A lot of the negative feedback I've gotten over my plans to attend The Culinary Institute Of America are regarding my ability to succeed. This entails every aspect of those plans, from my ability to come up with the money, to my ability to get in, to my ability to live up to the rigor and standards of the acclaimed program, to my ability to get a job in the industry at which I will last at least a year. Admittedly, I would've agreed with some of these objections, and fairly recently at that. Building enough self confidence to put aside these concerns and forge ahead has been a complex and multifaceted process. Perhaps some of it is just that a sufficient amount of time has passed since the failure of my company that I've been able to sufficiently mentally recover. Mostly, I think I've had experiences in both the distant and recent past that have convinced me I have at least sufficient reason to suspect that I can overcome those obstacles. For months after my company failed, I had no hope within me that I could succeed at any endeavor significant merit. Attending CIA represents the first truly significant thing for which I've dared hope in six months. Despite the complete lack of potential my biological and stepparents see in this endeavor, I see it as something that, while certainly difficult, is worth doing.
On the question of whether I'll be able to get in, I'll admit that that hasn't been definitively answered yet. What I have going for me is my three years of experience owning a specialized unique dessert company through which I gained a fairly rare expertise on the subject of gelato and that I can articulate my passion for food so well because of my writing talent. CIA sees me as someone with something unique to bring to the program and they appreciate that I'm not like most of their applicants who write that they expect to become celebrity chefs and authors of bestselling cookbooks. Raising the money to pay for tuition is another question that has not yet been definitively answered and I covered the particulars in an earlier article titled Payment. What I can tell you is that my fundraising campaign at http://www.gofundme.com/n91zus has raised 100 in less than 48 hours, which is a nice confidence boost. Concerns over my ability to work at the pace and quality demanded at CIA are valid and I've thought about it a lot. Helpfully, I remember how I had to adjust to the pace and quality standards in Classical Desserts And Pastries class at NWACC and how I managed to improve enough that the chef instructor personally congratulated me on how much I'd grown. Besides, I will be rigorously training myself through the very textbook I'll have at CIA, just as I did with the candy making book.
Perhaps the most open question on offer is whether I'll be able to get a job afterwards. Although my plan is to become a paid consultant for my former company, for which I currently consult, it's always good to consider all my options. Say that consulting job doesn't work out for whatever reason. Could I get up early in the morning, make dozens of pastries, and do so at a quality level and pace sufficient to satisfy a professional dessert business? Well, I don't know if that's true or not at the moment, but I couldn't successfully make a basic birthday cake that looked professional before I took the cake decorating class either. While I can't make the complex decorated cake that professional bakeshops can, yet, I feel that is mostly because I have not been trained to do it or even really tried to do it. It's worth it to stop saying I can't do things because of autism. For years, I've been saying that and I'm tired of it. Can't sweep, can't mop, can't move faster, can't make a lemon meringue pie, can't, can't, can't, can't, can't. Isn't it time to say that, no, I haven't turned over every stone, haven't tried as hard as I can every which way I can, haven't gotten the best training I can, haven't pushed my body and mind as hard as I can, and haven't believed in myself the way all my friends can? No more can't. Let's see if I can.
-Frank
Friday, February 27, 2015
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Partition
Chefs and bakers are very different creatures and this distinction is poorly understood. When I previously took a professional development course in frozen desserts at The Culinary Institute Of America's Greystone campus in Napa Valley, I learned this distinction in a very visceral manner. Their main kitchen isn't so much what most would picture as a kitchen as much as it was what most people would consider an enormous ballroom that happened to have a kitchen in it. I soon found out that the baking and pastry people had their own side of the kitchen and the general culinary people had their own side of the kitchen. It harkened back to the classic scene of siblings drawing a line down the middle of a shared bedroom to represent mutually exclusive personal areas. We were instructed to not use any of the equipment on the general culinary side of the kitchen and I'm pretty sure they were instructed to look upon us in the eye. That's an extreme example, but it does demonstrate a certain rivalry between pastry chefs and our savory counterparts.
A restaurant kitchen is one of the busiest environments you will ever find on the face of this Earth. Speed is king and the whole endeavor is a mad dash to produce everything perfectly as fast as one possibly can. Bakeshops too require one to work as efficiently as possible, but, "as possible," is the key phrase. Although cooks can often repair, replace, and regroup in the face of a mistake, bakers know, definitively, that a mistake will ruin a product completely, with no real option besides starting all over again. So bakers take their time to measure things precisely, to carefully apply the correct mixing method, to monitor thermometers, and to fabricate finished products. While cooks face a new deadline for a new order every time a ticket comes out of the printer, a baker faces a single deadline by which all the food must be ready. That means that bakers have the luxury of achieving successful time-management through planning out their entire workday, whereas cooks must constantly adjust their time management on the fly. These are very different worlds.
I think these differences very much offer clues as to why I'm a far better baker than I am a cook and why I would almost certainly not be able to thrive in a general culinary program the same way I could in a baking and pastry arts one. Adapting quickly isn't generally a strong suit of autistics and I am no exception. It's the planning and practice that take that element of cooking out of baking. All the adapting to new procedures, new recipes, and new environs is done ahead of time. One practices new procedures until one masters them, tests new recipes until they work consistently, and practices in new environs until comfortable with them. Time management isn't about adapting to constantly changing demands like cooking is. That's all about knowing from practice how long each baked good will take and keeping track on what is going on with each one. Many people who don't think I'll make it through CIA have, as their basic fallacy, a confusion between what it means to be a chef and what it means to be a baker. Don't get me wrong. All that planning and practice won't be easy, but I am capable of it.
-Frank
A restaurant kitchen is one of the busiest environments you will ever find on the face of this Earth. Speed is king and the whole endeavor is a mad dash to produce everything perfectly as fast as one possibly can. Bakeshops too require one to work as efficiently as possible, but, "as possible," is the key phrase. Although cooks can often repair, replace, and regroup in the face of a mistake, bakers know, definitively, that a mistake will ruin a product completely, with no real option besides starting all over again. So bakers take their time to measure things precisely, to carefully apply the correct mixing method, to monitor thermometers, and to fabricate finished products. While cooks face a new deadline for a new order every time a ticket comes out of the printer, a baker faces a single deadline by which all the food must be ready. That means that bakers have the luxury of achieving successful time-management through planning out their entire workday, whereas cooks must constantly adjust their time management on the fly. These are very different worlds.
I think these differences very much offer clues as to why I'm a far better baker than I am a cook and why I would almost certainly not be able to thrive in a general culinary program the same way I could in a baking and pastry arts one. Adapting quickly isn't generally a strong suit of autistics and I am no exception. It's the planning and practice that take that element of cooking out of baking. All the adapting to new procedures, new recipes, and new environs is done ahead of time. One practices new procedures until one masters them, tests new recipes until they work consistently, and practices in new environs until comfortable with them. Time management isn't about adapting to constantly changing demands like cooking is. That's all about knowing from practice how long each baked good will take and keeping track on what is going on with each one. Many people who don't think I'll make it through CIA have, as their basic fallacy, a confusion between what it means to be a chef and what it means to be a baker. Don't get me wrong. All that planning and practice won't be easy, but I am capable of it.
-Frank
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Paying
Paying to go to The Culinary Institute Of America is no mean feat. Given that I am unlikely to be able to raise the necessary funds by the summer semester, I am looking at basically ten months to do so. 61,730 is what the program will cost me in total, with 16,130 for the first semester, 14,485 for the second semester, 15,645 for the third semester, and 15,170 for the fourth semester. Upon the suggestion of a friend, I started a fundraising campaign on the website gofundme.com, which can be found at http://www.gofundme.com/n91zus and has, as of this writing, raised ten dollars for the cause. As mentioned in my previous article, I am looking into more traditional means of paying for school, such as student loans, personal loans, scholarships, and grants, as well as personal sacrifices like sacrificing the money that I've been setting aside for things like vacations and home renovation.
Although the tuition may seem fairly steep, it's actually quite the bargain, given the school's status as the best in the world. My undergraduate tuition at Drury University was a fair bit more than the numbers I quoted above and far less prestigious. When I tell people I have an undergraduate and graduate degree from that institution, they are rarely impressed and graduates of neighboring Missouri State University often downright scoff at the notion that this was an achievement of some description. CIA grads, on the other hand, get reactions on par with graduates of Harvard Law School, MIT, or other Ivy League institutions. Despite this being the first time I have not relied on family members to pay for tuition, I think I'll be making a better investment. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed my time at Drury immensely, but this is a whole new ball game of opportunity that will likely be my greatest achievement.
Many people will tell you that the CIA isn't worth the money because you'll just go out and get the same jobs people without culinary degrees that expensive can get, only you're 61,730 dollars lighter than they are. Yeah, if all you want to do is be a line cook or a bakery employee the rest of your life, maybe that's true. Here's what's also true. Do you think the CIA is training its students to go out there and be rank and file employees? No! The clue is very much in the word, "chef." Basically, the rough translation from the French is, "boss." When graduates leave the CIA, they will have prepared them to be chefs, business owners, managers, consultants, and so on. Kitchens operate like the military, owing to the concept developed by Escoffier of brigade de cuisine. This translates to, "army of the food." I will pay what I do because I am training to be an officer and a gentleman pastry chef extraordinaire.
-Frank
Although the tuition may seem fairly steep, it's actually quite the bargain, given the school's status as the best in the world. My undergraduate tuition at Drury University was a fair bit more than the numbers I quoted above and far less prestigious. When I tell people I have an undergraduate and graduate degree from that institution, they are rarely impressed and graduates of neighboring Missouri State University often downright scoff at the notion that this was an achievement of some description. CIA grads, on the other hand, get reactions on par with graduates of Harvard Law School, MIT, or other Ivy League institutions. Despite this being the first time I have not relied on family members to pay for tuition, I think I'll be making a better investment. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed my time at Drury immensely, but this is a whole new ball game of opportunity that will likely be my greatest achievement.
Many people will tell you that the CIA isn't worth the money because you'll just go out and get the same jobs people without culinary degrees that expensive can get, only you're 61,730 dollars lighter than they are. Yeah, if all you want to do is be a line cook or a bakery employee the rest of your life, maybe that's true. Here's what's also true. Do you think the CIA is training its students to go out there and be rank and file employees? No! The clue is very much in the word, "chef." Basically, the rough translation from the French is, "boss." When graduates leave the CIA, they will have prepared them to be chefs, business owners, managers, consultants, and so on. Kitchens operate like the military, owing to the concept developed by Escoffier of brigade de cuisine. This translates to, "army of the food." I will pay what I do because I am training to be an officer and a gentleman pastry chef extraordinaire.
-Frank
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Persistance
Attending The Culinary Institute Of America raises certain questions for me. How to pay for it, as it is roughly a cumulative cost of 61,000, is certainly among the most pressing. My plan on that, to paraphrase the title of a Clint Eastwood film, is every which way I can. A loan based on my vehicle would get me roughly a third of the way there and, if I sacrificed some vacation and renovation plans I upon which I was working I'd be about seventy five percent of the way there. Student loans, scholarships, grants, and the like are also options which I will explore. Another question it raises is whether or not I'll be able to make it through the program, if accepted. This question is one I find far less pressing, although I've certainly had to deal with some naysayers on the subject. While I am aware that the school is quite demanding, I am also confident that I've done everything in my power to make sure I understand as much about the school and what will be expected of me before I attend. By doing this, I can mentally and physically prepare myself as much as possible in the months leading up to my first semester. Even though I take the school and the challenges attending it will present with the utmost seriousness, I am not afraid.
Let's go into what I know will be expected of me. First, I must have my complete uniform of chef's jacket, checks, apron, side towels, and hat on at all times during which I am in the kitchen. Second, the only permitted answer to a request by a chef instructor is, "Yes chef." Even if I suspect I may struggle with what is being asked of me because of autism or inexperience, I will try like my life depends on it to follow orders immediately and precisely. Third, I must learn to cooperate with my classmates for the sake of making the bakeshop function properly. Admittedly, I had trouble with that in my last culinary school, but I am not going to let that stop me in this one. Besides, we'll all have gotten into the best culinary school in the world and I am confident that any personality clashes I have with my classmates will be ones we are all willing to put aside in service of the food. Whatever difficulties I must face at CIA, I that I won't quit. That's not idle talk either, but a fact proven by the fact that I so loved my dessert company that I stayed at it, operating long past the point where reason and finances would insist I throw in the towel. That's tenacity of a special kind. Basically, I don't care if it kills me, I am going to graduate from CIA. Period.
