Neurodivergence

A Happy Tale from Gen Con 2027

Lester

I posted this message earlier on Kickstarter, as an update to the Children of the Elder Sign project, but it’s too good a story to not share here.

College buddy & GDW compatriot Tim Ryan, diced

Hey, gang!

Gen Con was great, but exhausting. Friends dragged me into four different Call of Cthulhu adventures—from 1920s, to cyberpunk, to the depths of space—and introduced me to several new board games. (I highly recommend For Sale.) And I picked up a few treasures in the Dealers Hall, ran into some old colleagues there, and introduced someone to the Bookmark No HP RPG in a spontaneous session while sheltering in a side room during a tornado warning. (Western setting involving cattle rustlers holed up in a farmer’s cabin during a thunderstorm.)

Saturday evening, just after the tornado warning was lifted, a friend asked me to snap a picture of them in front of a Chaosium demo room just off a main hallway. I set my bags and hoodie down at my feet in the middle of the hall to get the picture, waiting for a gap in the passing crowds, and when we were finished and I gathered my stuff, I forgot the little brown paper bag of dice sets I’d gotten at the Black Oak Workshop booth.

When I realized it a few minutes later, we were nearly at the exit, and I figured the bag was long gone. My friend convinced me to retrace our steps, but no dice. (Pun intended.) They suggested checking Lost & Found, but it was late, the halls were crowded, and I thought it was a lost cause.

The next morning, as my old college buddy and GDW compatriot Tim Ryan were on the way to an event, we stopped at Lost & Found on the off chance they’d been returned. And lo and behold, there they were. Someone in that crowd of 74,000 people had seen the unattended little bag, picked it up, and took the time to turn it in instead of taking it home with them.

The person at the counter said, “I work a lot of events, with a lot of crowds, and I have to say, gamers are by far the nicest, kindest of them all.” It’s a sentiment shared by restaurant owners and shop keepers in Indianapolis news stories every year. Gamers are the nicest, most polite of all the convention crowds they see.

I gotta admit, I was a little misty eyed to hear that said about our hobby. I’m a little misty eyed again just telling you. The dice would have been no great loss, but instead they gave me a memory to treasure.

Gamers are the best.

Laying on the Horn

Lester

As I write this, my spouse is in the hospital. (Nothing currently life-threatening, just severe systemic pain from a common localized infection.) She’s been there pretty much the whole time since three days ago. It seems likely she may get out tomorrow.

I’m holding down the fort, which mainly means keeping our dogs from stressing in her absence.

My biggest problem right now is trying to divert my autistic hyperfocus from being pissed off that, because the hospital didn’t actually admit her as an inpatient, our health insurance won’t pay for the over-the-counter painkillers they’re giving her, and as of yesterday that meant $500+ in debt for Aleve. I’m expecting about $1k by the time she’s out.

It’s infuriating, because we’re helpless under American healthcare. And when I’m furious, my brain fixates on figuring out ways to make someone responsible regret their choices.

(Example: While I was teaching Kate to drive, we came to a complicated two-way stop involving a Wisconsin state highway that makes a right turn into downtown Elkhorn. Kate’s extremely cautious. The guy behind us laid on the horn. I said, “Oh, hell no. Put this car in Park.” And I went back to explain to him, in detail, smiling politely, the facts in those two sentences. After a few minutes, he was begging me to please just go back to our car and leave. I took my own sweet time strolling the distance.)

I’ve been too tired for the past few days to distract myself with work. Here’s hoping for a little relief today, by focusing on Children of the Elder Sign Kickstarter progress.

But, good god, once Jen’s back and settled, several somebody’s are going to discover just how annoying a pissed-off, hyperfocused retiree can be.

The long tall and the short of it

Lester

Electromagnetic Spectrum

“Everybody feels that way sometimes,” they say. “Everything’s a spectrum, and everybody’s on it.”

Tell that to the seven-foot-tall woman and the two-foot-tall man.

Yes, there is a range of people between those record-holders and the average 5′ 8″ for men, and the average 5′ 3” for women. Just as there is a range from the average IQ of 100 to YoungHoon Kim’s 276.  But to call those ranges “spectrums” is to paltrify the social challenges unique to those outliers. At some point the term “unusual” has to be acknowledged, along with associated difficulties and inconveniences.

The same can be said for autism and ADHD.

Speaking of which, last fall I posted about an initial diagnosis of “too old, successful, and respected by your peers to have autism or ADHD” (Good Enough, Close Enough Isn’t), and the challenges of caring deeply in a compromising world. There’s only so much that behavioral therapy—the only therapy available within our insurance network—can do for someone who perceives the world much differently than his neighbors.

So last month I bypassed those geographical limits, researched adult autism professionals within the US, and had an evaluation at my own expense. “We don’t guarantee a diagnosis as autistic,” they said. “Good,” I thought.

Let me compare the two evaluations, the “too old and successful” clinical psychologist, versus the “we don’t guarantee” one.

The first had me fill out two questionnaires and my wife fill out another, then spent a half an hour interviewing me, followed by another half hour a week later, in which he gave a short oral summary: “You have lots of markers, but I see children who can’t even speak, and others who literally can’t sit still.” He ended with an off-hand comment that he hadn’t even heard of “masking” until two weeks prior. A term I hadn’t at all mentioned.

The second also had me fill out a pair of questionnaires and my wife fill out another. Then she held two one-hour interviews, followed by another hour a week later, in which she walked me through the DSM-5 criteria, point by point. The adult autism diagnosis was undeniable. I’m reevaluating my history of outsidership and rootless shame from that perspective and it fits. It doesn’t fix things, but it lets me let myself off the hook for some and have a better idea of moving forward. And there are support groups and therapy available.

Why bother telling you all of this? Because I’m 70, I come from a time when such things weren’t discussed, and I’ve stubborned my way through a life with too much unnecessary misery.

Maybe you’re stubborning your own way through your own misery. If so, there’s no shame in self-discovery and therapy. And chances are that your example will lead other people in your circle to shed the stigma and find some answers of their own.

Good Enough Close Enough Isn’t

Lester

I just came back from a session with a behavioral therapist I see on and off. Last time was months ago, before my autism/ADHD evaluation.

I Iet her know the psychiatrist’s conclusions (forgive my summarizing them here if you’ve seen an earlier post), which were: (1) lots of autism markers, but he sees kids who are worse; (2) lots of ADHD markers, but he sees kids who are worse; (3) the lifetime of feeling “odd man out” is from being bright and well educated and (4) probably also because of childhood trauma. Basically, then: You’re 69 y.o., and accomplished and respected by your peers, so you can’t be autistic or have ADHD. He also brought up the word “masking”—a term he’d heard of only a month before—I’m guessing to forestall any reponse I might make. Not that I can think that fast (a trait of autistic people, I’ve been told).

Note: That long paragraph is not the point of this post, just some background.

The point of this post is that when I told my counselor, “Things make so much more sense, and much of the past quits hurting, when I look back from the standpoint of autism and ADHD,” she nodded. And then she said something that brought tears to my eyes, “ADHD people are intense by nature. That passion is part of who you are.”

Something clicked.

I’ve never been satisfied with a half-assed job. Especially a half-assed work of art. “Good enough, close enough” makes me crazy. It’s why I’ve won awards in my various careers.

But more significantly, for some years now, I’ve been on the outs with my siblings—several of them pastors—because I cannot reconcile their professing service to Christ, with their service and praise for Donald Trump. Like them, I was raised Evangelical Christian, but if Truth is Truth, it shouldn’t be sacrificed for expendiency.

Our father says, “Be reasonable. Families sometimes disagree on politics.” I say, “This isn’t politics. It’s ethics. It’s morals. It’s finding a way to rationalize evil.”

I loathe bullies. And their toadies even more. Ever since childhood, I’ve fought for the disadvantaged, and in adulthood I’ve asked those victims to teach me when I overstep, how best to be an ally.

It’s not that I believe everything is binary black-and-white right-or-wrong. It’s that the best thing evident deserves my best efforts, and that includes striving to be better.

“Why can’t you just get along?”

Because that’s not how people with ADHD are made.