Comments on Existence is Wonderful: Interview on Growing Up, Autism, and Other Things ...

Excellent blog post, with the pictures everything ...

2008-08-18T00:59:00.000-07:00

Excellent blog post, with the pictures everything on my mind played like a story. I really enjoyed the part where you talk about your friendship. Even though at times I'm a very rigid and focused person, it makes me wonder if connections towards other people truly exist or rather if this whole universe is structured in a way that we're unable to see... Anyways, I loved this blog entry and hoping to read up on similar ones.

JimF: I removed the duplicate comment for y...

2008-08-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

JimF: I removed the duplicate comment for you (the first one, as I presume that's the one you were referring to as having bad line breaks). Not a problem at all.

Regarding your friend T (and thanks for sharing your stories - they're quite neat to read): it is always interesting when "social powerhouse" folks end up "teaming" with the more introverted/socially inept among us. In some respects I think it might have something to do with them having actual confidence (at least in some areas) as opposed to the insecure, posturing sort of "apparent confidence" that characterizes those who tend to be counted as Popular in high-school parlance.

It sounds like neither my friend nor yours felt like they were risking anything not worth losing by associating with either of us.

AnneC also wrote:

> [B]ecause I hung aro...

2008-08-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

AnneC also wrote:

> [B]ecause I hung around with Larissa,
> I became a bit more likely to be seen as
> “quirky art chick” as opposed to “scary,
> mentally disturbed girl”. So I was still
> on the fringes socially (and fine with that),
> but not so ostracized anymore.

Huh. This happened to me, too. T..., the friend I made during that Star Trek summer, had quirks of his own (he's gay, for one thing, though I came out to him **long** before he came out to me, and we were certainly never, hm, "gay" together :-0 ).

But T... was a social powerhouse, of sorts (I'd peg him as an enneatype 3w2, if that means anything to you), and being in his circle had a cachet all its own.

In high school, he used to drive to school in this white 1962 Oldsmobile station wagon, and that poor wagon was **packed** at the end of the day with kids he'd drive home. It turned out that the kids in that station wagon (the "F...mobile", we called it, using T...'s last name) comprised all the brightest kids in both his year and my own. And we turned heads bombing out of the parking lot with that enormous Olds wagon's tail dragging on the overloaded shock absorbers.

It turned out that I was in a "clique" all my own, and we were the object of a certain degree of envy, and I was quite surprised to find out about it.

Hm. . .

So much for the "preview" function....

2008-08-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

Hm. . .

So much for the "preview" function.

It was not my intention to post a duplicate comment (the first with bad line breaks.)

Sorry. I don't see a way to delete it, either.

AnneC wrote:

> Eventually I made friends...

2008-08-02T11:01:00.000-07:00

AnneC wrote:

> Eventually I made friends with someone
> who actually ended up becoming my best
> friend. . . Basically, I started
> communicating with her because my parents
> made a rule that I had to initiate contact
> with someone from my school once a week if
> I wanted to retain my computer privileges. . .
> The first time I called her up. . .
> I said something like, “Hi Larissa, this
> is Anne from school. . . Would you like
> to talk about Star Trek?”

I have a similar story. In the summer of 1967 (I was 14 at the time) the family had just gotten home from my grandparents' house, where I'd made a low-quality tape recording of that week's first season Star Trek re-run (it was "The Return of the Archons"). I was at my desk, in front of a manual typewriter, attempting to make a transcript of this (barely intelligible) tape recording, when my parents got a call from the mother of somebody I didn't know, inviting
me to a performance that evening of the University of Delaware's E-52 players (I think the play was called "Romanoff and Juliet"). This was the summer between 9th grade (a junior-high grade, where I went to school) and 10th grade (high school), and the guy whose mother called was a year younger than me, but he'd noticed me because I won a ribbon that year in the Delaware State Science Fair.

Of **course** I didn't want to go -- I wanted to sit there and work on the Star Trek transcript. But my parents gave me **no** choice.

So naturally this guy became my best friend all through my high school and college years (he was **not** a Star Trek fan -- he tolerated my obsession with the show, and much else about me, with humor tinged at times with an edge of cruelty. My parents liked him a lot at first (he was a charmer, and people thought he was "going places"), but they later had cause to regret having forced us together -- my friend had a keen eye for the ridiculous, and was all-too-aware (and made **me** aware) of some of the less-savory aspects of my own family.
He saw right through my parents' pretenses of normality. By the time my parents changed their minds about him, it was of course much too late for them to do anything about it (except to further alienate me over the situation).

Ah, Star Trek. It wasn't just a TV show, was it?

Marla: I like that sort of thing too - that...

2008-07-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

Marla: I like that sort of thing too - that's one reason I love going through old pictures. It's almost like a time machine because you never really know at the time you take the picture what you might be capturing that you aren't necessarily aiming at. But the camera captures lots of things that might not even be noticed until years after the fact, so it's like looking into the past for something new in a way.

Yeah, the one with your Grandparents. Wow. It is...

2008-07-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

Yeah, the one with your Grandparents. Wow. It is so cool how your Dad is looking out the window. I love seeing parts of pictures like that. Looks very interesting.

Marla said:
I love the pictures you i...

2008-07-29T22:49:00.000-07:00
Marla said:
I love the pictures you included. The family portrait is precious.

Thanks. And do you mean the portrait with me and my grandparents, brother, and uncle? I like that one as well. I think that was taken the day of my brother's baptism - he's the one in the little white suit. My dad is actually in the picture too but you can barely see him, as he is looking out the front door.

I love the pictures you included. The family port...

2008-07-28T22:47:00.000-07:00
I love the pictures you included. The family portrait is precious.

Comments on Existence is Wonderful: Interview on Growing Up, Autism, and Other Things ...

Excellent blog post, with the pictures everything ...

JimF: I removed the duplicate comment for y...

AnneC also wrote:> [B]ecause I hung aro...

Hm. . .So much for the "preview" function....

AnneC wrote:> Eventually I made friends...