After everything I've said about dogged persistence, I suppose the ultimate question is, "Why are you doing this you crazy bastard?" It's a fair question. Couldn't I learn a lot of this from CIA textbooks, as I have done in the past? Besides, aside from a casual verbal agreement I have with the new owners of my company, there aren't any job prospects for me out there, even with a CIA degree, because of the limitations placed on me by autism. So why? Why come up with all this money, go through a grueling culinary program, and risk failure while your own family tries to talk you out of it? Well, the core of it is, I think, because it's the first passion I've felt for something since my company failed. Sitting around writing on my blog, often about the state of managing life as a failure and disabled man, isn't exactly something to sing about. What's my obit going to say one day? "Frank Bailey never did much with his life. A disabled man, he lived off his family until his death, survived by no one." What is money, effort, and risk of failure compared to that prospect? I don't want to die as that man. Maybe I'll grow enough at CIA to become employable, who knows? Even if not, however, I'll have done something to sing about.
-Frank
Let's go into what I know will be expected of me. First, I must have my complete uniform of chef's jacket, checks, apron, side towels, and hat on at all times during which I am in the kitchen. Second, the only permitted answer to a request by a chef instructor is, "Yes chef." Even if I suspect I may struggle with what is being asked of me because of autism or inexperience, I will try like my life depends on it to follow orders immediately and precisely. Third, I must learn to cooperate with my classmates for the sake of making the bakeshop function properly. Admittedly, I had trouble with that in my last culinary school, but I am not going to let that stop me in this one. Besides, we'll all have gotten into the best culinary school in the world and I am confident that any personality clashes I have with my classmates will be ones we are all willing to put aside in service of the food. Whatever difficulties I must face at CIA, I that I won't quit. That's not idle talk either, but a fact proven by the fact that I so loved my dessert company that I stayed at it, operating long past the point where reason and finances would insist I throw in the towel. That's tenacity of a special kind. Basically, I don't care if it kills me, I am going to graduate from CIA. Period.
After everything I've said about dogged persistence, I suppose the ultimate question is, "Why are you doing this you crazy bastard?" It's a fair question. Couldn't I learn a lot of this from CIA textbooks, as I have done in the past? Besides, aside from a casual verbal agreement I have with the new owners of my company, there aren't any job prospects for me out there, even with a CIA degree, because of the limitations placed on me by autism. So why? Why come up with all this money, go through a grueling culinary program, and risk failure while your own family tries to talk you out of it? Well, the core of it is, I think, because it's the first passion I've felt for something since my company failed. Sitting around writing on my blog, often about the state of managing life as a failure and disabled man, isn't exactly something to sing about. What's my obit going to say one day? "Frank Bailey never did much with his life. A disabled man, he lived off his family until his death, survived by no one." What is money, effort, and risk of failure compared to that prospect? I don't want to die as that man. Maybe I'll grow enough at CIA to become employable, who knows? Even if not, however, I'll have done something to sing about.
-Frank
Monday, February 23, 2015
Preparation
Depending on how things work out, my time at The Culinary Institute Of America could begin as early as this summer or as late as next January. With this on the horizon, I have begun to prepare myself as best I can for the experience. Anyone who has attempted to cook or bake at a high level has daydreamed about this prospect. Like most of them, I had always considered the notion a pipe dream and accordingly sought out an inexpensive culinary education at the local community college. In a way, I'm glad to went to that level of culinary school first. Before that, I was just a foodie who'd watched a lot of Food Network and created dishes friends and family seemed to enjoy. Having had that experience though, I know what it takes and what moving around a professional kitchen feels like. Among the most valuable things I learned in my original culinary school was that I don't have the mettle to be a cook. Baking and pastry arts is where I belong and where the pace is something to which I can adapt. Looking back on everything is proving crucial as I prepare myself for entering the most prestigious school I will have ever attended.
Already owning some CIA textbooks, I will bake my way through them, especially if I don't start until January. This is not to say that I'll be able to pull off everything in those books, mind you. Even with particularly challenging things like croissants, it'll be quite helpful if I've at least taken a stab at them. As much as I struggle with cake decorating, it might be time to break out my old tools and practice writing, borders, crumb coats, splitting, and even fondant again. Risen breads, particularly those that require fabrication, are also something up upon which I need to bone. Practicing candy some more would also be advisable because, while most of the fruits of the crash course in confection I put myself through last Christmas were well-received, I still need to figure out how to consistently temper chocolate, how to not burn starch-based confections, and how to consistently achieve dark amber on my brittles. My strengths, as well as my weaknesses, are also something on which I have a pretty solid grasp. Cookies, the actual baking of cakes, muffins, frostings, and generally in the quick bread family are areas that I will still practice before I enter CIA, but I am not as concerned about my competency in those areas.
The other aspect of my preparation is basically the mental part. Autism has its limitations. Having not made friends in my prior culinary program, I do not and ought not expect to make any friends in this one. Hopefully, I manage to keep my social unpleasantness to enough of a dull roar that my classmates will be willing to cooperate with me on group projects and with the general teamwork needed to make any kitchen function correctly. Otherwise, I plan to keep to myself, treating the CIA as an entirely educational environment, much in the way I did high school. None of this is to say I won't be friendly or that I am not open to pleasant surprises. There is also the dexterity and coordination problems that I will need to be ready to work through, especially fine motor skills and operating a broom and mop. More generally, there is the endurance I know I will need to develop, which will be aided by all the practicing I intend to do. My feet will hurt, my back will hurt, my hands and arms will be cracked, burned, bruised, calloused, and cut. Kitchen pain is the most distinctive form of pain I have ever experienced and it's either worth it to you or not. To me, it's all worth it, and I intend to be ready when I attend the greatest culinary school on Earth.
-Frank
Already owning some CIA textbooks, I will bake my way through them, especially if I don't start until January. This is not to say that I'll be able to pull off everything in those books, mind you. Even with particularly challenging things like croissants, it'll be quite helpful if I've at least taken a stab at them. As much as I struggle with cake decorating, it might be time to break out my old tools and practice writing, borders, crumb coats, splitting, and even fondant again. Risen breads, particularly those that require fabrication, are also something up upon which I need to bone. Practicing candy some more would also be advisable because, while most of the fruits of the crash course in confection I put myself through last Christmas were well-received, I still need to figure out how to consistently temper chocolate, how to not burn starch-based confections, and how to consistently achieve dark amber on my brittles. My strengths, as well as my weaknesses, are also something on which I have a pretty solid grasp. Cookies, the actual baking of cakes, muffins, frostings, and generally in the quick bread family are areas that I will still practice before I enter CIA, but I am not as concerned about my competency in those areas.
The other aspect of my preparation is basically the mental part. Autism has its limitations. Having not made friends in my prior culinary program, I do not and ought not expect to make any friends in this one. Hopefully, I manage to keep my social unpleasantness to enough of a dull roar that my classmates will be willing to cooperate with me on group projects and with the general teamwork needed to make any kitchen function correctly. Otherwise, I plan to keep to myself, treating the CIA as an entirely educational environment, much in the way I did high school. None of this is to say I won't be friendly or that I am not open to pleasant surprises. There is also the dexterity and coordination problems that I will need to be ready to work through, especially fine motor skills and operating a broom and mop. More generally, there is the endurance I know I will need to develop, which will be aided by all the practicing I intend to do. My feet will hurt, my back will hurt, my hands and arms will be cracked, burned, bruised, calloused, and cut. Kitchen pain is the most distinctive form of pain I have ever experienced and it's either worth it to you or not. To me, it's all worth it, and I intend to be ready when I attend the greatest culinary school on Earth.
-Frank
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Professional
Mine is a professional life that has basically had only two segments. These are various types of academia and the world of food service. By training at Drury University, I am a writer, but, much like others in the arts, I stumble at being able to call it a professional career since I've never actually been paid to do it. Much of my early young adulthood was spent trying in vain to get paid for writing while I went to college and grad school. During this time, I worked the usual collection of food service jobs, white collar internships, and even, quite briefly, in telemarketing. Following that old maxim which states that those who can't do teach, I substitute taught in three different school districts for two years while returning to college to become a gifted education teacher specializing in English & history. Although I liked teaching, I found I wanted to teach more complex subject matter and applied to a number of PhD programs to become a college professor. Those plans changed when the economy crashed in fall of 2008, which led to go to culinary school since it was a more professionally practical pursuit about which I was already passionate.
Once I was out of culinary school, my first real job in the industry was working in the gelato shop some college friends had begun. They knew I had gotten through most of the way through a baking and pastry arts program and wanted me to make better gelato for them than was available for wholesale distribution. After spending about six months of private research, taking two trips to California to train, at CIA Greystone and with a legendary gelato shop owner respectively, and buying a home gelato machine to test recipes on, I began work at their gelato shop. Although things went very well, the working relationship broke down after I was never paid, despite acting as chef, supplier, and dishwasher, something I unwisely let slide for so long since they were old friends. During that time, I had already started my own gelato wholesale manufacturer called F.C.B. Desserts. Six months after I quit the gelato shop, we began distributing under the brand name Benissimo. At our height, the Springfield, MO company had product as far south as Northwest Arkansas and as far north as Columbia, MO. We made our product right and were known for it.
Before I began my company, I did not have much leadership experience. About the most I'd ever been a leader was a brief stint in Drury University's student government when I was an undergraduate. Knowing this, I brought on a woman to be an administrator and fill much of the managerial role that I was too inexperienced to perform. Being an autistic man, I am not terribly comfortable with hugging or being emotionally demonstrative, but I can certainly tell you that you must get over that fast when your staff is almost entirely composed of young women in their late teens and early twenties. Such handicaps aside, we became a fun an familial workplace. My realm was the kitchen and my culinary knowledge, quality standards, and insistence upon safety and sanitation procedures (very important in a production kitchen specializing in dairy) were what made our product the outstanding showstopper it invariably was. Nonetheless, I signed all paychecks, made ultimate decisions, and shared responsibility for figuring out how to solve problems as they came up. I can safely say I learned quite a bit from the experience.
-Frank
Once I was out of culinary school, my first real job in the industry was working in the gelato shop some college friends had begun. They knew I had gotten through most of the way through a baking and pastry arts program and wanted me to make better gelato for them than was available for wholesale distribution. After spending about six months of private research, taking two trips to California to train, at CIA Greystone and with a legendary gelato shop owner respectively, and buying a home gelato machine to test recipes on, I began work at their gelato shop. Although things went very well, the working relationship broke down after I was never paid, despite acting as chef, supplier, and dishwasher, something I unwisely let slide for so long since they were old friends. During that time, I had already started my own gelato wholesale manufacturer called F.C.B. Desserts. Six months after I quit the gelato shop, we began distributing under the brand name Benissimo. At our height, the Springfield, MO company had product as far south as Northwest Arkansas and as far north as Columbia, MO. We made our product right and were known for it.
Before I began my company, I did not have much leadership experience. About the most I'd ever been a leader was a brief stint in Drury University's student government when I was an undergraduate. Knowing this, I brought on a woman to be an administrator and fill much of the managerial role that I was too inexperienced to perform. Being an autistic man, I am not terribly comfortable with hugging or being emotionally demonstrative, but I can certainly tell you that you must get over that fast when your staff is almost entirely composed of young women in their late teens and early twenties. Such handicaps aside, we became a fun an familial workplace. My realm was the kitchen and my culinary knowledge, quality standards, and insistence upon safety and sanitation procedures (very important in a production kitchen specializing in dairy) were what made our product the outstanding showstopper it invariably was. Nonetheless, I signed all paychecks, made ultimate decisions, and shared responsibility for figuring out how to solve problems as they came up. I can safely say I learned quite a bit from the experience.
-Frank
Friday, February 20, 2015
Purpose
When my dessert company went out of business, I honestly believed my time in the food service industry was done. Then, over the six months between the time I closed the doors and the time I successfully sold the company to new owners who wished to continue on the mission of providing high-quality gelato and sorbet to The Ozarks and beyond, things slowly began to steer me back onto my culinary course. It began while I was trying to sell my equipment and building, only to have my eventual buyers express interest through a mutual friend. Naturally, I had come to care a great deal about gelato and was thrilled that the dream might live on. As negotiations were conducted, I found myself watching videos about confections, having never taken that class. When I realized I already owned CIA Chef Instructor Peter Greweling's book on the subject, one of many cookbooks friends and family had given me as gifts over the years, I made every major variety of candy in the book as a way of sealing a gap in my knowledge and rebuilding my confidence, giving the results away in tins as Christmas gifts. With my mojo back and company resurrecting, I was pleased with how things were going.
