book about that first visit.

                    6.    My Second Attempt at Therapy

     Once again I have chosen almost at random—or maybe this time magic has intervened. I have made several efforts to find a therapist, but with so many people distraught about Covid no one is taking new patients. I will eventually learn that this particular person had an opening because she had taken time off to be with her daughter and is rebuilding her practice. 

    I spend the days before our first session preparing: walking, talking to myself, relearning, revising, and rehearsing my life story. I figure I will do what I did last time—until I show up, and my plan falls apart.

    It’s my first visit. Icy roads add to my nervousness. She has sent an email telling me to “take a seat in the waiting room” when I arrive. I can do that. The waiting room is broken into two adjacent areas with a handful of chairs in each part, and I take a seat by the front doors.  

    At the appointed hour my new therapist walks into the other part of the room, pauses for part of a second to look at the empty chair in front of her, then turns and walks over to me. We are both wearing masks.

    “Peter?” she asks.  

    “Yes,” I say, and begin to stand up. She’s a lot younger than I am, probably half my age.

    “You weren’t where I expected you to be!” She points to the empty chair. “I thought you would be over there.”

    I am never brilliant with small talk but now I’m flummoxed. I am the only person in the waiting area and 15 feet from “over there.”

    I follow as she walks silently to her office and points me to a small couch. Now my own expectations go unfulfilled. I’ve prepared myself for a certain amount of chit chat, maybe about the icy weather, maybe the earlier snow, or maybe a meaningless question about whether I had trouble finding the place, but there is none. We have evidently used up our stores of small talk on my seating choice.  

    Although I don’t know it yet, this awkwardness on both sides bodes well. It is a sign that I have come to the right place, that I am with the right person.

    I fall onto the very center of the little couch and lean towards an armrest that is too far away.  I wind up at a forty-five-degree angle. I am making the first impression of a crazy person, which, given her profession, is perhaps not surprising.  After all, I am here to talk about my crazy life—but it’s not the first impression I planned.

    I pull myself up to a more dignified vertical and we begin. I have come with the firm intent to repeat the well-rehearsed story of my life to this new person, as I did with the last. She even knows this plan, because in my initial email I foolishly shared the “candy store” comment of the previous therapist. I promised good stories. But my plan sputters immediately into chaos. I jabber out bits and pieces. I breathe oddly. I talk about my current clingy depression. I talk about my painfully alone college years. I try to say something about the crazily alcoholic but loving home I grew up in. My voice warbles. I blame my ragged breath and speech on the mask I am wearing. She smiles and says, “It’s okay. It happens. Just talk.”  

    And within minutes, she begins ushering me gently towards an entirely new understanding of who I am—a unified theory of me that explains almost everything.

    She doesn’t tell me during our first session, but she has seen something, and I know this because at one point she talks aloud to herself, laughing a bit and shaking her head, saying, “It’s not even a firm diagnosis yet!”

    I’m listening and wondering, “What? What’s not a firm diagnosis?” 

    Ten or fifteen minutes into our first session she says, “Do you like to read?”

    “I do.”

    “Do you like nonfiction?”

    “Anything. Everything.”

    “Oh good!” she says. “I’m thinking of a book you might like. It focuses on women, but you’ll be able to see past that.”

    This is exactly what I have been hoping for—a book that will help me understand who I am and why I am that way. Because I have known most of my life that I am different.

    And then she asks the big question.

    “Do you know the term ‘neurodiversity?’”

    I do not—so she reaches back to a word I had used to describe my relationship with Rebecca. “We like each other and love each other and support each other despite our quirks,” I told her.  

    She smiled. She smiles again now.

    “It means ‘quirky.’ Neurodivergent people are people whose brains are wired differently from most people. Not badly, just differently. We see the world differently from most people.”

    We? Have I heard this properly? At any rate, I like it. I’ve known all my life I am wired differently, that I see things differently, that I’ve lived differently, and even lawyered differently. I’m proud of it. I can’t wait to learn how and why.

    As I’m getting ready to go she loans me a copy of the book—a volume so new and fresh it makes me nervous. I hurt the books I read. I spindle, fold, and mutilate. I cart them on long walks to read in bits and pieces from any dry bench. They wind up with arched spines and ragged pages spotted with drops of coffee and wine. But I take the book home, protecting it from the winter elements, and immediately sit down in my customary spot (I have two) to gingerly open it and read.  

    I am immediately and stunningly disappointed. She hasn’t understood me at all.

(Peter O'Neil is the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll, available on bookshop.org, barnseandnoble.com, amazon.com, or on order from your local bookstore.)