Raising Cubby

by John Elder Robison

  Perry’s hostility stood in stark contrast to Cubby’s placid geeky demeanor. I saw the jurors looking at the two of them, back and forth, and I wondered what they were thinking as she made each fresh accusation. I hoped they saw her for what she was. If they didn’t, we were lost.

  And then it happened. Until then, the witnesses’ testimony had matched the written reports and my own memories of the scene. I knew because I had been on high alert, listening intently to every word. But as the prosecutor questioned Cubby, I heard her speak the words “… sitting on your bookcase next to a hundred pounds of PETN.” A hundred pounds!

  Cubby spoke right up. “Well, it wasn’t a hundred pounds, it was a hundred grams, big difference in scale.”

  Was it an error or was it intentional? The fact is, there’s a huge difference. One hundred grams is equivalent to a quarter-pound hamburger patty or a stick of butter. One hundred pounds of high explosive is a serious matter. A quarter-pound of powder in a lab tray isn’t. The slip wasn’t lost on the jurors.

  The prosecutor looked furious and corrected herself.

  In the end, if there was anyone who seemed oblivious to her own actions and to how she might be perceived, it was Perry. I couldn’t tell whether she truly believed Cubby was dangerous, or whether she was simply trying to make a name for herself. Either way, I knew I would never forgive either her decision to prosecute the case or the way she had gone about it.

  After what felt like hours of testimony, all of which kept the jurors riveted, the questions came to an end. The judge looked at my son and said, “Mr. Robison, you may step down.” Cubby looked at the prosecutor, snorted slightly, and walked slowly back to his seat.

  It was time for closing arguments, and for that Perry waxed lyrical. “If you close your eyes for a second and you think about the quiet and the beauty and the stillness of the woods, you can almost feel the sun on your face, that’s a human experience that we all have, you’re walking through the woods, you might have a child with you, and then there’s a huge explosion. That’s what this is about.”

  So there it was: My son had disturbed the peace and quiet of the Amherst woods, and for that she asked the jury to send him to prison with four felony convictions. I don’t know how many explosions disturb the peace of Amherst every year, but it’s a lot. We have steady blasting in two rock quarries just over the Granby line. We’ve got a couple of shooting clubs in town, and much of the land is rural, and walked by hunters every year.

  Finally, it was the judge’s turn. She turned to the jurors and thanked them for sitting through the trial. Now, she said, it was time for them to go to work. They had to discuss everything they had heard, and reach a verdict on each of the charges. To convict my son, they had to believe—beyond a reasonable doubt—that he’d done some sort of tangible damage to property and that he’d acted with malice. They filed out of the room to begin deliberations. We started pacing and wondering how long we’d have to wait for the verdict.

  We weren’t the only ones cooling our heels. The local television stations had camera crews lurking in the halls, and reporters from the newspaper had staked out two prime benches in the foyer. Thousands of cases move through our county court every year, but only fifteen “big cases” make it all the way to superior court trial. Cubby’s case was one of them, keeping company with a murder, some robberies, and an arson or two.

  At 3:45, the bailiff called us back to court and announced there was a verdict. As much as I wanted the trial to end, I cringed at those words. This jury had taken less than two hours to make up its mind, and I’d read that speedy decisions often signal conviction.

  We took our seats as Cubby and the lawyers took their seats at the bar. The jury foreman handed a folded piece of paper to the bailiff, who passed it to Judge Josephson. The judge looked at it, nodded, and turned to the jurors. She would have made a world-class poker player; for all I know, that’s what she was in another life. Her expression gave absolutely nothing away. At her nod, the bailiff spoke.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

  “We have,” the foreman answered.

  “On the first charge of malicious destruction of property, how do you find?”

  “We find the defendant not guilty.”

  “On the second charge?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “On the third charge?”

  “Not guilty.”

  We had reached the last charge, detonating explosives near people and property. I’d seen trials on TV where the defendant was acquitted of all but one charge and ended up in prison anyway, so I was right on the edge of my seat.

  “On the fourth and last charge?”

  “Not guilty!” The certainty was palpable in the juror’s voice.

  Cubby and his lawyers stood up and smiled. At that, the whole courtroom seemed to rise as one and burst into applause. My son turned to David Hoose, nodded slightly, and said one word: “Excellent.” It was a most Aspergian reaction. The newspaper photographer popped up and captured the moment. Across the bench, Prosecutor Perry looked like she’d just swallowed a lemon.

  The audience of supporters parted as we walked outside to share Cubby’s victory with the reporters. Perry slunk out a side door when no one was looking.

  The reporters gathered around Cubby and his lawyer and peppered them with questions. One of them asked my son how he felt. “I’m very pleased the jury was able to see through all the hype and the inflammatory testimony on the part of the prosecution,” he said in a measured tone. When this process had started, he’d been a gawky kid. Now he was a strong young man.

  His attorney spoke up. “Today Jack knows better than to tinker with such potentially dangerous chemicals.” He smiled a little. “Part of being young is not being wise. It’s time for Mr. Robison to go home to his family and friends and studies—a little bit older, but very much wiser for his experience.”