During negotiations, the new owners asked if they could hire me as a consultant. I thought they just wanted my gelato expertise, but, on the date of the sale, they told me they wanted to get into all areas of dessert and had the investors to do it. This being the case, they wanted to keep me on as a paid consultant, since I was such an expert on baking and pastry arts. Compared to them, this assessment was correct, but I knew the amount of work it had taken to truly gain expertise in gelato and that I could not claim that level of expertise in any other area of dessert. Oh, I knew how to make most types of dessert well enough to impress civilians. Pies are the dessert item with which I most struggle, especially my personal culinary archnemesis the lemon merengue, the custard of which frustrates my every attempt to make it set right. If these guys were banking on me to be their permanent advisor in the dessert business, I'd need to up my game as much as possible, including pie making and a the rest of it. That was when a CIA education became more than the fantastical pipe dream that I had traditionally considered it to be. Now it was a necessity to become the best pastry chef I could possibly be because others were counting upon me being just that chef.
After I complete my degree in baking and pastry arts at the CIA, I will return to consulting for the new owners of my former company. It will be a few years before they are ready to enter the broader world of desserts, having to rebuild the distribution and business connections that atrophied in the six months the company was not operating. In the meantime, my mission as a consultant is to teach them all I can about gelato and sorbet in general and about how my former company operates in general. With more financial backing and a stronger business background than I had, I am quite certain I'll be able to advise them towards the end of building a successful gelato business. When I go away to CIA for two years, I'll have given them the tools they need to proceed on their own. By the time I graduate and return, it will be time to start launching further business ventures and I will be quite well-prepared to take my lifelong appointment as their consultant on such ventures. Obviously, there's only so much to advise them on past a certain point. From there, they see me becoming a flavor developer in charge of a test kitchen of some description. They also see me as someone who would train and instruct new employees in the techniques I've learned and the knowledge I have. So in a strange way, I am going to culinary school to learn enough to become a chef instructor of sorts myself.
-Frank
During negotiations, the new owners asked if they could hire me as a consultant. I thought they just wanted my gelato expertise, but, on the date of the sale, they told me they wanted to get into all areas of dessert and had the investors to do it. This being the case, they wanted to keep me on as a paid consultant, since I was such an expert on baking and pastry arts. Compared to them, this assessment was correct, but I knew the amount of work it had taken to truly gain expertise in gelato and that I could not claim that level of expertise in any other area of dessert. Oh, I knew how to make most types of dessert well enough to impress civilians. Pies are the dessert item with which I most struggle, especially my personal culinary archnemesis the lemon merengue, the custard of which frustrates my every attempt to make it set right. If these guys were banking on me to be their permanent advisor in the dessert business, I'd need to up my game as much as possible, including pie making and a the rest of it. That was when a CIA education became more than the fantastical pipe dream that I had traditionally considered it to be. Now it was a necessity to become the best pastry chef I could possibly be because others were counting upon me being just that chef.
After I complete my degree in baking and pastry arts at the CIA, I will return to consulting for the new owners of my former company. It will be a few years before they are ready to enter the broader world of desserts, having to rebuild the distribution and business connections that atrophied in the six months the company was not operating. In the meantime, my mission as a consultant is to teach them all I can about gelato and sorbet in general and about how my former company operates in general. With more financial backing and a stronger business background than I had, I am quite certain I'll be able to advise them towards the end of building a successful gelato business. When I go away to CIA for two years, I'll have given them the tools they need to proceed on their own. By the time I graduate and return, it will be time to start launching further business ventures and I will be quite well-prepared to take my lifelong appointment as their consultant on such ventures. Obviously, there's only so much to advise them on past a certain point. From there, they see me becoming a flavor developer in charge of a test kitchen of some description. They also see me as someone who would train and instruct new employees in the techniques I've learned and the knowledge I have. So in a strange way, I am going to culinary school to learn enough to become a chef instructor of sorts myself.
-Frank
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Passion
For everyone who has a passion for food, there is an experience that takes one from mere dabbler to someone truly dedicated to culinary arts. Memories of making poundcake with my grandmother, the truly glorious gourmet meals my stepfather regularly served all of us, and a hobby of experimenting with New Orleans cuisine in my mid-teens all were definite precursors to my eventual culinary passion, but these were merely seeds that were planted when I was younger. Then a day came in 2007 when my mother suggested I watch the television program Good Eats. Once I did so, I couldn't stop and worked my way through Alton Brown's recipes until I'd completed the majority of them. Brown's approach to cooking and baking caused me to understand, for the first time in my life, what goes into creating an appealing dish. Ultimately, this experience set me on a course that led to working in the industry.
When I first began attempting Brown's recipes, I quickly learned just how little I knew. In the beginning, there were many botched recipes. At times, my palate was not yet developed enough to recognize subtle mistakes in flavor or texture, which when having a family of stern bankers who tell it like it is came in handy. Determined to get my skills up, I slogged through each recipe over and over again until I got it right. Nothing could stop me, not even my low point of exploding a hot Pyrex baking pan of water I had put in the oven with baking bread to help with crust formation by refilling it with cold water when it had all burned out. Like any good student, I learned things, like what thermal shock is, from my mistakes. Over time, I became more confident and competent, even taking my baked goods into classes at University Of Arkansas to serve my fellow students. Still, going professional had not yet occurred to me.
Although I was definitely a foodie by late 2008, I still thought of culinary arts as a very enjoyable hobby. My future, I thought, was in teaching at the high school or college level. Then in fall the economy crashed and I lost confidence in professional wisdom of pursuing an academic career. Wanting a more practical skill, and having spent two years of increasing passion, I enrolled in culinary school in Rogers, AR. As it had been in the beginning, I quickly learned how little I knew. Simulating, as any decent culinary school would, something approximating the professional kitchen environment, I learned that a faster pace was expected, that you must be willing to try any food you are asked to try, and that there are a lot more variables than I had previously thought. Hard though it was, it taught me that I was strong enough to get through it, prepared me for the pressures of owning my own dessert business, and showed me that my passion for food was stronger than I realized. So that's when I understood that my passion was stronger than I knew and it all began with an appetite for Good Eats.
-Frank
When I first began attempting Brown's recipes, I quickly learned just how little I knew. In the beginning, there were many botched recipes. At times, my palate was not yet developed enough to recognize subtle mistakes in flavor or texture, which when having a family of stern bankers who tell it like it is came in handy. Determined to get my skills up, I slogged through each recipe over and over again until I got it right. Nothing could stop me, not even my low point of exploding a hot Pyrex baking pan of water I had put in the oven with baking bread to help with crust formation by refilling it with cold water when it had all burned out. Like any good student, I learned things, like what thermal shock is, from my mistakes. Over time, I became more confident and competent, even taking my baked goods into classes at University Of Arkansas to serve my fellow students. Still, going professional had not yet occurred to me.
Although I was definitely a foodie by late 2008, I still thought of culinary arts as a very enjoyable hobby. My future, I thought, was in teaching at the high school or college level. Then in fall the economy crashed and I lost confidence in professional wisdom of pursuing an academic career. Wanting a more practical skill, and having spent two years of increasing passion, I enrolled in culinary school in Rogers, AR. As it had been in the beginning, I quickly learned how little I knew. Simulating, as any decent culinary school would, something approximating the professional kitchen environment, I learned that a faster pace was expected, that you must be willing to try any food you are asked to try, and that there are a lot more variables than I had previously thought. Hard though it was, it taught me that I was strong enough to get through it, prepared me for the pressures of owning my own dessert business, and showed me that my passion for food was stronger than I realized. So that's when I understood that my passion was stronger than I knew and it all began with an appetite for Good Eats.
-Frank
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
San Antonio
As I go about the business of applying to The Culinary Institute Of America, much goes through my mind. Memories of my time at Northwest Arkansas Community College's culinary program, memories of my experiences in three years of owning my own dessert company, and even my experiences of working various low-level food service jobs, ironically all before I ever had any intention of seriously working in the industry. In addition to such rumination on the past, I also ruminate on the future. If I get in, what will it be like going off to college in my 30s, adjusting to living in San Antonio for two years, and putting my endurance and skills to the test every day at the best culinary school in the world? All these things swirl about in my mind, causing a heady mixture of anxiety and excitement. There's really never been a comparable experience in my entire life, but I must still endeavor to learn what I can from past experiences to accurately prognosticate, as best I can, just what the future may hold.
Past experiences tell me that culinary school will be difficult, but doable. Working at the campus diner taught me that sometimes my superiors will be difficult but also that I must find a way to work with them and even find a way to like what I can about them. IHOP taught me that food service people are down to Earth and that sweeping and mopping are inescapable parts of the industry. Being a concessions host at a cinema taught me that, no matter how daunting a technique may seem, sufficient practice will result in mastery. NWACC taught me that classmates may be more skilled than you and complete jerks, but you can't let it get in the way of doing what you came there to do. F.C.B. Desserts taught me that, even with as much stress as it caused me and how much money I lost, my passion for food is unbreakable. Above all, my past experiences taught me that food service is a business where you can't fake it. However clever you are, you can either cut it or you can't, which is both maddening and heartening.
What I expect, assuming I get to go, when I attend CIA would run along the following lines. I would get one of the apartments associated with the school. The only supplies I would bring are my loaded knife roll, my baking kit, two weeks of clothes, toiletries and prescriptions, my computer and printer, my phone and its various chargers, enough cookware to cook for myself, and my tobacco accessories. With no expectations of making friends, I would mostly go to school and my apartment. At school, I would do exactly as told and never quit. Either I leave with that degree or I die trying. During my time at NWACC, I think I slacked off too much and was willing to accept the generally lower standards on offer in certain areas. Our equipment didn't all work, our ingredients weren't always quality, and I thought I knew more than I did, all of which fed into not caring enough. By asking my father to pay for the world's best culinary education, I am asking a lot of him and I am obligated to ask at least as much of myself.
-Frank
Past experiences tell me that culinary school will be difficult, but doable. Working at the campus diner taught me that sometimes my superiors will be difficult but also that I must find a way to work with them and even find a way to like what I can about them. IHOP taught me that food service people are down to Earth and that sweeping and mopping are inescapable parts of the industry. Being a concessions host at a cinema taught me that, no matter how daunting a technique may seem, sufficient practice will result in mastery. NWACC taught me that classmates may be more skilled than you and complete jerks, but you can't let it get in the way of doing what you came there to do. F.C.B. Desserts taught me that, even with as much stress as it caused me and how much money I lost, my passion for food is unbreakable. Above all, my past experiences taught me that food service is a business where you can't fake it. However clever you are, you can either cut it or you can't, which is both maddening and heartening.
What I expect, assuming I get to go, when I attend CIA would run along the following lines. I would get one of the apartments associated with the school. The only supplies I would bring are my loaded knife roll, my baking kit, two weeks of clothes, toiletries and prescriptions, my computer and printer, my phone and its various chargers, enough cookware to cook for myself, and my tobacco accessories. With no expectations of making friends, I would mostly go to school and my apartment. At school, I would do exactly as told and never quit. Either I leave with that degree or I die trying. During my time at NWACC, I think I slacked off too much and was willing to accept the generally lower standards on offer in certain areas. Our equipment didn't all work, our ingredients weren't always quality, and I thought I knew more than I did, all of which fed into not caring enough. By asking my father to pay for the world's best culinary education, I am asking a lot of him and I am obligated to ask at least as much of myself.
-Frank
Monday, February 16, 2015
Groupon
Working in groups is something with which I've always had difficulty. Ironically, this hasn't come up much in actual jobs. Plenty of people have to work in groups as part of their job, but I've never had that experience. It's always been me with a task that needs to be performed and me performing that task, and succeeding ones, until it was time to go home. School is where working in a group was perennially present, whether we're talking about public school, private and public universities, or vocational college. As social skills are something with which autistics commonly struggle, it's not much of a surprise that working in a group has never gone well for me. Over the years, I've explained this to the various teachers and professors under whom I've studied. Sometimes they let me do the work on my own and other times they don't, but they usually realize, one way or the other, that letting me work on my own is for the best. When forced to work in a group, the results, although unpleasant and unproductive, are childishly easy to predict.
If the relevant pedagogue ibis upon me working in a group, this will yield one of three possible results. The first option is that the others in the group, noticing that I actually care about the outcome more than they do, will proceed to do nothing, in which case I will simply do all the work by myself so as to not face a steaming pile of a grade at the conclusion. Secondly, the other members of the group are friends and all agree upon the idea that I am a weird guy with whom they would rather not work, resulting in my complete uninvolvement with any of the work and my awkward forced smile when I say nothing as the results of said work as presently. Thirdly, the relevant pedagogue will seek a half-measure whereby they and I will form one of the groups, which is an awkward option, if preferable to option one and two. Rarely have I had a class where I was forced to participate in option one or two for the entirety of a semester. Usually, the relevant pedagogue will eventually opt for either option three or simply let me work in a group by myself, as it is often phrased.
