If you ask most people to describe a pivotal point in their lives, they will likely mention their wedding, the birth of a child, or the passing of a loved one. They might recall a trip abroad to a foreign country, an important award, or being the first of their family to attend college.
Me? I say it was the sixth grade.
I describe the sixth grade as pivotal to my development, but on reflection that applies not just to me. This is it. You’re no longer a child. No longer will you sit in one classroom all day, the windows behind you overlooking the playground. No more recess, either. Middle school is next, with its lockers and older kids and class schedules, and somewhere puberty is waiting to pounce on you like a werewolf.
My first friend made was Dave. He lived just south of Pleasant Hill and walked to school every day. Dave was the proverbial math geek while I was the artistic kid.
Dave and I bonded over Tolkien and ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’. We watched the animated Ralph Bakshi version of the latter on SelecTV, an early television subscription service. We were hooked, even going so far as to create our own ‘fantasy trilogy’ but never getting beyond a rough, geographically problematic map.
Dungeons and Dragons was hitting its stride around this time, and my mother bought me the classic Blue Box set, with a knight and wizard facing off with a dragon on its cover. Know what? I didn’t take to the game at first, thought it too complicated, and it wasn’t until I realized that the halflings of the game were Tolkien’s hobbits that I gave it a go. And so, Dave and I played D&D. We lived it.
Looking back, I think Dave might have been the first autistic individual I met. I say this because we shared traits in common: excitability; obsessive special interests; marked disinterest in group activities or whatever the other kids were doing; book-smart but not streetwise; narrow areas of expertise; and almost no other friends.
In the fourth and fifth grade I had attracted a lot of negative peer attention, so the indifference of my fellow sixth graders was a blessing to me. They paid almost no attention to anything Dave and I said or did, and from this I learned something: social invisibility was a good thing. It was camouflage.
Don’t want to get beat up at the bus stop? Then keep your ‘weird’ special interests to yourself, autist.
So, I became one of the quiet autistics who don’t speak unless spoken to, display little emotion, and have no identifiable personality. Such autistics are the public equivalent of tap water; safe for public consumption.
Seventh grade arrived like World War I. Middle school is an awful time for kids and Wisconsin made it worse by layering eighth and ninth graders on top of us new seventh-graders. Changing classrooms was an ordeal. Lockers banging and clanging. Kids shouting, laughing, jabbering, kids everywhere, some of them gigantic ninth graders cutting through the smaller fry like sharks through smaller fish.
One day I left my bag lunch behind in class; cue humiliation over ninth grade girls making a treacly fuss over me when I finally retrieved it--oh, look how small he is!
And Dave? I don’t think he ever got the memo that the other kids don’t play D&D and have no interest in advanced math.
The scene: fifth period English, Dave and me present. On audio tape is the BBC production of ‘Lord of the Rings’. I think we were covering fantasy literature, and the teacher had the class listen to ten or fifteen minutes of Book One, ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’.
My classmates were nonplussed. We might as well be listening to pork belly trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to judge by their blank faces.
Dave suddenly piped up from behind me: My friend Mike and I are also working on a fantasy trilogy.
This caught the teacher slightly by surprise. I far as I was concerned, Dave has just stepped on a social landmine. Twenty-eight pairs of cold, cold eyes turned upon me and just stared. It almost would’ve been better if the class had burst into laughter at the two autists; this icy regard was somehow much worse. I knew we were pariahs at that instant.
And Dave? I have no idea if he knew we were now bound for the middle-school equivalent of Siberia. But I made sure he knew how angry I was with him.
People drift apart, and so do kids. Dave continued with his autistic social gaffes and was eventually banished from our lunch table. I didn’t send him away, but I also didn’t intervene. I didn’t follow him to his new table. I was no longer mad at Dave, but he was a social liability, attracting derision with his behavior. I was tap water now and still had problems with other kids and their free-floating aggression, the blast furnace hostility.
I moved to Ohio after seventh grade. The friendship between Dave and me had ended well before that, of course—no more Atari, no more D&D games, no more gushing over movies like Time Bandits and Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was just another schoolkid in the hallway and as for me, likewise.
And so, the autists parted ways.
Forty-odd years later and I don’t know what has become of Dave. I wonder how he’s fared in life. I like to think he’s well-adjusted, teaching math, married with kids and in his spare time works on his own fantasy trilogy.
I like to think that.