  It was finally over. Cubby, his lawyers, and a crowd of friends and supporters headed down the street to Fitzwilly’s for the first of several victory celebrations. Many of Cubby’s high school and college classmates had been in court that last day, and they all joined in, filling several tables in the back of the restaurant. My friends were there too. The restaurant was overflowing, and we were just getting started.

  That night, we joined more friends for a victory dinner at my son’s favorite restaurant in downtown Northampton. As we walked in the door, the people at a long table straight ahead of us turned our way. I recognized a number of senior officers from the Northampton courthouse and I was surprised as they looked at Cubby, smiled, and started to applaud. None of the folks at the dinner table had been involved with my son’s case, but obviously they followed what went on in their courthouse closely. One of them walked up to my son and shook his hand, congratulating him on our victory. “Those people in the DA’s office have gotten out of control with some of their recent cases,” he said, adding, “We’re all so glad you won!” I was amazed and moved by the depth of support I came to find in the community as news of Cubby’s acquittal spread.

  As we were driving home after our victory celebration, I turned to Cubby and said, “Now we can go to Australia as free-range Aspergian tourists and see the penguins you’ve always talked about. That’s a hell of a lot better than going there as fugitives and hiding at some mining community in the outback.” Cubby agreed.

  “All you have to do is earn the money to pay for the trip, because I had to spend what I had to keep you out of jail.” Cubby snorted. He never has paid me back, and he hasn’t gone to Australia. Yet. But there is still time for both.

  EPILOGUE

  Five years have passed since that fateful visit from the ATF. Cubby’s almost twenty-three now. We haven’t heard from the Feds since his acquittal, but none of us have any doubt that they’re keeping an eye on our corner of the planet, just to be sure.

  The prosecutor never said a word to any of us before the trial, and she hasn’t sa
id a word since. You’d think the DA’s office might have apologized, but I guess they don’t see things the way we do. Anyway, the DA was voted out of office a few months after our victory, and the incoming DA replaced most of the staff. Good riddance to them, I said.

  We won the case, but victory came at a high cost. The most obvious was the legal fees. I’ve been very fortunate to achieve enough success that I could afford to hire a top lawyer for Cubby’s defense. Without that, we’d have had little choice but to cave in before the state’s onslaught. Knowing that, I realize how wrong it is that there is no mechanism for holding district attorneys accountable for rogue prosecutions and the harm they can cause. Even if most people who enter the legal system are guilty of something, a few are not, and those people suffer irreparable harm even when they win.

  Moving beyond the scope of local officials, I see what a terrible mistake our society has made by criminalizing so much that young people do. Activities that were once dismissed as pranks and “kids being kids” are now prosecuted with vigor. Fights between schoolchildren end up in court. Fights between drunken college students send youths to jail. Sure, those behaviors merit punishment, but in today’s society the punishment is out of proportion to the action. That’s true for so many felonies today. In the space of a generation, an activity that millions of kids have engaged in—experimenting with fireworks and explosives—has evolved from mostly harmless fun to being a serious felony. There’s no doubt that the events of 9/11 went a long way toward building the climate of fear that has allowed our state security apparatus to run wild in this fashion, but I believe these changes have deeper roots than that, and began even before 9/11.

  We think of our country as free, but we have the highest rate of incarceration of any developed nation. In 1980, five hundred thousand Americans were in jail. Today that number has ballooned to almost 2.5 million. Less well known is how many adult Americans have criminal convictions. The shocking truth is that one in thirty adults is behind bars, on probation, or on parole. That’s more than seven million people. One reason for that is that we’ve criminalized so many behaviors. Americans end up with permanent criminal records for driving eighty-five on the interstate or for shoplifting at seventeen. I stopped to pee in a ditch by the side of a backcountry road in Alabama last year, and a cop pulled up behind me. To my disgust, he told me I could be arrested and that I’d be a registered sex offender because I was “exposing myself by the roadside.” Is this the system we want?

  What’s even worse is the fact that our justice system often takes a poor person convicted of a “blue collar crime” like barroom fighting and sends him to prison for a longer term than a rich man who embezzles millions. It’s hard to watch that, and go through something like my family went through, and still feel good about where our country is headed.

  Little Bear was devastated by the consequences of the raid. Her house was wrecked, and she suffered the humiliation of having it publicly condemned. She’s wrestled with organizational troubles all her life—a hallmark of autism—and her house was always a mess. That was okay as long as it was private, but she has yet to recover from the effects of having a hundred strangers tramp through it, exposing her belongings to damage and her psyche to ridicule. In addition to all that, she’s still being harassed intermittently over the costs of the raid, even though she was never charged with any wrongdoing and our son was acquitted.

  She’s convinced that the publicity during and after the raid caused the administrators at her school to not renew her teaching contract. There’s no way for us to know, but whatever the reason, it has proven very hard to find new teaching jobs and the sting of that rejection still hurts.

  The stress took its toll on me too. I became very depressed and almost suicidal the winter before the trial. It seemed like everything we had worked so hard to build was crumbling. Our son was facing prison, and we underwent a ruinously expensive trial to defend him. At the same time, the nation’s economy was collapsing and our resources seemed to diminish daily. All the gains I thought I’d made went up in smoke. It was all I could do to keep going.