Thankfully, I no longer have occasion to work in groups. What's striking to me about the phenomenon as I experienced it is that it's about the only scenario of which I am aware that social rejection that blatant is permissible. Of course, nobody forces anyone to be friends with anyone or anything, but students are generally taught to cooperate with their education in all other areas. What, exactly, then, is working in a group supposed to teach us? There's no way it's supposed to prepare us for actually working in a group, since group work is generally so unsupervised that it's laughable to suggest that we're actually being taught anything. Perhaps it's more subversive than that. Maybe they're intending to imply the lesson that people generally suck and group work is to be avoided whenever possible. Of course, I cannot help that this, as with all things I write, comes from an autistic perspective and it is entirely possible that, while I was drowning in frustration and isolation, my classmates were learning life lessons somehow beyond my ken.
-Frank
If the relevant pedagogue ibis upon me working in a group, this will yield one of three possible results. The first option is that the others in the group, noticing that I actually care about the outcome more than they do, will proceed to do nothing, in which case I will simply do all the work by myself so as to not face a steaming pile of a grade at the conclusion. Secondly, the other members of the group are friends and all agree upon the idea that I am a weird guy with whom they would rather not work, resulting in my complete uninvolvement with any of the work and my awkward forced smile when I say nothing as the results of said work as presently. Thirdly, the relevant pedagogue will seek a half-measure whereby they and I will form one of the groups, which is an awkward option, if preferable to option one and two. Rarely have I had a class where I was forced to participate in option one or two for the entirety of a semester. Usually, the relevant pedagogue will eventually opt for either option three or simply let me work in a group by myself, as it is often phrased.
Thankfully, I no longer have occasion to work in groups. What's striking to me about the phenomenon as I experienced it is that it's about the only scenario of which I am aware that social rejection that blatant is permissible. Of course, nobody forces anyone to be friends with anyone or anything, but students are generally taught to cooperate with their education in all other areas. What, exactly, then, is working in a group supposed to teach us? There's no way it's supposed to prepare us for actually working in a group, since group work is generally so unsupervised that it's laughable to suggest that we're actually being taught anything. Perhaps it's more subversive than that. Maybe they're intending to imply the lesson that people generally suck and group work is to be avoided whenever possible. Of course, I cannot help that this, as with all things I write, comes from an autistic perspective and it is entirely possible that, while I was drowning in frustration and isolation, my classmates were learning life lessons somehow beyond my ken.
-Frank
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Make It Right
There's a lot of obsessions in an autistic's life. Everything from various media franchises, various routes to school or work, various attractive young women, and pipes and cigars have been the case with me. Sometimes these obsessions are benign, if useless, such as obsessing about always taking the same route somewhere, and other times they can set me up for a profound emotional fall, as with developing obsessive crushes on attractive women. Positive outcomes can come from some of the obsessions, however. Such is the case with my love of baking and pastry arts. Although it led me down a path that includes an ultimately failed company, it's a lot of fun. As I proceed to make a serious attempt to attend The Culinary Institute Of America In San Antonio, I have been giving a lot of thought to my philosophy about dessert. I get that most people over the age of twelve just think of it as this sugary snack after the meal, but, in my opinion, dessert is important. Let me explain why.
We pastry chefs are in a different boat than our general culinary counterparts. How many big-name restaurants do you know who would offer only a couple of savory items on their menu, all of them bought as cheaply as possible, with no mind whatsoever given to the quality of the ingredients? Not too many, I'm guessing. Yet that is precisely the dessert situation in most restaurants I've ever eaten in my life. In the back, they have a big tub of vanilla ice cream with so much overrun it's like eating air flavored with imitation vanilla extract, a frozen cheesecake or cream pie that came through the door already made, and some pre-made cookie dough discs that opening shift throws in an oven when they clock in. Getting a good dessert with a good meal is a damned pipe dream most of the time and I'm not sure why we let it get this way. They'll take the time and effort to make Peking Duck, fresh yeast-risen table bread, short ribs, and Beef Wellington, but can't be bothered to make a batch of cookies? That's unacceptable.
What's interesting about the mediocrity of so much dessert out there is that it's so simple to fix it. I've had people marvel at my cakes, cookies, pies, cupcakes, muffins, candies, custards, and more, but the fact is that I'm just an autistic good at absorbing concepts and possessed of relevant training. All I'm ever doing with that dessert you're so bowled over by is making it with good ingredients the right way, by which I mean the way that countless years of experience and food science have shown is most effective. Innovation isn't something I've done much of yet, and I hope to become better at it if I get into CIA. Dessert doesn't require innovation though. All it requires is a little effort, a lot of knowledge, and the right ingredients and anybody should be able to make basic dishes of sweet items. After all, dessert is a celebration. Celebrations are the only time we take dessert seriously. Being that celebration and dessert are connected, if we allow mediocrity in dessert, are we not celebrating mediocrity?
-Frank
We pastry chefs are in a different boat than our general culinary counterparts. How many big-name restaurants do you know who would offer only a couple of savory items on their menu, all of them bought as cheaply as possible, with no mind whatsoever given to the quality of the ingredients? Not too many, I'm guessing. Yet that is precisely the dessert situation in most restaurants I've ever eaten in my life. In the back, they have a big tub of vanilla ice cream with so much overrun it's like eating air flavored with imitation vanilla extract, a frozen cheesecake or cream pie that came through the door already made, and some pre-made cookie dough discs that opening shift throws in an oven when they clock in. Getting a good dessert with a good meal is a damned pipe dream most of the time and I'm not sure why we let it get this way. They'll take the time and effort to make Peking Duck, fresh yeast-risen table bread, short ribs, and Beef Wellington, but can't be bothered to make a batch of cookies? That's unacceptable.
What's interesting about the mediocrity of so much dessert out there is that it's so simple to fix it. I've had people marvel at my cakes, cookies, pies, cupcakes, muffins, candies, custards, and more, but the fact is that I'm just an autistic good at absorbing concepts and possessed of relevant training. All I'm ever doing with that dessert you're so bowled over by is making it with good ingredients the right way, by which I mean the way that countless years of experience and food science have shown is most effective. Innovation isn't something I've done much of yet, and I hope to become better at it if I get into CIA. Dessert doesn't require innovation though. All it requires is a little effort, a lot of knowledge, and the right ingredients and anybody should be able to make basic dishes of sweet items. After all, dessert is a celebration. Celebrations are the only time we take dessert seriously. Being that celebration and dessert are connected, if we allow mediocrity in dessert, are we not celebrating mediocrity?
-Frank
Saturday, February 14, 2015
The Lone Gunman
As I've written before, morality is a through-line in discussions between believers and atheists. There's a few through-lines like that, including the meaning of life, what happens after death, and whether a benevolent deity is looking out for humanity. With morality, the dumber believers will claim that the concept of a secular morality is completely impossible, while the smarter ones will either claim that nonbelievers inherit their morals from religion or that secular moral philosophy is human and flawed in such a way that it will always be inferior to religious morality. Defending these ideas has traditionally required claiming that Hitler was an atheist, which is false, and that Stalin was motivated in his murder by atheism, when, in fact, his greatest death count came in rejecting the theories of Darwin and Mendel in Soviet agriculture, resulting in a famine that killed tens of millions. Now, finally, they have fresh blood. A fervent atheist by name of Mr. Hicks murdered three Muslims at the University Of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Innocent religious people were gunned down by a extreme atheist and, boom, you've got a new symbol of what can happen with extreme atheism. Well, not exactly.
The first thing I want to establish is that atheism is not a philosophy of any sort. Neither is it a religion, which feels maddeningly absurd to need to type, but I've been told enough times that atheism is my new religion, defined as worshipping myself and self-deification, that I begrudgingly concede that this sentence is a necessary one. All atheism means is the lack of belief in supernatural deities. Ayn Rand and Karl Marx were both atheists, yet you'd hardly get their respective philosophies confused. Mr. Hicks' atheism could not any more influence his actions than a man who'd never heard of bespoke suits lack of knowledge about bespoke suits influence which cheese he consumes at a dinner party. One simply can't have any affect on the other. Much more helpful would be to ask whether he had any special hatred for Muslims. Upon this question, the whole incident shall turn. Some say that his hatred for Muslims was part and parcel of his anti-theistic feelings, and it is undeniable the man considered, as I do, all religion to be a bad thing. Others say he shot his victims over a parking dispute. While I cannot be certain which version of event is true, I know nothing inherent in what he believed mandated what he did.
People don't need philosophies to hate. They can do that all by themselves. My atheism and my anti-theism was formed primarily by the writings of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Nothing in the writings of these men advocates violence against religious people, or even hatred towards them. It's all about how we may be a boon to humankind by supporting scientific progress, the emancipation of oppressed peoples and groups, and standing up for free speech, even in the face of death. See, anti-theists can point in the holy books and show followers of Abrahamic faiths where it says you can kill and torture people. Sure, you'll do a little dance about interpretation and translation, but that doesn't change the fact that you're putting a book in the hands of people who won't pick up on the subtleties and then telling them it is the morally perfect word of God. Believers will have a hard time citing the published works that formed the foundation of the New Atheist movement as condoning or recommending Mr. Hicks' actions. As for me, I'll put it to you this way. If I had to kill every other atheist on Earth to stop their efforts to murder even a single innocent Muslim, I wouldn't hesitate to do it.
-Frank
The first thing I want to establish is that atheism is not a philosophy of any sort. Neither is it a religion, which feels maddeningly absurd to need to type, but I've been told enough times that atheism is my new religion, defined as worshipping myself and self-deification, that I begrudgingly concede that this sentence is a necessary one. All atheism means is the lack of belief in supernatural deities. Ayn Rand and Karl Marx were both atheists, yet you'd hardly get their respective philosophies confused. Mr. Hicks' atheism could not any more influence his actions than a man who'd never heard of bespoke suits lack of knowledge about bespoke suits influence which cheese he consumes at a dinner party. One simply can't have any affect on the other. Much more helpful would be to ask whether he had any special hatred for Muslims. Upon this question, the whole incident shall turn. Some say that his hatred for Muslims was part and parcel of his anti-theistic feelings, and it is undeniable the man considered, as I do, all religion to be a bad thing. Others say he shot his victims over a parking dispute. While I cannot be certain which version of event is true, I know nothing inherent in what he believed mandated what he did.
People don't need philosophies to hate. They can do that all by themselves. My atheism and my anti-theism was formed primarily by the writings of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Nothing in the writings of these men advocates violence against religious people, or even hatred towards them. It's all about how we may be a boon to humankind by supporting scientific progress, the emancipation of oppressed peoples and groups, and standing up for free speech, even in the face of death. See, anti-theists can point in the holy books and show followers of Abrahamic faiths where it says you can kill and torture people. Sure, you'll do a little dance about interpretation and translation, but that doesn't change the fact that you're putting a book in the hands of people who won't pick up on the subtleties and then telling them it is the morally perfect word of God. Believers will have a hard time citing the published works that formed the foundation of the New Atheist movement as condoning or recommending Mr. Hicks' actions. As for me, I'll put it to you this way. If I had to kill every other atheist on Earth to stop their efforts to murder even a single innocent Muslim, I wouldn't hesitate to do it.
-Frank
Friday, February 13, 2015
CIA
It is interesting how quickly things can change. A few days ago, I was a failed entrepreneur and terminally single, with my best ambition typing away at this blog and hoping against hope that something would happen with it, even if it was just a few of my readers learning something or at least getting a laugh. Then I applied for admission to the Culinary Institute Of America. To be honest, that's been a dream of mine ever since I first started to develop a serious passion for food back in 2007. Previously, there's always been an excuse not to do it. Back in late 2008, when I was originally considering culinary school, I didn't apply there because I didn't have much experience in the food service industry. All I'd done was work in the campus diner, the dish station at IHOP, and a movie theatre concession stand. Once I started my company, it seemed like I was too busy to move away for two years for school. After the company failed, I had so much debt that it seemed impossible to justify the not-inconsiderable cost of the CIA. Things are different now. My reservations have been nullified and I might be off on a great adventure.
When the company sold, it was done with the understanding that I would work as a consultant for its new owners, offering my expertise and experience in the industry. This was something I was happy to do if it meant getting the thing sold. At the time, I viewed it as a mild annoyance because I was ready to completely move on from the terrible memory of my failure. Meanwhile, I had liked the CIA Facebook page and tantalizing facts and videos kept showing up, tantalizing me to no end. Exciting as the fantasy was, the cost was too expensive to warrant it because I had no plans to work in the industry again. Around the time the company sold, its new owners told me tales of their greater ambitions in the dessert industry and their desire for my continuing services as a consultant on these hypothetical future ventures. Concurrently with these events, my parents began to encourage me to go back to school so that I had something significant happening in my life. Mentioning the CIA as too expensive, due to my debt, they offered to pay for it. Surprised as I was, I realized the value this would have for consulting.