Mike Minnis is a guest blogger and client. His books can be purchased on Amazon. Visit his website at: www.michaelminnisbooks.com/index.htm
Me? I say it was the sixth grade.
I describe the sixth grade as pivotal to my development, but on reflection that applies not just to me. This is it. You’re no longer a child. No longer will you sit in one classroom all day, the windows behind you overlooking the playground. No more recess, either. Middle school is next, with its lockers and older kids and class schedules, and somewhere puberty is waiting to pounce on you like a werewolf.
My first friend made was Dave. He lived just south of Pleasant Hill and walked to school every day. Dave was the proverbial math geek while I was the artistic kid.
Dave and I bonded over Tolkien and ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’. We watched the animated Ralph Bakshi version of the latter on SelecTV, an early television subscription service. We were hooked, even going so far as to create our own ‘fantasy trilogy’ but never getting beyond a rough, geographically problematic map.
Dungeons and Dragons was hitting its stride around this time, and my mother bought me the classic Blue Box set, with a knight and wizard facing off with a dragon on its cover. Know what? I didn’t take to the game at first, thought it too complicated, and it wasn’t until I realized that the halflings of the game were Tolkien’s hobbits that I gave it a go. And so, Dave and I played D&D. We lived it.
Looking back, I think Dave might have been the first autistic individual I met. I say this because we shared traits in common: excitability; obsessive special interests; marked disinterest in group activities or whatever the other kids were doing; book-smart but not streetwise; narrow areas of expertise; and almost no other friends.
In the fourth and fifth grade I had attracted a lot of negative peer attention, so the indifference of my fellow sixth graders was a blessing to me. They paid almost no attention to anything Dave and I said or did, and from this I learned something: social invisibility was a good thing. It was camouflage.
Don’t want to get beat up at the bus stop? Then keep your ‘weird’ special interests to yourself, autist.
So, I became one of the quiet autistics who don’t speak unless spoken to, display little emotion, and have no identifiable personality. Such autistics are the public equivalent of tap water; safe for public consumption.
Seventh grade arrived like World War I. Middle school is an awful time for kids and Wisconsin made it worse by layering eighth and ninth graders on top of us new seventh-graders. Changing classrooms was an ordeal. Lockers banging and clanging. Kids shouting, laughing, jabbering, kids everywhere, some of them gigantic ninth graders cutting through the smaller fry like sharks through smaller fish.
One day I left my bag lunch behind in class; cue humiliation over ninth grade girls making a treacly fuss over me when I finally retrieved it--oh, look how small he is!
And Dave? I don’t think he ever got the memo that the other kids don’t play D&D and have no interest in advanced math.
The scene: fifth period English, Dave and me present. On audio tape is the BBC production of ‘Lord of the Rings’. I think we were covering fantasy literature, and the teacher had the class listen to ten or fifteen minutes of Book One, ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’.
My classmates were nonplussed. We might as well be listening to pork belly trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to judge by their blank faces.
Dave suddenly piped up from behind me: My friend Mike and I are also working on a fantasy trilogy.
This caught the teacher slightly by surprise. I far as I was concerned, Dave has just stepped on a social landmine. Twenty-eight pairs of cold, cold eyes turned upon me and just stared. It almost would’ve been better if the class had burst into laughter at the two autists; this icy regard was somehow much worse. I knew we were pariahs at that instant.
And Dave? I have no idea if he knew we were now bound for the middle-school equivalent of Siberia. But I made sure he knew how angry I was with him.
People drift apart, and so do kids. Dave continued with his autistic social gaffes and was eventually banished from our lunch table. I didn’t send him away, but I also didn’t intervene. I didn’t follow him to his new table. I was no longer mad at Dave, but he was a social liability, attracting derision with his behavior. I was tap water now and still had problems with other kids and their free-floating aggression, the blast furnace hostility.
I moved to Ohio after seventh grade. The friendship between Dave and me had ended well before that, of course—no more Atari, no more D&D games, no more gushing over movies like Time Bandits and Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was just another schoolkid in the hallway and as for me, likewise.
And so, the autists parted ways.
Forty-odd years later and I don’t know what has become of Dave. I wonder how he’s fared in life. I like to think he’s well-adjusted, teaching math, married with kids and in his spare time works on his own fantasy trilogy.
I like to think that.
Mike Minnis is a guest blogger and client. His books can be purchased on Amazon. Visit his website at: www.michaelminnisbooks.com/index.htm
