I hated FDR… that is what I told myself after just one short semester. I wanted to go to John Dewey High School to participate in their dance program. It seems that dance was the only thing that held my attention; the only thing I can pinpoint caring about. Since I had not applied to the school during my eighth grade year, and I didn’t live within the school zone, I needed a special variance from the school district in order to attend. The variance was denied—no John Dewey for me.
If I couldn’t go to the school I wanted, then I would go to no school at all.
During seventh grade, I briefly joined a cheerleading squad at St. Dominick’s church. A friend of mine, introduced me to the squad, and to Jeannine who had cheered at St. Dominick’s. Jeannine and I became friends over the next couple of years. She attended a different junior high school than I was zoned for, but when high school began, we found ourselves zoned for the same school.
Beginning in the second semester of freshman year, Jeannine walked to my house every morning before school—if she hadn’t already spent the night. I had a horrible time trying to look good to go to school. Nothing was ever right, my clothes all looked “wrong,” my hair was always “wrong,” when all the girls around me looked beautiful in my eyes. My self-image was beginning to falter.
If we were actually heading to school, we would have been late each and every single day. But we weren’t heading to school; we were heading to the candy store. Yes—we left the house each day and spent our entire school day in the candy store hanging out, went home, and repeated the same thing the next day.
Years later we often laughed at how silly our routine was; we could have just stayed in bed and slept in. I never pretended to go to school. In fact, I could have saved myself plenty of beatings from my father if I had just made up a lie that I was in school, but I didn’t. When asked, I just told them that I didn’t go.
If I was going to stand by my decision to not go to school then at least I would have to be truthful about that decision.
Our time was spent lollygagging the days away at Sal’s Candy Store, or roaming around the campus of Kingsborough Community College. When the weather turned warmer our days were spent lying on the beach or on rolls of aluminum foil we placed on Vanessa’s roof to help tan ourselves. We baked ourselves like chicken cutlets, thoroughly covering ourselves with baby oil and iodine, or cooking oil if that was all we had. There were not that many skin cancer warnings back then.
By the beginning of sophomore year, I’d had enough of the candy store. That didn’t mean I was going to FDR because my mind was made up— set in stone against it. I couldn’t change that decision even if I wished it. A friend from junior high, Robyn, was attending Catholic school. She went to Fontebonne Hall Academy. I could do that; I could wear a uniform.
My insistence on going to Fontebonne Hall had nothing to do with academics, and everything to do with becoming someone different—again. I could be one of those girls; the ones who looked cute in their Catholic school girl uniforms; the ones who belonged somewhere. I built this new image of myself up in my head, and when my parents told me they could not afford to send me to the school I had a complete meltdown.
I screamed, cried, and accused them of not caring about me, of not loving me. I threw things in a fit of rage that I still fail to grasp. This was the first time I can recall having a rage meltdown, which was followed by two days of sleeping. This must have scared the wits out of my parents because when the two days of sleep had passed they announced that I could attend Fontebonne.
My first Catholic school was in October of my sophomore year of high school. Even though I didn’t attend many classes at FDR the previous year, I still managed to pop into the class enough to pass the exams. Attendance was my issue. My test scores were high enough to fight for me to pass the classes even though I only attended on test days. I was a very good test taker.
I remember dressing in my brand new uniform, complete with tights, school sweater and black shoes. I don’t know exactly what I expected from this new life of mine. Did I think that everything would be different, people would be different, school would be different, just because I put on a plaid skirt? Apparently, I did, and was soon gravely disappointed. Instead of being a part of this group, a part of this new school community, I was more of an outcast than ever.
The girls that attended that school were nothing like me. I suppose no one was.
My time in Catholic school did not last very long. The first time my mother had to come up to school was to discuss my tardiness. It was nearly impossible for me to arrive to school on time. It didn’t matter what time I left the house, if it was late, or early, I managed to show up at school late.
It wasn’t intentional; stuff just always happened to me. If I wasn’t falling on my way to the bus stop and tearing my stockings, I was leaving my books home needing to go back. More than once the bus pulled to the curb sending a wave of muddy water from the previous rainfall into my face and hair.
Days that I managed to make it to the bus stop, and onto the bus, without incident often ended in my wandering the streets of Bay Ridge wondering why I had turned up this block. No matter how many times I exited the bus on Fourth Avenue, and started to walk up to the school, I managed to find myself lost in the streets. The minute I hit the avenues that were not numbered the way I’d been used to I felt lost.
Maybe I was just lost in my own world again, and failed to pay attention to the street signs, or maybe I was struggling with what I now know is called place-blindness. Eventually I found my route, and as long as I continued on the same route, traveling the exact same streets each time, I would not be lost.
Having my route sorted allowed me to arrive at school on time some of the days, which was a definite improvement, but by that time I was already labeled. I was expected to be late, to be trouble, to not follow the rules—intentionally. The walls were closing in around me and I began longing to be free of that place.