If I am accepted into the CIA, there are a great number of ramifications. First of all, I'd be defying the limitations autism places on me in a very direct manner. This school is the best in the world for culinary arts and will require me to push the limits of my ability to learn quickly, to overcome my dexterity and coordination issues as much as I can, and to test the limits of my physical endurance. There's also the aspect of leaving my life in Springfield to consider. To their credit, my friends here have all said to go if I get the opportunity, as badly as they'll miss me, and I them, for the two years it'll take. They recognize that, as much as it sounds like a line out of a movie, this is my shot. An Associate's Degree In Baking & Pastry Arts from the CIA is, for a pastry chef, the equivalent of a Juilliard degree for a performing artist, a MIT degree for an engineer, or an Oxford degree for a writer. Graduating from these schools in these disciples is prestigious enough that, even if you never manage to make it in the real world, people must acknowledge you were a person who has shown his quality. For all my fears of autism defining me, CIA would define me in a way that supersedes all else.
-Frank
When the company sold, it was done with the understanding that I would work as a consultant for its new owners, offering my expertise and experience in the industry. This was something I was happy to do if it meant getting the thing sold. At the time, I viewed it as a mild annoyance because I was ready to completely move on from the terrible memory of my failure. Meanwhile, I had liked the CIA Facebook page and tantalizing facts and videos kept showing up, tantalizing me to no end. Exciting as the fantasy was, the cost was too expensive to warrant it because I had no plans to work in the industry again. Around the time the company sold, its new owners told me tales of their greater ambitions in the dessert industry and their desire for my continuing services as a consultant on these hypothetical future ventures. Concurrently with these events, my parents began to encourage me to go back to school so that I had something significant happening in my life. Mentioning the CIA as too expensive, due to my debt, they offered to pay for it. Surprised as I was, I realized the value this would have for consulting.
If I am accepted into the CIA, there are a great number of ramifications. First of all, I'd be defying the limitations autism places on me in a very direct manner. This school is the best in the world for culinary arts and will require me to push the limits of my ability to learn quickly, to overcome my dexterity and coordination issues as much as I can, and to test the limits of my physical endurance. There's also the aspect of leaving my life in Springfield to consider. To their credit, my friends here have all said to go if I get the opportunity, as badly as they'll miss me, and I them, for the two years it'll take. They recognize that, as much as it sounds like a line out of a movie, this is my shot. An Associate's Degree In Baking & Pastry Arts from the CIA is, for a pastry chef, the equivalent of a Juilliard degree for a performing artist, a MIT degree for an engineer, or an Oxford degree for a writer. Graduating from these schools in these disciples is prestigious enough that, even if you never manage to make it in the real world, people must acknowledge you were a person who has shown his quality. For all my fears of autism defining me, CIA would define me in a way that supersedes all else.
-Frank
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Autistic Superpowers
Continuing on with a theme I've had lately of dispelling myths and clarifying traits of autism, this time we talk about autistic superpowers. Like a lot of things, this has been muddled quite a bit by Hollywood. Ever since Rain Man came out, people have been assuming autistics can do the incredible mental tricks Dustin Hoffman's character could do in the film. I'm not saying that some autistics can't do some amazing things, mind you. The truth, as is often the case, lies somewhere in the middle. First of all, not all autistics are gifted with patterns and mathematics. Pattern autistics are, but, depending on a number of factors, they might simply have a heightened aptitude for it, have greater aptitude for music or organization, or have that level of aptitude, but be more high-functioning than Hoffman's character. Perhaps it is useful to note that the man upon whom the film was based does not have autism in the first place, so the performance's ability to correlate with real-life autistics was compromised from the jump. All that being said, there are real-life autistics who can do some amazing things.
Temple Grandin is probably the most famous autistic with special abilities. A visual autistic, Ms. Grandin interprets the whole of the world in images. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she has a photographic memory, describing the ability to play back past experiences in her head with full cinematic detail. She is also able to perfectly imagine the literal viewpoint of other people, and even animals, which allowed her to revolutionize the beef industry by intuitively understanding the visual cues that would alarm cattle. Stephen Wiltshire is another visual autistic with amazing abilities. He can focus on entire cities while flying over them in a helicopter with enough precision that he can draw the entire city later without making a single mistake in detail. Visual autistics are probably to easiest ones to explain in terms of their unique abilities because their abilities are simply heightened versions of the ones you already possess. You can probably remember most of your last birthday party or what the Empire State Building looked like the last time you went to New York City. Understanding the others can be harder.
I suppose I'll start with verbal autistics, since that's what I am. Since we understand absolutely everything in terms of textual or spoken language, we become extremely adept at understanding ideas. This allows me to gain something like a working knowledge of virtually any subject simply by heavily researching and rapidly absorbing the information. Pattern autistics understand absolutely everything in terms of the underlying pattern. The reason they tend to be so adept at understanding things like computers, mathematics, and music is that they speak code as their first language. Being naturally better at their first language than their second, they tend to be able to create and innovate more efficiently and more intuitively than most in their field. Auditory autistics understand absolutely everything in terms of sounds. Intuitively understanding sound tends to give them perfect pitch and the ability to imitate basically any sound they hear. Here, I speak in generalities, but what I've said here works for my purpose of giving a primer on autistic abilities. Remember though, there are as many types of autism as there are autistics.
-Frank
Temple Grandin is probably the most famous autistic with special abilities. A visual autistic, Ms. Grandin interprets the whole of the world in images. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she has a photographic memory, describing the ability to play back past experiences in her head with full cinematic detail. She is also able to perfectly imagine the literal viewpoint of other people, and even animals, which allowed her to revolutionize the beef industry by intuitively understanding the visual cues that would alarm cattle. Stephen Wiltshire is another visual autistic with amazing abilities. He can focus on entire cities while flying over them in a helicopter with enough precision that he can draw the entire city later without making a single mistake in detail. Visual autistics are probably to easiest ones to explain in terms of their unique abilities because their abilities are simply heightened versions of the ones you already possess. You can probably remember most of your last birthday party or what the Empire State Building looked like the last time you went to New York City. Understanding the others can be harder.
I suppose I'll start with verbal autistics, since that's what I am. Since we understand absolutely everything in terms of textual or spoken language, we become extremely adept at understanding ideas. This allows me to gain something like a working knowledge of virtually any subject simply by heavily researching and rapidly absorbing the information. Pattern autistics understand absolutely everything in terms of the underlying pattern. The reason they tend to be so adept at understanding things like computers, mathematics, and music is that they speak code as their first language. Being naturally better at their first language than their second, they tend to be able to create and innovate more efficiently and more intuitively than most in their field. Auditory autistics understand absolutely everything in terms of sounds. Intuitively understanding sound tends to give them perfect pitch and the ability to imitate basically any sound they hear. Here, I speak in generalities, but what I've said here works for my purpose of giving a primer on autistic abilities. Remember though, there are as many types of autism as there are autistics.
-Frank
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy theories are never far from the subject of autism. Mostly, that's regarding what might cause autism, about which science is still somewhat uncertain. Rather than address the specifics of conspiracy theories relating to autism, I would prefer to come at the subject in a more broad fashion. That is to say that I would like to debunk the very notion of conspiracy theories. Now, there can certainly be such a thing as a legitimate conspiracy and such a phenomenon ought to be investigated, proven, and prosecuted. However, this is not the conspiracy theory that so enraptures people. Those kinds of conspiracy theories are not sincerely investigated with legitimate science. Instead, they are based upon mere suspicion, fallacy, and wishful thinking. Simply put, if you merely suspect a conspiracy, but are unable to prove it, you have nothing worth talking about. Yet people do talk about it endlessly, in private conversations, books, television, movies, and, of course, on the Internet. I am here to tell you why everyone must stop this.
All conspiracy theories have the same basic bones. First, we have a a bad thing. It may be some kind of phenomenon, a murder, an official decision, or nearly anything you can imagine, so long as it is bad. Second, we have an official explanation, or no explanation at all, that the conspiracy theorist finds deeply unsatisfying. Third, we have the explanation the conspiracy theorist invents of which they subscribe. The only real requirement for a conspiracy theory is that it must explain the bad thing in a way commiserate with the conspiracy theorist's preexisting bias and suspicion. Invariably, the people behind the conspiracy will be people the conspiracy theorist does much like or trust. Proving the theory is actually beside the point for them because what they actually seek to do is convince others of the untrustworthy nature of whoever they claim is behind the conspiracy. Once you understand how generally untrustworthy these people are, they figure, you'll understand why they just have to be behind the bad thing, as opposed to what THEY would have you believe.
Since I don't believe ANY conspiracy theories, I'm sure I'll get some flack for what I've written here. Everybody seems to have a pet conspiracy theory. Believers might call me naive and generally sheep-like to not believe any of their nonsense, but I look at it another way. Every conspiracy theory anyone's ever invented has in common a tremendous amount of confidence in the competence of vast numbers of human beings. At a minimum, a conspiracy theory involves a select few powerful men pulling the strings. On the larger end of the spectrum, you've got worldwide organizations, entire races, religions, sexual orientations, international corporations, and more. Imagine for a moment the number of people who would have to do their job completely competently for an extended period of time, up to the present day, to maintain the conspiracy. Then ask yourself how many people that competent you've ever even met who are daft consistently competent. Remember, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
-Frank
All conspiracy theories have the same basic bones. First, we have a a bad thing. It may be some kind of phenomenon, a murder, an official decision, or nearly anything you can imagine, so long as it is bad. Second, we have an official explanation, or no explanation at all, that the conspiracy theorist finds deeply unsatisfying. Third, we have the explanation the conspiracy theorist invents of which they subscribe. The only real requirement for a conspiracy theory is that it must explain the bad thing in a way commiserate with the conspiracy theorist's preexisting bias and suspicion. Invariably, the people behind the conspiracy will be people the conspiracy theorist does much like or trust. Proving the theory is actually beside the point for them because what they actually seek to do is convince others of the untrustworthy nature of whoever they claim is behind the conspiracy. Once you understand how generally untrustworthy these people are, they figure, you'll understand why they just have to be behind the bad thing, as opposed to what THEY would have you believe.
Since I don't believe ANY conspiracy theories, I'm sure I'll get some flack for what I've written here. Everybody seems to have a pet conspiracy theory. Believers might call me naive and generally sheep-like to not believe any of their nonsense, but I look at it another way. Every conspiracy theory anyone's ever invented has in common a tremendous amount of confidence in the competence of vast numbers of human beings. At a minimum, a conspiracy theory involves a select few powerful men pulling the strings. On the larger end of the spectrum, you've got worldwide organizations, entire races, religions, sexual orientations, international corporations, and more. Imagine for a moment the number of people who would have to do their job completely competently for an extended period of time, up to the present day, to maintain the conspiracy. Then ask yourself how many people that competent you've ever even met who are daft consistently competent. Remember, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
-Frank
Monday, February 9, 2015
The Enigma
Recently, I saw the film The Imitation Game about the life of English mathematician Alan Turing. If you don't know who the man is, Winston Churchill described his contribution to winning World War II as more significant than even that of the Prime Minister himself. As if that weren't enough of a claim to greatness, he is also one of the men credited with creating what would eventually be called computers. One might expect a man with contributions to humanity as great as those to have been treated as a hero. However, there were two things that prevented Turing from receiving accolades for his crucial and groundbreaking work. Firstly, his work was classified, both during the war and for fifty years after its conclusion. Secondly, Turing was homosexual, eventually being successfully prosecuted for this reason and sentenced to chemical castration. Although he was eventually pardoned for this by Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, all that came far too late for Turing, who found the chemical castration so intolerable that he committed suicide rather than continue to suffer.
Although Turing cannot be properly considered autistic since all such labeling of historical figures is fallacious, he does demonstrate several of the symptoms. When I meet people who suspect they have autism, they commonly ask me to diagnose them, but I tell them I cannot because only a trained professional is qualified to do so. What I can do, assuming they share similar traits as myself, is tell them how to cope. In this way, The Imitation Game is very useful to autistics. There is a line in the film that appears twice and it goes, "Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine." Beyond autism, I think any person who is highly creative can relate to something in that line. Turing had a unique mind that made him socially inept and deeply strange, but it was precisely that unique mind that made him capable of the insight that only a machine could break the Nazi Enigma code. Throughout his life, he suffered for all the ways he was different, but he nonetheless accomplished no less than the most important achievements of the 20th century.
Part of why this film is getting so much acclaim is that it encourages us to value people who think differently than everybody else. Towards the end of the film, Turing poses a pointed question, which goes, "Just because something, uh... thinks differently from you, does that mean it's not thinking?" In context, he is drawing an analogy between how humans might view artificial intelligence and how most humans view his own intelligence. What wonders are you willing to squander by oppressing the only minds capable of achieving them? Perhaps you'd be willing to squander my own. Understanding written and spoken language like Turing understood patterns and numbers probably won't do much to change the world. Nevertheless, the kindness and patience I'm always saying autistics need to thrive might something society would be well-advised to make an effort towards. Someday, there may be a cure for autism and individual autistics will need to decide whether the wonders we can create are worth the hardships. Neurotypical, happy, and unaccomplished, or autistic, unhappy, and great? That is an enigma.
-Frank
Although Turing cannot be properly considered autistic since all such labeling of historical figures is fallacious, he does demonstrate several of the symptoms. When I meet people who suspect they have autism, they commonly ask me to diagnose them, but I tell them I cannot because only a trained professional is qualified to do so. What I can do, assuming they share similar traits as myself, is tell them how to cope. In this way, The Imitation Game is very useful to autistics. There is a line in the film that appears twice and it goes, "Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine." Beyond autism, I think any person who is highly creative can relate to something in that line. Turing had a unique mind that made him socially inept and deeply strange, but it was precisely that unique mind that made him capable of the insight that only a machine could break the Nazi Enigma code. Throughout his life, he suffered for all the ways he was different, but he nonetheless accomplished no less than the most important achievements of the 20th century.
Part of why this film is getting so much acclaim is that it encourages us to value people who think differently than everybody else. Towards the end of the film, Turing poses a pointed question, which goes, "Just because something, uh... thinks differently from you, does that mean it's not thinking?" In context, he is drawing an analogy between how humans might view artificial intelligence and how most humans view his own intelligence. What wonders are you willing to squander by oppressing the only minds capable of achieving them? Perhaps you'd be willing to squander my own. Understanding written and spoken language like Turing understood patterns and numbers probably won't do much to change the world. Nevertheless, the kindness and patience I'm always saying autistics need to thrive might something society would be well-advised to make an effort towards. Someday, there may be a cure for autism and individual autistics will need to decide whether the wonders we can create are worth the hardships. Neurotypical, happy, and unaccomplished, or autistic, unhappy, and great? That is an enigma.
-Frank
Sunday, February 8, 2015
I Don't Care If It's Hard
All children are vulnerable to pedophiles. I'll let you recover from that for a moment. Like with any other risk to children, not all of them are at the same level of risk. There are steps you can take to reduce the various risks to your kids. If they trick-or-treat, put those reflective stickers on them so they don't get hit by a car, if they ride a bike, make them wear a helmut so they don't break their head open when they fall off, if they go boating, make them wear a life jacket so they don't drown, and if they're going to interact with humanity, teach them as much accurate information about sex as you can. It may seem random and strange to you to bring up child molestation on a blog relating to autism, but I do so for a purpose. You remember I said that there are varying levels of risk? Well, it's mostly about how easy it is to get away with it, which can mean how easily the victim is manipulated. Knowing how easily manipulated I was a child, and remain to this day, I'm pretty sure the only reason I wasn't molested is because no one ever tried. Autistic kids are highly vulnerable to pedophiles. Uncomfortable as it is, we're going to have to talk about this and understand it. No, it won't be fun, but it needs to be done.
As I said, victims are chosen based about how easy it is to get away with it. That's an easy line of logic to follow. We start with the ones no one will believe or care about. Kids who cause trouble, kids from criminal families, kids from poor families, mentally handicapped kids, and I'm sure you can imagine more categories like this. Then you've got kids the pedophile recognizes as easy to manipulate. Autistic kids are like that, but so are many types of kids. Logic can be twisted like a pretzel by a predator dealing with a naive kid. Leveraging power is another thing to look out for. Sometimes, it's institutional, like Penn State or the Roman Catholic Church, and the institution is considered so important that it's either considered beyond reproach or molestation gets actively covered up by otherwise decent people. Other times, it's more personal power, like the pedophiles who date single moms and are always happy to babysit. Gifts and financial resources will change the mom's life, and the predator will convince the victim to endure molestation rather than cause financial hardship in the family. That guy in the creepy van probably isn't molesting kids because that's a poor strategy for repeatedly getting away with it.
While you may imagine extra vigilance, sex offender pictures on websites, and being extra suspicious are the best ways to go about preventing molestation, it's actually most helpful to teach your kids the most about sex you can. I know children are supposed to remain innocent, especially when they're prepubescent, but here it's just ignorance of the very information that could help prevent molestation or get them to tell you right away. If you'd rather your kid get molested than have accurate information about sex, I'd say you must sort out your priorities. Tell them the correct anatomical terms for all of their sexual anatomy, explain what sex is, why people like it, its reproductive nature, and why adults should not be having it with minors. Explain adults having sex with minors is wrong without words like, "sick," or, "disgusting." Simply say that minors are too young to consent to sex and that an adult who has sex with a minor involving said minor in something for which they are not ready and harms them. Finally, tell them to tell you if any adult ever does anything like that to them. Make them understand that this rule supersedes all others and that it will always be okay to tell you. It won't be easy, but you didn't sign up for easy. You signed up to parent and you must protect your kids. This way works. Do it.
-Frank
As I said, victims are chosen based about how easy it is to get away with it. That's an easy line of logic to follow. We start with the ones no one will believe or care about. Kids who cause trouble, kids from criminal families, kids from poor families, mentally handicapped kids, and I'm sure you can imagine more categories like this. Then you've got kids the pedophile recognizes as easy to manipulate. Autistic kids are like that, but so are many types of kids. Logic can be twisted like a pretzel by a predator dealing with a naive kid. Leveraging power is another thing to look out for. Sometimes, it's institutional, like Penn State or the Roman Catholic Church, and the institution is considered so important that it's either considered beyond reproach or molestation gets actively covered up by otherwise decent people. Other times, it's more personal power, like the pedophiles who date single moms and are always happy to babysit. Gifts and financial resources will change the mom's life, and the predator will convince the victim to endure molestation rather than cause financial hardship in the family. That guy in the creepy van probably isn't molesting kids because that's a poor strategy for repeatedly getting away with it.
While you may imagine extra vigilance, sex offender pictures on websites, and being extra suspicious are the best ways to go about preventing molestation, it's actually most helpful to teach your kids the most about sex you can. I know children are supposed to remain innocent, especially when they're prepubescent, but here it's just ignorance of the very information that could help prevent molestation or get them to tell you right away. If you'd rather your kid get molested than have accurate information about sex, I'd say you must sort out your priorities. Tell them the correct anatomical terms for all of their sexual anatomy, explain what sex is, why people like it, its reproductive nature, and why adults should not be having it with minors. Explain adults having sex with minors is wrong without words like, "sick," or, "disgusting." Simply say that minors are too young to consent to sex and that an adult who has sex with a minor involving said minor in something for which they are not ready and harms them. Finally, tell them to tell you if any adult ever does anything like that to them. Make them understand that this rule supersedes all others and that it will always be okay to tell you. It won't be easy, but you didn't sign up for easy. You signed up to parent and you must protect your kids. This way works. Do it.
-Frank
Saturday, February 7, 2015
More Health Problems
January 30th's article was called Health Problems and it wasn't one I was hoping I could sequelize. Nevertheless, this article is basically a sequel to that one. While that one was about how people with chronic health conditions deal, this one is more about my personal experience with chronic health conditions piling up long past the point of, "Alright already!" See, back when I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I thought that was the one chronic condition with which I'd have to deal because, for the vast majority of my life, I had been the kid who never got sick. With the exception a case of pneumonia that took me out of school for a week once, I never took a sick day from school as a kid. Today, I am an adult living with nine diagnosed chronic conditions. Some were always there and have just been unearthed. Others are brand new. If you're wondering what this has to do with being autistic, basically it's a lot of change and we really, really, REALLY hate change.
Symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome have been present in me since about 2007. Since I was always busy trying to have ambitions of some sort or another come to fruition, not to mention simply in a great deal of denial, I've been ignoring it for eight years. Well, since I've been getting everything checked out lately anyway, I figured I might as well see about the carpal tunnel syndrome too. Upon examining me, they determined that it was either arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome, and an X-Ray was taken to rule out the former. Depending on how that comes out, I get to either have regular injections into my wrist or undergo the official carpal tunnel syndrome test. If that confirms I have it, surgery is coming. That's a pain in the ass, but I also have pain in the head. A few weeks ago, migraine headaches began happening about once a week. The pain's dull and endurable, but I'm rendered useless to myself or anyone else when they occur because I can't think.
Whereas the previous article on health problems was about how chronic conditions grind one down, I suppose this one is really about how traumatic the change of having new ones in one's life can become. Part of it is knowing that, with age, more and more health problems will come up. Beyond the stuff that everybody has to worry about when they get older, one also knows what one has to worry about in one's family history. While I've pretty much already got everything I can think of that my family tends to get while young, there is Alzheimer's, prostate cancer, gout, and osteoporosis to think about as I get older. Of these, Alzheimer's, which my great-grandfather had, scares me the most. Autism already robs me of my awareness plenty and to be robbed of cognitive ability until it actually kills me would be a cruel fate. Even with all this, I know some would say I'm relatively healthy and shouldn't whine. Well, if I whine it is because I am afraid.
-Frank
Symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome have been present in me since about 2007. Since I was always busy trying to have ambitions of some sort or another come to fruition, not to mention simply in a great deal of denial, I've been ignoring it for eight years. Well, since I've been getting everything checked out lately anyway, I figured I might as well see about the carpal tunnel syndrome too. Upon examining me, they determined that it was either arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome, and an X-Ray was taken to rule out the former. Depending on how that comes out, I get to either have regular injections into my wrist or undergo the official carpal tunnel syndrome test. If that confirms I have it, surgery is coming. That's a pain in the ass, but I also have pain in the head. A few weeks ago, migraine headaches began happening about once a week. The pain's dull and endurable, but I'm rendered useless to myself or anyone else when they occur because I can't think.
Whereas the previous article on health problems was about how chronic conditions grind one down, I suppose this one is really about how traumatic the change of having new ones in one's life can become. Part of it is knowing that, with age, more and more health problems will come up. Beyond the stuff that everybody has to worry about when they get older, one also knows what one has to worry about in one's family history. While I've pretty much already got everything I can think of that my family tends to get while young, there is Alzheimer's, prostate cancer, gout, and osteoporosis to think about as I get older. Of these, Alzheimer's, which my great-grandfather had, scares me the most. Autism already robs me of my awareness plenty and to be robbed of cognitive ability until it actually kills me would be a cruel fate. Even with all this, I know some would say I'm relatively healthy and shouldn't whine. Well, if I whine it is because I am afraid.
-Frank
Friday, February 6, 2015
The Safe Haven
There are many strategies for autistics to cope with the social world. Some are not sufficiently socially impaired to require such strategies, and these are fortunate indeed. Most commonly, autistics simply try to improve their social skills in some way, just as any socially unskilled neurotypical person would do. Since this is essentially developing skill at seeming neurotypical, it qualifies as developing a coping mechanism. Not every autistic can improve social skills sufficiently to succeed, however, as is the case with me. Primarily, social skills are going to be the most crucial in school and, later, the workplace. When they aren't sufficient for these environments, the ultimate result is becoming unemployable. While this is not the only factor in my unemployable nature, it is a major one. Only two environments in my life have proven to be ones wherein I can socially succeed. These, I term, "safe havens."
As a child, I didn't have an environment where I could socially succeed. Here, I do not count home, because, although I certainly got on my family's nerves, there was always an understanding that there was a certain obligation to be kind to and patient with me. Family is, after all, its own thing. Friendless and disconnected from my peers, I mostly remember doing everything by myself, such as watching television, reading, playing video games, and so on. Drury University was my first safe haven. Basically, the social environment there was carefully designed to be close-knit and open-minded. Much like the fictional Hogwarts, the place excels at feeling like a secure home, and it was there I made my first friends. Just For Him was my second safe haven and I think it's because pipes and cigars are hobbies that attract all walks of life. With that much diversity, everybody just learns to get along with pretty much anyone, and I didn't have to leave after graduation.
Safe havens are very rare places. In the 33 years I have been alive, I have only found two, both in 1999. When I moved back to Arkansas for three years, I experienced life without one. During my time there, I tried to find smoking lounges, schools, gaming groups, churches, and other places that might demonstrate that heightened level of patience and kindness. None did. The closest I had were visits with two friends from my Drury days, which weren't nearly so frequent as I would've preferred. Nowadays, having moved back to Springfield, I have Just For Him back. Drury isn't much of an option, because the safe haven it was for me was always meant to be temporary. Autistics as socially deficient as myself are always going to need safe havens in order to have sufficient quality of life. By far, the best option is to become as socially skilled as you can. If that proves insufficient though, find your safe haven and if you're ever in Springfield, come to Just For Him. It's safe there and I'll buy you a cigar.
