•4:20 PM
September 9, 2009 4:59 p.m.
I don't often write about books I have read but I had to comment on the book I just finished reading: Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison. This is an unlikely read for me, but I heard about it on somebody's blog (I do not remember whose blog, sorry) and it turned out that our local library carried it.
I have to say that this was an entertaining read for me. It caused me to laugh out loud on several occasions. There were also some very touching moments in the book. But most of all, it was a truly interesting book. The author is about seven years older than I am, and grew up in the years before Asperger's was even identified as a "syndrome". He just wondered why he had such difficulty with fitting in, and wondered to what extent his severely disfunctional family life would render him "illegitimate" as a person. Nevertheless, he rose above his deficiencies and made the most of his strengths and today he is a happy person with a very successful life: married, a father with a good relationship with his son, and a productive small business owner. I shared several details of the book with Self-Reliant Man, in particular the author's interest and talent around cars, tractors, and his early career as an electrical engineer. Self-Reliant Man is an electrical engineer for a large corporation, and I am a "retired" electrical engineer. Despite the author's unstable childhood and teen years, I classify this as an uplifting and encouraging read.
The book left me wondering about myself and Self-Reliant Man. I would tend to think that both of us have some "Aspergian" traits. Perhaps this added to my interest in this book. I happened to find an online self assessment quiz that measure's one's "AQ"; I guess that the quiz is semi-serious, and measures one's "Aspergian Quotient". So I took the quiz, and as I suspected, I came up as near borderline Aspergian myself. My score turned out to be 29! Rather high for a woman. As I read and answered the questions, I can only guess that Self-Reliant Man's score would be even higher than mine.
Oh well, not to worry. I think the results are interesting, and they certainly explain a lot! (to me, anyway, as most of my friends would never guess about my internal social struggles and the self-coaching I need to often do). However, thinking about this has been eye -opening as well, because it reminds me how we cannot ever judge another person for their personality quirks, or ever consider a person less "spiritual" or less Christian on account of their reticence to do certains things within their church community setting. The Lord created all of our brains differently, and one person's weakness can certainly be another person's strength (and vice versa).
By the way, thinking about Asperger's caused me to think back to a boy I knew in middle school. He was a nice kid, although he had a lot of strange and unusual habits and the other kids teased him unmercifully. He was also a whiz kid in math. Although Asperger's wasn't a diagnosis in those days, I feel certain that he would have fit the profile. I had a flashback to some of the interactions I had with him in seventh and eighth grade. Both of us were marginalized by the other kids when we were in school, but I was always nice to him and he was a gentle soul. By the time I began high school, he and his family had moved away, and I never knew what became of him. I thought I would Google his name and see what became of him. It turns out that he is a university professor today, and a mathematician. He teaches in the electrical engineering and computer science department and specializes in theoretical computer science, specifically a subfield known as "computational complexity". He has written about a hundred research papers and he travels the country and the world to present his work at conferences. His name is all over the internet. He has a blog, and I cannot even understand anything he writes in it; it is that esoteric. Apparently he is an internationally well- known and respected contributor in his field. Where would we be without such people in the world?
Very interesting. What is it with these folks and electrical engineering, anyway? Hmmmm.
I don't often write about books I have read but I had to comment on the book I just finished reading: Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison. This is an unlikely read for me, but I heard about it on somebody's blog (I do not remember whose blog, sorry) and it turned out that our local library carried it.
I have to say that this was an entertaining read for me. It caused me to laugh out loud on several occasions. There were also some very touching moments in the book. But most of all, it was a truly interesting book. The author is about seven years older than I am, and grew up in the years before Asperger's was even identified as a "syndrome". He just wondered why he had such difficulty with fitting in, and wondered to what extent his severely disfunctional family life would render him "illegitimate" as a person. Nevertheless, he rose above his deficiencies and made the most of his strengths and today he is a happy person with a very successful life: married, a father with a good relationship with his son, and a productive small business owner. I shared several details of the book with Self-Reliant Man, in particular the author's interest and talent around cars, tractors, and his early career as an electrical engineer. Self-Reliant Man is an electrical engineer for a large corporation, and I am a "retired" electrical engineer. Despite the author's unstable childhood and teen years, I classify this as an uplifting and encouraging read.
The book left me wondering about myself and Self-Reliant Man. I would tend to think that both of us have some "Aspergian" traits. Perhaps this added to my interest in this book. I happened to find an online self assessment quiz that measure's one's "AQ"; I guess that the quiz is semi-serious, and measures one's "Aspergian Quotient". So I took the quiz, and as I suspected, I came up as near borderline Aspergian myself. My score turned out to be 29! Rather high for a woman. As I read and answered the questions, I can only guess that Self-Reliant Man's score would be even higher than mine.
Oh well, not to worry. I think the results are interesting, and they certainly explain a lot! (to me, anyway, as most of my friends would never guess about my internal social struggles and the self-coaching I need to often do). However, thinking about this has been eye -opening as well, because it reminds me how we cannot ever judge another person for their personality quirks, or ever consider a person less "spiritual" or less Christian on account of their reticence to do certains things within their church community setting. The Lord created all of our brains differently, and one person's weakness can certainly be another person's strength (and vice versa).
By the way, thinking about Asperger's caused me to think back to a boy I knew in middle school. He was a nice kid, although he had a lot of strange and unusual habits and the other kids teased him unmercifully. He was also a whiz kid in math. Although Asperger's wasn't a diagnosis in those days, I feel certain that he would have fit the profile. I had a flashback to some of the interactions I had with him in seventh and eighth grade. Both of us were marginalized by the other kids when we were in school, but I was always nice to him and he was a gentle soul. By the time I began high school, he and his family had moved away, and I never knew what became of him. I thought I would Google his name and see what became of him. It turns out that he is a university professor today, and a mathematician. He teaches in the electrical engineering and computer science department and specializes in theoretical computer science, specifically a subfield known as "computational complexity". He has written about a hundred research papers and he travels the country and the world to present his work at conferences. His name is all over the internet. He has a blog, and I cannot even understand anything he writes in it; it is that esoteric. Apparently he is an internationally well- known and respected contributor in his field. Where would we be without such people in the world?
Very interesting. What is it with these folks and electrical engineering, anyway? Hmmmm.
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1 comments:
I'm always surprised by the people who see themselves in my stories.
Best wishes
John