Rules without logic were ones that I was incapable of following. It was test day, and a fever was not keeping me away from test day. Doing well on tests was the only thing that redeemed my school life. The day I showed up to take my Biology Regents exam was my last day at Fontebonne Hall Academy.
One nun hated me. I had her for my first period class, and since I was never on time I was the problem child. I can’t tell you how happy I was to not have her proctoring the test. School rules: Students are not allowed to wear jackets in class. All students must be dressed in proper school uniforms.
The problem was that I was burning up with fever, and freezing. The lousy thin navy blue V-necked school sweater was not keeping me warm enough. Explaining this to the proctor, she allowed me to wear my coat during the test.
My teeth were chattering while I filled in the tiny circles on the answer sheet that would be scanned into the computer system. My head ached, and my nose was running, but I was almost done then I would go home sick.
I didn’t see her enter the room.
“Wearing coats is not permitted in class,” a squeaky voice screamed. The pencil flew out of my hands and broke on the floor when she snatched my arm to pull me out of my seat. “Get that coat off!”
My first period teacher stood in front of me. What was she doing here? The nun proctoring the test began to rise from her seat when the crazy woman glared at her. “I’ll handle this,” she said,” Let’s go young lady.”
When tugging on my arm didn’t have the desired effect, she grabbed a fist full of my hair to pull me from the desk.
“Don’t touch me!” I screamed, and before I knew it she had a fist full of my hair, and I had a fist full of hers. That is exactly how we proceeded to the office, both of us refusing to let go of the other’s locks.
I was “not Fontebonne material”, that’s what my mother was told that afternoon when they sent me on my way.
“Now what are you going to do?” my mother said.
“Cathy, that nun should not have touched her,” my grandm
other said, but my mother didn’t seem to hear her.
I sat at my kitchen table while my mother yelled. My father was happy not to have to pay the tuition bill any longer but said little else. Why was no one else upset that that woman pulled my hair? Why was I the one who was wrong just because I pulled her hair back? That makes no sense! Why were the rules different just because she was an adult? Shouldn’t she have been made to act more appropriately?
I was never given an opportunity to explain why I was wearing my coat in the first place, no one asked, no one cared.
We had already established I would not attend FDR; that decision was final, and I was immovable. The law required that I attend high school or I would have been just as satisfied with not going to school at all. I could not even enroll in “mini-school”.
Mini-School was a half day GED program that required I be past my sixteenth birthday, which was still a few months away.
My mother tried to force me to re-enroll at FDR but I told them plainly that if they made me attend that school I would not show up.
“We will send the police to your house, and they will force you to come to school,” a woman in charge of admissions said.
“Someone needs to blow-up this school. This school sucks!” I yelled, and swiped my arm across the papers hanging off the front of her desk sending them sailing through the air before storming out.
I didn’t say I would blow up the school, or even that I wanted to blow up the school. I was just so angry that I felt like I would punch a hole through the wall. Everything was being blamed on me, it was always all my fault and I was helpless to do anything about it.
Apparently, you cannot just say anything you want without consequences. You are not allowed to say blow-up and school in the same sentence. Now—I was not allowed to return to FDR, even if I wanted to, which was fine with me!
I was called down to the Superintendent’s office for District 20 schools, and questioned about what I intended to do to the school. I did not intend to do anything.
“Would you consider sending her to an alternative high school?” he asked my mother. But it really was not a question at all, I had no choice in the matter, neither did my mother. I had to comply, do as he said, or pay the price, his words. When I asked him exactly what the price would be, he glared at me.
I really wanted to know; maybe the price I’d have to pay would be worth it.
“Brooklyn College Academy (BCA), that is where we are going to send her,” he said to my mother without taking his eyes off of me. “They can keep a good eye on her.” Could they now?
I liked BCA. It is an alternative high school that is on the campus of Brooklyn College. Even some of the college staff was unaware of its presence. This school was as optional as a school could get. If I wanted to sit in the hallways of the college instead of attending class, that was fine. If I wanted to roam the campus endlessly, that was all right too. As long as I signed in when school began, the rest of the day was mine, until it was time to sign out.
I spent those days sitting in the hall reading books, and wandering the campus in my own world. No one really cared what I did during the day; they were only required to keep us kids out of trouble. I don’t know how exactly they were accomplishing that directive if they had no idea where we were or how we spent our days.
My sixteenth birthday was approaching quickly, and I was preoccupied with my upcoming Sweet Sixteen party. Putting school pretty far out of my mind because once I turned sixteen, no one could force me to go to school any longer. Even mini-school was out of the question since it met at FDR, and I, for all intents and purposes was completely banned from stepping foot on that campus. Without the mini-school program, I could wait until I was seventeen and take the GED test on my own. Who needs school anyway?
In July of 1991, after my seventeenth birthday I promptly signed up to take the GED exam. The test took eight hours covering all the subjects that I supposedly should have covered in high school. You know—the high school that I didn’t attend.