-Frank
As a child, I didn't have an environment where I could socially succeed. Here, I do not count home, because, although I certainly got on my family's nerves, there was always an understanding that there was a certain obligation to be kind to and patient with me. Family is, after all, its own thing. Friendless and disconnected from my peers, I mostly remember doing everything by myself, such as watching television, reading, playing video games, and so on. Drury University was my first safe haven. Basically, the social environment there was carefully designed to be close-knit and open-minded. Much like the fictional Hogwarts, the place excels at feeling like a secure home, and it was there I made my first friends. Just For Him was my second safe haven and I think it's because pipes and cigars are hobbies that attract all walks of life. With that much diversity, everybody just learns to get along with pretty much anyone, and I didn't have to leave after graduation.
Safe havens are very rare places. In the 33 years I have been alive, I have only found two, both in 1999. When I moved back to Arkansas for three years, I experienced life without one. During my time there, I tried to find smoking lounges, schools, gaming groups, churches, and other places that might demonstrate that heightened level of patience and kindness. None did. The closest I had were visits with two friends from my Drury days, which weren't nearly so frequent as I would've preferred. Nowadays, having moved back to Springfield, I have Just For Him back. Drury isn't much of an option, because the safe haven it was for me was always meant to be temporary. Autistics as socially deficient as myself are always going to need safe havens in order to have sufficient quality of life. By far, the best option is to become as socially skilled as you can. If that proves insufficient though, find your safe haven and if you're ever in Springfield, come to Just For Him. It's safe there and I'll buy you a cigar.
-Frank
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Reconciliation
In a previous article called The People I Grew Up With, I detailed the circumstances of my friendless childhood, how my perspective on it changed after my autism diagnosis, and my desire for reconciliation by friending my former classmates on Facebook. Well, now the reconciliation I seek is coming to fruition. With a few notable exceptions, everybody seems game for this plan. Now, I didn't expect much of a formal or direct reconciliation, mind you. Mostly, I wanted them to know I've always been autistic, read the blog, and interact if they wished. Formal and direct reconciliation happened today though and I found it rather enlightening. Whether or not that sort of thing will continue, I don't know. It'll depend greatly on the individual involved. Back then, not having friends, I just considered everybody to be neutral or hostile. Oh, there were a rare few that could be reasonable and pleasant, but I assumed this was out of politeness or convenience. This being the case, reconciliation either means burying the hatchet with individuals or actually becoming friends with them.
As I imagine you've picked up on, I was bullied as a kid. The vast majority of this was nonviolent, although I was punched in the face by a girl the first day of preschool and knocked out with my own backpack once in Junior High. Around seventh grade, a popular form of bullying was to steal my pencils. To combat this, I kept five on my person at all times and a box of 100 of them in my backpack. Rarely was I successfully robbed of all of them. Although I presumed I was the only person to even remember this, a classmate contacted me today to apologize for her involvement in it. She told me she didn't know why she did it. Well, I know quite well why she did it. An undiagnosed autistic is weird and off-putting in a million ways. Some are subtle. Others are not. Tolerating this with kindness and patience is only really possible if both you and the autistic are aware of their condition. Otherwise, it's an entirely natural reaction throughout the animal kingdom to cajole deviants back into normal behavior. Of course, I accepted her apology and appreciate her still thinking of it.
Part of the problem is that most of these people are little more to me than a name I can match with a face. Unless you were one of the more persistent hostiles, I had romantic feelings for you, or you truly went out of your way to interact with me, chances are you're just a face I can't quite place or a name on a roll call that sounds familiar. Everybody had their own story and their own drama going on, I'm sure, but the fact is that I didn't know about hardly any of it. Who was rich, who was poor, who was popular, who was unpopular, who was smart, who was dumb, who were the greatest athletes, who else was badly coordinated besides me, who dated who, who got pregnant, who got an abortion, or any of that kind of stuff. What I hope will happen is actually beyond apologies for bad behavior. Hopefully, some of them will share a memory with me of something I was involved with that I was oblivious to or have simply forgotten. It's that kind of stuff that lets an autistic feel human, if only for a moment. When I went to college, I tried to act like none of it ever happened, but maybe reconciliation can mean I can be glad some of it did.
-Frank
As I imagine you've picked up on, I was bullied as a kid. The vast majority of this was nonviolent, although I was punched in the face by a girl the first day of preschool and knocked out with my own backpack once in Junior High. Around seventh grade, a popular form of bullying was to steal my pencils. To combat this, I kept five on my person at all times and a box of 100 of them in my backpack. Rarely was I successfully robbed of all of them. Although I presumed I was the only person to even remember this, a classmate contacted me today to apologize for her involvement in it. She told me she didn't know why she did it. Well, I know quite well why she did it. An undiagnosed autistic is weird and off-putting in a million ways. Some are subtle. Others are not. Tolerating this with kindness and patience is only really possible if both you and the autistic are aware of their condition. Otherwise, it's an entirely natural reaction throughout the animal kingdom to cajole deviants back into normal behavior. Of course, I accepted her apology and appreciate her still thinking of it.
Part of the problem is that most of these people are little more to me than a name I can match with a face. Unless you were one of the more persistent hostiles, I had romantic feelings for you, or you truly went out of your way to interact with me, chances are you're just a face I can't quite place or a name on a roll call that sounds familiar. Everybody had their own story and their own drama going on, I'm sure, but the fact is that I didn't know about hardly any of it. Who was rich, who was poor, who was popular, who was unpopular, who was smart, who was dumb, who were the greatest athletes, who else was badly coordinated besides me, who dated who, who got pregnant, who got an abortion, or any of that kind of stuff. What I hope will happen is actually beyond apologies for bad behavior. Hopefully, some of them will share a memory with me of something I was involved with that I was oblivious to or have simply forgotten. It's that kind of stuff that lets an autistic feel human, if only for a moment. When I went to college, I tried to act like none of it ever happened, but maybe reconciliation can mean I can be glad some of it did.
-Frank
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
You Can't Vaccinate Stupid
The anti-vaccination movement grew up out of the idea that medical technology that has saved more lives than we shall ever be able to know might cause autism. That incredibly destructive idea came out of a study published in The Lancet that has been as thoroughly disproven as any academic research we have ever known. Perhaps discrediting the study would've been sufficiently effective, if not for the interference of Playboy model and comedic actress Jenny McCarthy. Ms. McCarthy's pediatrician believed the debunked study and convinced her vaccination was the reason she had autistic children. As a result of her advocacy of this deeply stupid pseudoscience, many people in the United States have begun to refuse to vaccinate their children. Even if this is merely a matter of parents endangering the lives of their own children, it is a moral outrage, but the true consequences are a great deal more lamentable.
Within living memory exists a time before vaccination. I'm talking about the time when diphtheria, polio, meningitis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, mumps, whooping couch, pneumonia, rotavirus, rubella, smallpox, tetanus, chicken pox, and more routinely killed children. There was a time when we had these diseases either virtually eliminated or rendered survivable because we had vaccinations for all of them. That was before the anti-vaccination movement took its toll. Now we see diseases that medical science had pretty much defeated roaring back and people are dying because people who believe Jenny McCarthy won't vaccinate their kids. This is not an argument where there are no consequences for being wrong. If vaccination does cause autism in one in 110 kids, but more kids get to live because of said vaccinations, that's still less dead kids by a large margin. However, if the anti-vaccination people are wrong, people will die for no good reason.
Look, I am autistic and my entire blog is about seeing things from an autistic point of view. Any regular reader will know how much I hate being autistic, how badly I wish there were a cure, and that I would not wish the condition on my worst enemy. So take it from someone who would rather die than inflict autism on a single child, let alone one in 110, that vaccines do not cause autism. The fact is that what does cause autism is still being researched and, like any area where we don't know all the facts, it invites misinformation. Artificial sweeteners cause autism, Agent Orange causes autism, power lines cause autism, forceps birth causes autism, and more are just some of the ways people have told me I ended up autistic. Parents who don't want their child to be autistic are right to fear the condition and I've written many articles on what there is to fear. What they are not right to do is risk their children's lives and the lives of many others guided only by the depths of their ignorance.
-Frank
Within living memory exists a time before vaccination. I'm talking about the time when diphtheria, polio, meningitis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, mumps, whooping couch, pneumonia, rotavirus, rubella, smallpox, tetanus, chicken pox, and more routinely killed children. There was a time when we had these diseases either virtually eliminated or rendered survivable because we had vaccinations for all of them. That was before the anti-vaccination movement took its toll. Now we see diseases that medical science had pretty much defeated roaring back and people are dying because people who believe Jenny McCarthy won't vaccinate their kids. This is not an argument where there are no consequences for being wrong. If vaccination does cause autism in one in 110 kids, but more kids get to live because of said vaccinations, that's still less dead kids by a large margin. However, if the anti-vaccination people are wrong, people will die for no good reason.
Look, I am autistic and my entire blog is about seeing things from an autistic point of view. Any regular reader will know how much I hate being autistic, how badly I wish there were a cure, and that I would not wish the condition on my worst enemy. So take it from someone who would rather die than inflict autism on a single child, let alone one in 110, that vaccines do not cause autism. The fact is that what does cause autism is still being researched and, like any area where we don't know all the facts, it invites misinformation. Artificial sweeteners cause autism, Agent Orange causes autism, power lines cause autism, forceps birth causes autism, and more are just some of the ways people have told me I ended up autistic. Parents who don't want their child to be autistic are right to fear the condition and I've written many articles on what there is to fear. What they are not right to do is risk their children's lives and the lives of many others guided only by the depths of their ignorance.
-Frank
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Monday, February 2, 2015
Other Autistics
I've only known a handful of other autistics in my life. There's only three I can think of, in fact. Of course, I've interacted with other autistics online before, but that didn't go well, to the point where the largest autistic website, which is wrongplanet.com, actually banned me not long after my initial diagnosis. It was for posting about my romantic difficulties, if you're wondering. You'd think a section called Love & Dating would be appropriate for such context, but apparently recounting my sexual difficulties offended some of the moms, resulting in banning, despite profuse apologies from myself. Apparently, the whole world is for children. Anyway, I've read other autistic message boards since, but never again posted. As a result, most of my interactions with other autistics have been in person. While I completely failed to get along with other autistics on the Internet, my relationships with the three I've known personally have been mostly positive. Here, I will recount how I got to know each of them and how autism has affected them in varying ways throughout their lives. Determining if they are higher or lower-functioning than myself is difficult, so draw your own conclusions.
Brad is a few years younger than myself and I got to know him through my ex-fiancé Marie. Marie, as I've said many times, was a sociopath and treated me with the according evil. As a form of psychological torture, she cowed me into driving over to Brad's once so she could have a sexual encounter with him. Although this did, in fact, occur, I find that I didn't then and don't now have any ill will towards him over it. A woman who he'd had a crush on for years, according to her, seduced him and he had all the emotional wherewithal to resist that comes with autism. Fact is, if the equivalent woman in my life ever decided to pull that, I'd probably do as he did. Since then, we've gotten to know one another on Facebook and his journey has been similar to mine. He's dated his share of women, some of them kind and some of them crazy, but has had no more success at managing relationships than myself. His professional life has been similarly bleak, despite going through training, as I did, to develop various specialized skills. Lately, he's battled several of the same problems I have and I've recommended my therapist and trainer to him so he can hopefully make at least as much progress as myself.
Amy is the only female autistic I've ever known. I first got to know her when she was dating a friend of mine and I liked her immediately. A very compassionate person, she is highly interested in zoology, particular primates, with lemurs being her favorite. Years after I originally got to know her, I asked her out. She was no longer dating the friend of mine she was when we first met, and had had another boyfriend in the interim, so this wasn't like what happened when I admittedly stole Marie from her then-boyfriend. Although she said yes, she didn't really want to and we were in a four-month long-distance relationship before I realized she didn't actually want to be with me. Of my exes, she is the only one with whom I remain on good terms, although I am not permitted to speak with her often, even on Facebook, due to her fiancé disliking the idea of her speaking with exes. Obviously, an entire relationship where one is not aware the other person isn't into it is quite an experience and, in retrospect, it was probably my first time seriously questioning my ability to manage one. Previous exes had cheated on me, been evil, or backstabbed me over a religious group, but this one's demise, as well as formation, was based upon an inability to intuit what is going on in my own relationship. Subsequent relationships further revealed this flaw to an even greater extent, with Randi dating me ten months before she broke up with me for reasons that I suspect are more complex than she let on and April breaking up with me because I was unable to keep the relationship pacing as slow as she wanted. Nowadays, she seems very happy and I'm glad I can still be on good, if limited, terms with her.
