Chuck2

Well, I will put what I can here to give some perspective.

I was born in California, in the bay area. Grew up mostly in Texas as my family has lived here for a couple hundred years so all of my Texas relatives are here. My mom was from Michigan. My Michigan relatives were kind enough to teach me how to drive in snowy and blizzard conditions. Fell in love with Hawaii when I was on active duty so I wear Hawaiian shirts whenever the weather is warm.

I grew up in theater because my mom and younger sister had the interest. I got to play a lead role in a professional production because they needed a kid who acted like an adult.

I had Bacterial Meningitis at age nine shortly after my big role and could no longer memorize lines. My schoolwork which was already failing got worse and I began to forget homework assignments.

I kept going to school but my grades got rapidly worse. I became a regular in summer school where I had no problem making good grades. I didn't finish high school. One day they just told me to go home. It would have been my third senior year.

At nineteen, right before the beginning of my third senior year, my parents and I saw no future for me on the course I was on so they recommended that I join the Navy so I could get some training. I signed up to fix mainframe computers but flunked out of the school. I had trouble interpreting the questions and so I also had trouble extrapolating the answers. On the harder subjects they would write the questions more plainly and I would ace those tests but still was not enough to finish the school.

In college, quite a few years later, I had a 3.2 average. I finished with a technical certification.

When my contract with the Navy ran out I went straight to a civilian doctor to ask why I was so depressed all of the time. They diagnosed me with bipolar. This was 1990 and that diagnosis was common.

I never managed to keep a job very long. I always had confrontations with staff and was usually asked to leave or was fired.

Through my teens and twenties my passion was cooking in restaurants. It didn't pay very well so I sought after work in computers. Air conditioning was part of the motivation.

During treatment for bipolar and all of my adult life I kept having problems that I thought were related to bipolar but my doctors said that they weren't. I had to keep a notepad with me all of the time to write things down. I had to make lists for everything even things I did every morning to open up the restaurant. I often had trouble understanding people when they would use sarcasm or subtlety. This happened all too often.

Needless to say I was harassed and beaten all through school until we moved to a city where people just didn't do that. The schools where I was getting beaten had a no tolerance policy and would punish the bullies and me as well.

I would love to find out if I am on the spectrum so that if I am I know what else I have to work around. That way I may be able to go back to work at least part time. One of the lingering side effects of Meningitis for me is having to take a nap half-way through the day. This makes it hard to have a full time job. Also, while doing paperwork I have a lot of trouble and paperwork that should take ten minutes to do ends up taking two hours. I had the same problem with homework in school but that's not why I was forgetting my assignments.

Yeah, maybe TMI but maybe not. This is where I'm at right now at age fifty.

Most importantly, i have a cousin on the spectrum who is now a meteorologist. The schools in this state wanted to put him in special ed. My father has so much in common, as do I, with the character Sheldon Cooper on Big Bang that I thought it was something I needed to look into for him and for myself.

If I am diagnosed as being on the spectrum I plan on becoming a paying member here and setting up camp. If not I will get a second opinion.

Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 159 of 200 - Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 40 of 200 - You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)
RAADS-R 179 The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised (RAADS-R)
AQ Score 42 AQ-10 score 9.0 The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ)