Figured would toss these on here as I’m both lazy and a disaster, but here you go (these are ancient history fwiw, when I was 9). Shouldn’t have any triggering/sad shit (didn’t screenshot, basically) but may as well share 9 year old me’s glorious basedness:
Sis, you got no idea how messed up it was. How good you were at masking was the defining characteristic that determined if you were gonna be in the “gifted kids group” or the “r-worded kids class”.
Autism was barely even recognized as a legitimate diagnosis at the time, and it was largely limited to, “Haha, like Rain Man! Very funny!” levels of understanding. Which track you landed in was largely vibes-based, and I’m forever grateful I was adept enough at scripting my responses at the time to make me seem normal.
Also, us Big Smart Boys got a break every day to go read in the library, where I learned how to install a pirated version of SimCity on the cataloguing computer. That was neat.
Damn, didn’t know it was- that recent of a thing? Autism recognition in schools that is.
Hell if I know where I’d wind up (though it probably would have been the latter). I scored rather decently for the ““intelligence assessment,”” but then I was a little terror (and still remain a terror, albeit a healthier and better one). I believe the assessments began because I was- in hindsight, probably stimming- and some other kid tried to busybody/stop me,
and I wound up in a pencil/pen stabbing fightI think the 1987 revision of the DSM was the first time autism was recognized as its own distinct thing—outside of just being a subset of schizophrenia. And even then it was mostly a differentiation between, “Do you
have schizophreniado weird things and cannot communicate them effectively, or are you Rain Man Super Genius Savant Boy?”Note that I don’t include the word “girl” or “woman” in any of my descriptions of the time. Females are just moody, apparently!
Ah, rip