Dave is the other autistic with whom I most frequently associate, mostly because we met at Just For Him, where we both smoke pipes and cigars on a daily basis. He's a musician and has successfully held jobs before, although each one was ultimately sabotaged by autism. Successfully getting on disability due to autism is probably the most interesting feature he has relating to the subject and his resultant limited finances give me a useful, if frightening, glimpse into what my circumstances could possibly be one day if I ever, for any reason, lose the family money on which I subsist. Although Dave has had three failed marriages and is one of the very few people who've been abused by women in ways that can hold a candle to my own experiences, he's managed to retain hope into his late forties and fully intends to keep putting himself out there. Of the ones I mention in this article, Dave is also the one with whom I most frequently discuss autism. Diagnosed at the onset of his forties, he had to wait far longer than myself to find out why his life had always been so damned difficult. Many of our conversations have involved me educating Dave about autism and comparing and contrasting our respective cases of it. For instance, Dave has light and touch sensitivity, but no dexterity or coordination issues, whereas I have dexterity and coordination issues, but no light or touch sensitivity. Differences in autism aside, Dave has been a nice source of someone who actually understands autism from the inside and conversations between us tend to go more smoothly than most interactions either of us have with others.
Autistic adults today grew up in the infancy of science's understanding of the condition. Ones lucky enough to live in major cities, like Brad and Amy, had access to sufficient resources and diligent professionals to get diagnosed in childhood. Less fortunate ones, like Dave and myself, were either misdiagnosed with something else or were never given a diagnosis in the first place. Nonetheless, all of us grew up in a time when public understanding of autism was basically limited to, "Oh, you mean retarded kids?" Clearly, autistic kids growing up now have a it a lot better than we did. They'll have a lot better chance ending up like Amy and Dave, meaning happy and hopeful adults, as opposed to like Brad and myself, meaning burned and burned out adults whose autism has come to define them and the sort of life they must lead. In any event, it's nice to have known all of them. Us autistics have to deal with a lot of crap in life. People still believe everything from vaccines, to diet soda, to freaking power lines cause autism and this is just insane pseudoscience. Worse yet, some refuse to believe you even have autism in the first place if you're high -functioning enough to appear relatively normal. So we must all be ready to be communicators and advocates for our condition. Despite alarmist claims that autism is an epidemic, there are still plenty of walks of life wherein one might be the only autistic a given person has ever met. Some are better suited to be the pointman on this than others, of course, and I think I'm particularly well-suited to this task. To that end, I maintain this blog and its archives will hopefully serve as an explanation for how autistics see the world around them.
-Frank
Brad is a few years younger than myself and I got to know him through my ex-fiancé Marie. Marie, as I've said many times, was a sociopath and treated me with the according evil. As a form of psychological torture, she cowed me into driving over to Brad's once so she could have a sexual encounter with him. Although this did, in fact, occur, I find that I didn't then and don't now have any ill will towards him over it. A woman who he'd had a crush on for years, according to her, seduced him and he had all the emotional wherewithal to resist that comes with autism. Fact is, if the equivalent woman in my life ever decided to pull that, I'd probably do as he did. Since then, we've gotten to know one another on Facebook and his journey has been similar to mine. He's dated his share of women, some of them kind and some of them crazy, but has had no more success at managing relationships than myself. His professional life has been similarly bleak, despite going through training, as I did, to develop various specialized skills. Lately, he's battled several of the same problems I have and I've recommended my therapist and trainer to him so he can hopefully make at least as much progress as myself.
Amy is the only female autistic I've ever known. I first got to know her when she was dating a friend of mine and I liked her immediately. A very compassionate person, she is highly interested in zoology, particular primates, with lemurs being her favorite. Years after I originally got to know her, I asked her out. She was no longer dating the friend of mine she was when we first met, and had had another boyfriend in the interim, so this wasn't like what happened when I admittedly stole Marie from her then-boyfriend. Although she said yes, she didn't really want to and we were in a four-month long-distance relationship before I realized she didn't actually want to be with me. Of my exes, she is the only one with whom I remain on good terms, although I am not permitted to speak with her often, even on Facebook, due to her fiancé disliking the idea of her speaking with exes. Obviously, an entire relationship where one is not aware the other person isn't into it is quite an experience and, in retrospect, it was probably my first time seriously questioning my ability to manage one. Previous exes had cheated on me, been evil, or backstabbed me over a religious group, but this one's demise, as well as formation, was based upon an inability to intuit what is going on in my own relationship. Subsequent relationships further revealed this flaw to an even greater extent, with Randi dating me ten months before she broke up with me for reasons that I suspect are more complex than she let on and April breaking up with me because I was unable to keep the relationship pacing as slow as she wanted. Nowadays, she seems very happy and I'm glad I can still be on good, if limited, terms with her.
Dave is the other autistic with whom I most frequently associate, mostly because we met at Just For Him, where we both smoke pipes and cigars on a daily basis. He's a musician and has successfully held jobs before, although each one was ultimately sabotaged by autism. Successfully getting on disability due to autism is probably the most interesting feature he has relating to the subject and his resultant limited finances give me a useful, if frightening, glimpse into what my circumstances could possibly be one day if I ever, for any reason, lose the family money on which I subsist. Although Dave has had three failed marriages and is one of the very few people who've been abused by women in ways that can hold a candle to my own experiences, he's managed to retain hope into his late forties and fully intends to keep putting himself out there. Of the ones I mention in this article, Dave is also the one with whom I most frequently discuss autism. Diagnosed at the onset of his forties, he had to wait far longer than myself to find out why his life had always been so damned difficult. Many of our conversations have involved me educating Dave about autism and comparing and contrasting our respective cases of it. For instance, Dave has light and touch sensitivity, but no dexterity or coordination issues, whereas I have dexterity and coordination issues, but no light or touch sensitivity. Differences in autism aside, Dave has been a nice source of someone who actually understands autism from the inside and conversations between us tend to go more smoothly than most interactions either of us have with others.
Autistic adults today grew up in the infancy of science's understanding of the condition. Ones lucky enough to live in major cities, like Brad and Amy, had access to sufficient resources and diligent professionals to get diagnosed in childhood. Less fortunate ones, like Dave and myself, were either misdiagnosed with something else or were never given a diagnosis in the first place. Nonetheless, all of us grew up in a time when public understanding of autism was basically limited to, "Oh, you mean retarded kids?" Clearly, autistic kids growing up now have a it a lot better than we did. They'll have a lot better chance ending up like Amy and Dave, meaning happy and hopeful adults, as opposed to like Brad and myself, meaning burned and burned out adults whose autism has come to define them and the sort of life they must lead. In any event, it's nice to have known all of them. Us autistics have to deal with a lot of crap in life. People still believe everything from vaccines, to diet soda, to freaking power lines cause autism and this is just insane pseudoscience. Worse yet, some refuse to believe you even have autism in the first place if you're high -functioning enough to appear relatively normal. So we must all be ready to be communicators and advocates for our condition. Despite alarmist claims that autism is an epidemic, there are still plenty of walks of life wherein one might be the only autistic a given person has ever met. Some are better suited to be the pointman on this than others, of course, and I think I'm particularly well-suited to this task. To that end, I maintain this blog and its archives will hopefully serve as an explanation for how autistics see the world around them.
-Frank
For A Girl
There seems to be some basic confusion out there about feminism's latest attempts to advance women. Primarily, this takes the form of either thinking there was never a problem with sexism to begin with or that, at any rate, there is not one anymore. This conclusion is untrue and I feel the need to point that out. The Super Bowl I just watched featured a commercial demonstrating the destructive nature of the common saying, "Like a girl." When used in certain contexts, which are usually athletic ones, it signifies weakness and incompetence. So the ad insists we turn, "Like a girl," into a positive saying. In response, men's rights activists have been promoting, "Like a boy," as a response. To miss the point that badly can only be explained by not believing the problem exists in the first place. Feminism is ultimately about the idea that women have it worse than men in a variety of contexts and what can be done to improve this. If you don't believe this, you will perceive feminism negatively and be wrong.
Women having it worse than men has always seemed a very obvious fact to me, even as a child. When I first learned about childbirth, I vividly remember being grateful for being born male because SCREW THAT. Sex is fertile ground for women having it bad. First of all, men are going to enjoy every time they have sex and women basically have no better than Vegas odds of an orgasm in any given encounter. Second of all, women have to worry about every man that ever crosses their path raping them, something I've never worried about for a moment. There is still pressure for women to choose between career and children, while men experience no such pressure. While some men wish to frame all this as some sort of whiny, "Life's hard. Get a helmut," sort of thing, it's much more than that. From the moment a woman is born, the world tries to frame what her limitations are in every possible context. Being individualistic is hard enough for me as a man. With more expectations to conform, it must be all the harder.
A men's rights activist will say that we need to treat everyone equally and fairly. Where they err is in their assumption that, by changing the way we treat women and girls, we are somehow affording them special rights. Dropping everything you as a man think you know about women is the first step. I will not say I am entirely innocent on these charges, but I've been educated well enough to have improved dramatically in recent years. Any time a little girl feels inferior to a boy, is treated worse than she would be if she were a boy, or is told she cannot do things she could otherwise do were she a boy, she is experiencing something that ought to rouse moral outrage in all us all. All that is not hypothetical, but goes on every day in modern America. Women who succeed do so only after mounting courage and strength enough to overcome the challenges unique to their gender. Life is harder, but it need not be, so remember that as you contemplate a lone advertisement asking us to think of what life is like for a girl.
-Frank
Women having it worse than men has always seemed a very obvious fact to me, even as a child. When I first learned about childbirth, I vividly remember being grateful for being born male because SCREW THAT. Sex is fertile ground for women having it bad. First of all, men are going to enjoy every time they have sex and women basically have no better than Vegas odds of an orgasm in any given encounter. Second of all, women have to worry about every man that ever crosses their path raping them, something I've never worried about for a moment. There is still pressure for women to choose between career and children, while men experience no such pressure. While some men wish to frame all this as some sort of whiny, "Life's hard. Get a helmut," sort of thing, it's much more than that. From the moment a woman is born, the world tries to frame what her limitations are in every possible context. Being individualistic is hard enough for me as a man. With more expectations to conform, it must be all the harder.
A men's rights activist will say that we need to treat everyone equally and fairly. Where they err is in their assumption that, by changing the way we treat women and girls, we are somehow affording them special rights. Dropping everything you as a man think you know about women is the first step. I will not say I am entirely innocent on these charges, but I've been educated well enough to have improved dramatically in recent years. Any time a little girl feels inferior to a boy, is treated worse than she would be if she were a boy, or is told she cannot do things she could otherwise do were she a boy, she is experiencing something that ought to rouse moral outrage in all us all. All that is not hypothetical, but goes on every day in modern America. Women who succeed do so only after mounting courage and strength enough to overcome the challenges unique to their gender. Life is harder, but it need not be, so remember that as you contemplate a lone advertisement asking us to think of what life is like for a girl.
-Frank
Sunday, February 1, 2015
The Bowl
Tonight, I watched the Super Bowl. It's a relatively ordinary event for plenty of Americans to do this, but it represents a lot of progress for me. Where I grew up, sports was king and much more than a simple game. Small towns, especially in the South, make sports king for a number of reasons, which I only came to understand later. Sports programs bring in money and that's always a consideration in any walk of life. They also provide a social purpose in providing regular entertainment in places where entertainment is a relatively rare quantity and a structure and locale at which kids may socialize outside of school. Perhaps most importantly, they provide a sense of unity and town pride that can be hard to muster for towns that don't have a whole lot going on otherwise. Watching the Super Bowl and actually enjoying the experience is representative of a lot of progress for me. To understand why, I'll take you back to how it used to be for me.
As I mentioned, sports was king where I grew up and I did not approve of this one bit. Autism can mean a lack of dexterity, coordination, balance, and proprioception, which it certainly did in my case. Since this means a stunning lack of athletic ability, and since I had little interest in games consistently featuring athletes who were among the worst of my bullies, it is unsurprising that I and the athletic department were constantly at loggerheads. Oh, I tried to conform sometimes, even playing football in seventh grade in a truly piteous attempt to impress a girl, but it was never any use. While I was struggling with a system seemingly designed to make it impossible to have town pride, prevent socialization with peers, and highlight and shame my mods profound weaknesses, athletes and coaches seemed capable of getting away with anything. That's just how Harrison was though, and I and it were unfortunate for one another.
These days, as with many things, I have my autism diagnosis to help me look back on the problems my childhood town and I had with one another over athletics with understanding instead of anger. I still think the athletic department of my day had too much power in areas that it had no business having any, but I imagine things might be different now. When I say I watched the game, it's important to understand the difference. Mostly, I played on my phone while occasionally looking up to respond to the passionate statements of my peers. Nobody minded that because rooting for a particular sports team or closely following one does not have anything to do with one's social standing, one's town pride, or one's character. At 33, sports is the mere entertainment it was always supposed to be and I am free to be happy for my friends when their team does well and cry for them when it doesn't. Watching the Super Bowl is fun because of what it isn't.
-Frank
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