I passed that test on the first try just a couple points shy of the highest score possible. For kicks I took the SAT test to see how I would do, and scored in the 1400 range. I was told that was an excellent score. Deciding to leave high school behind, and be someone, or someone else, I enrolled in John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the fall of 1991, one full year before my peers were to graduate high school.
Academics came easily to me. The rest of life—not so much.
Chapter Twelve
Autism Widens the Divide; Life Outside My Bubble
The divide was widening; the divide that separated me from the rest of the world. In the years leading up to high school I hadn’t noticed it. I didn’t feel it. I was fairly oblivious. I trudged through life in my own world bouncing around in my bubble.
I didn’t notice how different I felt from the people around me, or how truly different my thoughts and ideas were. But as I traveled through my early teens I began to feel it. The gap was broad and wide, and growing deeper with each passing year.
Each section of my life is fairly compartmentalized in my brain. I remember having friends for a time period and when the time was left behind so were the friends. I had difficulty incorporating more than one person into my life at a time, making it very difficult to juggle the complications of relationships that were to come.
Even when it came to my closest friends, I had trouble incorporating both of them. My two friends drew closer to each other, and I drifted further away. It was not intentional, they didn’t exclude me—to an extent I excluded myself. When I didn’t understand the dynamics, couldn’t relate to the situation, or flat-out disagreed with their actions I withdrew, removed myself, and disappeared.
Relationships became more complicated, and that was a difficult thing for me to navigate. My inability to have more than one friend at a time made it difficult for me to relate to others, and keep friends when I developed other relationships—romantic relationships.
Often times if I had a boyfriend as a teenager, my friends rarely saw me. It was, again, all or nothing. I was with that one person to the exclusion of everyone and usually everything else. I didn’t understand their need for time away, or their need for time with their own friends because I had no such needs.
Throughout high school I was known for vanishing when a boy I liked came around. I gave no thought whatsoever to just leaving with him without telling my friends I was going. It never crossed my mind most of the time. I switched from friend mode to girlfriend mode. I couldn’t stay in two modes at the same time.
I never thought anyone would wonder where I was, after all, I knew where I was. Didn’t they? An outsider looking in with a keenly trained eye may have noticed my mind-blindness when I was a child, but I would not have.
Looking back with a new set of eyes, armed with the knowledge of my autism, I can clearly see just how much I didn’t see—I didn’t see past me. It wasn’t an intentional self-absorption; I hadn’t even realized I was doing it.
Inside the gaping divide between what others perceive and what my brain processed was a dangerous place. This danger was greatest at a time when I was most vulnerable, at a time when I was developing my sense of self, my elusive identity, my self-image.
I learned to socialize by emulation. Unfortunately, I learned about body image and what a “real woman” looks like in magazines—Penthouse magazines. This caused mind-blinding damage to my self-image.
I remember the first time I found my father’s stash of magazines, kept tucked in his nightstand drawer. They weren’t exactly hidden since I could open the drawer at will and peer inside. You would think I’d be appalled but I wasn’t. I was fascinated, intrigued.
Flipping through the pages, I viewed each beautiful woman with her perfect smile, perfect hair, tanned skin, and smooth curves. One day, I would look like that—and one day I did.
I am thankful that back then the magazines were not as explicitly graphic as they are today; how
ever, they were graphic enough to damage my frail self-image. They set the standard for body-image unrealistically high, and the reward for achieving this image low and degrading.
My short time wearing a Catholic school uniform taught me one thing—short skirts attracted attention. The magazines reinforced this attention getting strategy. And it wasn’t just adult magazines, teen magazines, fashion magazines, they all told young girls the same thing—you must look like this, whatever “this” was at the time.
Shirts became shorter, pants tighter, tops cut lower—attracting more attention than any teenage girl should receive, let alone one whose danger radar doesn’t function properly. Beyond the obvious dangers of attracting too much attention from the opposite sex, and older ones at that, a much bigger unforeseen danger lurked—mind blindness.
One of the first things that I learned about my Asperger’s diagnosis is that there are three core deficits that accompany this condition—the lack of theory of mind, executive dysfunction, and weak central coherence. There are also a host of other issues like sensory processing difficulties—being hyper or hypo sensitive to outside stimuli like heat, cold, or pain.
Theory of Mind is the ability to understand that other people’s feelings, intentions, and desires are different than your own, and then interpret, infer, or predict their actions. It is a fundamental understanding that their actions are based on their inner feelings. Autistic people often lack, or have great difficulty with theory of mind—they are said to be mind-blind.
Being mind-blind makes you extremely susceptible to deception. The mind-blind, autistic teenaged girl may not see the signs that are obvious to everyone else around them. They do not pick up on social cues, vocal intonations, or facial expression. Or, if they noticed they often will misinterpret their meanings. Picking up on social cues comes naturally to the neurotypical individual, a person who is not autistic, but for those with autism this innate ability is missing.
Twirling Naked in the Streets and No One Noticed; Growing Up With Undiagnosed Autism Page 8