  When the trial ended, everyone applauded our victory, but I still had a mountain of legal bills to pay. My family and work life, which I’d neglected during the period before the trial, felt like a shambles. I was able to turn around the business, but my marriage came to an end. The years 2009 and 2010 were very hard ones for me. Three years have now passed and I have mostly recovered. Martha is doing okay as well. I’m remarried to a wonderful woman who came into my life with three kids, two cats, a fourteen-pound Imperial War Pug, and a vegetable garden. We’re looking forward to a bright future together.

  But enough about us. We are just the supporting characters in this story. You want to know what happened to Cubby.

  He’s stayed well clear of all the activities that got him into trouble on that cold winter day in 2008. At the same time, he remains fascinated by chemistry. He doesn’t have a lab at home anymore, but he’s become the top student in all his labs at the university. I’m proud of what he’s doing without worrying that he’ll blow himself up in the process.

  Cubby matured a lot as we prepared for the trial, and every year his intelligence shines brighter and brighter. In fact, the change from childhood is so profound that I wonder whether he’s getting smarter or his innate intelligence is simply becoming more visible. Brain researchers wonder the same thing when it comes to autistic people. My next book will tell the story of scientists who are working to unravel the secrets of intelligence and perhaps make us all smarter. Autism is described as a developmental delay, and researchers at CMU/Pitt and elsewhere are now exploring the idea that autistic people may develop certain brain pathways much later in life than “neurotypical” people. I’ve always wondered how my son could be “nearly normal” in first grade, and “nearly a genius” on a different IQ test fifteen years later. The question remains to be answered.

  I mentioned executive function and organization several times in this book. That’s a big problem for many autistic people; indeed, it’s a problem for many people of all sorts. Last year I worked with a team from Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and Ivymount School in Rockville, Maryland, to develop a book called Unstuck and on Target, which describes a new therapy intended to develop better executive function in kids. I wish something like that had existed when Cubby, Little Bear, and I were young!

  My son had many friends growing up, but he had and has problems with teamwork. My troubles making friends were more severe, as were his mom’s. One new therapy that addresses teamwork and friendship is PEERS, from Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior at UCLA.

  I also describe many strategies for making one’s best life in the face of difference in my second book, Be Different.

  As Cubby has gotten older, a number of his Aspergian traits have softened. He’s still oblivious to other people at times, but when he pays attention, he shows a kind and gentle side that makes me happy and proud to be his dad.

  He still has the intense concentration he had as a kid with Pokémon cards, but it looks very different now that it is focused on grown-up interests. As a little kid, his fixations were strange, geeky, or even weird. As a young adult, his concentration and insight reveal an intelligence that went largely unnoticed throughout grade school. We first saw that when he became captivated by chemistry.

  His mom would say, “I knew it all along,” but that’s certainly not something I heard from his teachers or anyone else at the school. More than anything, the “near-normal” description by that Yale clinician exemplifies the difficulty of testing kids who are different. What if we’d accepted that assessment instead of pushing to expand Cubby’s capabilities? To a large extent, his mom is to thank for that.

  Brainpower aside, my relationship with Cubby is in the middle of the evolutionary process all father-son relationships go through. Having long ago finished with the tuck-in and the homework
stages, we’re moving toward a time of equals. Except I’m still King of the House.

  It did take a few years for Cubby to get back on track. The time between the raid and his victory in court was a lost cause, academically. He wasn’t able to reenroll in classes till the following January, and when he did, he had to make up the courses he’d failed. Our state has a program through which people can graduate from community college and be guaranteed admission and reduced tuition to state university. That’s what he’s planning to do. We’re hoping he will earn his bachelor’s in chemistry from UMass in fall 2013.

  Right now he attends classes but does most of his learning on his own, using the resources of the university to educate himself. That’s pretty much what I did as a student. The difference is, he’s likely to get a degree, and I didn’t.

  When he started in college his only interest was chemistry. Indeed, he’s taken a few swings at the ball before he could get passing grades in college courses that weren’t chemistry or math. However, in the last two years he’s also become interested in libertarian politics, software, electronics, and mechanical engineering. He’s especially interested in a developing subculture known as the maker movement. Make Magazine says makers “celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science projects, and the do-it-yourself (DIY) mindset.” That sums it up pretty well.

  Cubby’s interest in chemistry wasn’t merely theoretical; he wanted to make things. He still wants to do that, but today he’s also making things from plastic, metal, and wood. He’s making electronics to run his creations, and writing software to run the electronics.

  He recently started designing and prototyping a quadracopter, a four-rotor model helicopter built on a rectangular frame with propellers on each corner. Right away he ran into problems. Parts made from metal were too heavy to fly, and he had no way to make things from lightweight plastic. Enter the RepRap. An open-source wiki on the RepRap winningly describes the device as “humanity’s first general-purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine.” Put another way, a RepRap is a desktop device that extrudes molten plastic from a print head that moves in three dimensions. A RepRap can print three-dimensional objects the way a conventional inkjet printer prints pictures on paper. It just takes a bit longer.