aspie rhetor

I wrote the following blurb for the Asperger’s/HFA group I’m a part of, Aspirations. Some version of this will be appearing in the December newsletter. Last week, I was able to spend some time at the NATTAP Conference (Network of Autism Training and Technical Assistance Programs).

On Friday, November 21, I hopped on the #2 bus and headed toward the convention center, on my way to see one of the keynote speakers at the NATTAP Conference—Temple Grandin. I held a name badge in hand, a badge that wasn’t my own, largely owing to the fact that I was too miserly to register for the conference. Once I walked through the front doors, I pretended to be Jeff Siegel [an Aspirations facilitator], and no one noticed the misnomer, excepting one creepy guy who said “Hi, Jeff” as I walked past a table in the exhibition hall. After that point, I removed my fraudulent tag and moseyed into the auditorium.

The session began nearly 15 minutes late, and then started off with four speakers who, though I’m sure were important, relied entirely too much on PowerPoint and monosyllabic words. I tuned them out, instead fascinated by the lighting effects in the room. The stage had two large fiberglass panels on the ends, each of which slowly turned different colors, hushed reds and purples and greens. Center stage and affixed from several light fixtures hung a large cardboard globe, and descending from the middle was a strange shape, the symbol of the conference—I spent about twenty minutes debating whether it was a puzzle piece or a person that looked like a puzzle piece. Alas, I could wonder no more, as suddenly Temple Grandin was called onto the stage, each of the boring people filtering back to their front-row seats.

I’ve never seen Grandin speak, though I have read several of her books and have watched some of her presentations on YouTube. Calling her energetic would be an understatement. Her talk about autism spectrum disorders had the fervency of a televangelist, minus the damnation and tithing stuff, if you can imagine that. For those not familiar with her work, Grandin was born in 1947 and sported all the symptoms of full-blown, classic autism. Today, she’s a professor at Colorado State and has designed half of the facilities for livestock that exist in the U.S. And, according to her blurb in the NATTAP program, she’s arguably the most famous autistic person in the world. HBO is currently filming a movie about her early life, with Claire Danes playing the role of Grandin. As Grandin discussed her visit to the Hollywood set during the keynote talk, she mentioned how she cared less for meeting Claire Danes than she did for playing with all the neat electronic toys on the set.

What I really enjoyed about Grandin’s talk was her perspective on ASD—a focus on strengths rather than deficits. Sometimes I read autism-related articles or watch documentaries on Asperger’s and walk away thinking “woe is me,” wondering why I even bother to tie my shoes in the morning or trudge through the existential quandary that is life. Grandin described three thinking types that generally typify persons with ASD:

1. Visual thinkers (poor at Algebra)
2. Music and math thinkers (love patterns)
3. Verbal fact thinkers (poor at drawing, tend to be the aspies who love History, fact-finding, and/or language-based subjects)

Grandin continually emphasized that “eccentric” is OK, that not everyone should be “plain vanilla,” that autism is variable, that no one on the spectrum is of a cookie-cutter mold. The only way to help insure success of those on the spectrum, she argued, is to drill social skills into them at a very early age and in very specific ways.

Grandin claimed that there is a big difference between old and new aspies, that aspies of previous generations have tended to be more successful in jobs and relationships because rules and manners were more structured in the 50s and 60s. She uses herself as an example—her success, she maintained, dealt largely with her mother being very specific about what qualifies as rudeness. “Neurotypicals,” she lamented, “are too vague today.”

Grandin concluded a bit prematurely, mostly because the boring people at the beginning started late. She suggested that practitioners learn to better identify the strengths of those on the spectrum and capitalize on those strengths for employment. She also stressed that many people with ASD “are what they do.” After her talk, she sat at a table in the exhibition hall and signed books. In true miserly fashion, I brought my tattered, heavily used copy of Thinking in Pictures, an ex-library book that I splurged three dollars for on half.com. Grandin signed it and made a comment about the old library stamps. I told her that I was a poor grad student surviving on Ramen Noodles and my professors’ mercy, and she seemed to understand.

Photographic evidence: Grandin’s signature