Well now, how was my time in school?
First: it started one year late.
Waldorf school has a test all children have to perform, to see if they are ready for school.
My Dad had already told me that it involved drawing, which made me real happy. I liked to draw, and was better at it than everybody else I knew. So, for sure I would pass with flying colors.
When I was at the school doctor's office, I certainly was intimidated, and not happy that I had to answer the questions, instead of letting my parents do the conversation, as usual.
But then came the test.
The doctor handed me a sheet with one circle, one square, and one triangle, and told me to copy the shapes.
Great! I'm real great at copying shapes.
In my mind the test was how good I am at drawing. How much alike I was able to draw my own shapes.
Very very carefully I drew my lines, and was real pleased by how they came out. Just the same like the doctor's shapes.
And it caught me by biggest surprise that nobody praised my skills.
In the opposite. It was judged that I was still way too immature to go to school, and my parents seemed embarrassed.
    But the good thing was, due to my coming in late, I got the better teacher.
Waldorf school places great value on continuance, and so classes stay together as a class from the first to the twelfth grade. And every morning during the first eight years, the class teacher, or form teacher or master, I'm not sure about the proper term, teaches the first two hours. Like that the teacher nearly becomes a third parent. And things can get real awkward when one doesn't like ones form teacher.
I liked mine, despite all his shortcomings, of which I sure will tell more. But all in all I was lucky to be in his class. Schooltime always was an adventure with him, with going on long hikes, trading classes for an hour in the pool in summer, or ice skating on the lake at the school's door step in winter. Plus he was very keen on arts, and I always delivered good in that department, and we sang so many beautiful camp fire songs.
Pretty much all other students envied us our teacher.
My sister for instance had a female teacher, a spinsterish slightly elderly lady who never did any hiking, and for sure she wouldn't play the guitar to accompany camp fire songs. She was a real bore.
My teacher taught sports too, and there my sister had him as her teacher too. And because my teacher really liked wild tomboy girls, he really liked my sister. All over the years he told me to be a little bit more like my sister.
It wasn't like I never was tomboyish at all. When we, my sister and I were playing outdoors with our friends, I certainly was tomboyish too. But there I wasn't so puzzled like in school.

Waldorf school takes great pride in the fact that they cherish all children, and take them just like they are. They don't do the spooky thing like regular schools, to let slower children stay down a year. If children are a little bit slow, they try extra care to help them along. And they claim that every child is allowed to develop in just its own way.
- Maybe they have temporarily lost their manual when I was in school. Because it seems only children who act like textbook children, who like bright colors and running around and be loud, are allowed to be just like that. Others have to be pushed into the proper direction.
In first grade we learned knitting.
I actually had learned it at home already. My sister had to teach me, after she had told me about it.
I was absolutely thrilled, and to this day knitting is still a favorite pastime of mine.
And my teacher  (a lady teacher for handcrafts, not my form teacher) was full of praise, because my knitting was so neat.
Our first project was to knit a ball. And we were allowed to use every color we liked.
I liked green and white.
So I started out: two rows green, two rows white. Two rows green...
I had about a quarter of my ball done, when my teacher chided me for being a bore. "What? Only two colors? And white isn't even a color really. Look, all the other balls look so merry with all those mingled colors." And she put down her foot and forbade me to use green or white again.
My ball looked dreadful, and I never again took any pride in it.

Colors are extremely important to me.
I always loved blue, but of course blue isn't blue. One nuance off, and it looks dreadful to me.
And not only looks. It kind of feels dreadful.
The first years in school we only painted with a handful of colors: lemon-yellow, golden-yellow, cinnabar-red, carmine-red, yellow-green, dark-green, ultramarine-blue, and prussic blue. At times we were allowed to also use brown, and very rarely black.
So, when we had to use prussic blue in our copy books, the day was rotten for me. I didn't want to have that in my book. Why not take the ultramarine?
But the worst was when we used brown.
Brown is a color that is necessary to depict earth, or the stems of trees. Brown is no color one uses for ones pleasure!
But when we learned writing, we started out with writing all the names of everybody in our class. And the child whose name was being written, was allowed to select the color we all had to use.
And Lars-Christian ruled we had to use brown for his name.
It nearly made me sick. I didn't want to use it.
And because Lars-Christian was one of the children who were really mean to me, plus also had a real like for brown clothes, brown stayed a no-no all through my life. I didn't even want to touch it.
And when I had to wear brown garments for a theater, I nearly suffocated.
Only recently I made my peace with the color. I actually realized that because I have brown eyes, the color goes way better for my clothes than blue.
But it might help that Lars-Christian turned out to be a nice guy after school, when we had met for our first reunion.

The good thing is: because I was in a class that never let anything weird I did slide, but rather reacted with laughing at me, teacher included, I learned from very early on to never act on my feelings.
If I didn't understand what was going on, never show the tiniest hint! Just act like everything is perfectly normal! I even was mean enough to laugh with the class when one of my fellow weirdos had said/done something weird.
But in the end that saved me a great deal of trouble.

What also helped me big time, was that I come from a home where figures of speech were in constant use.
Our father had a very colorful way of speaking, saying things like "It's just a tiny village. They flip up the sidewalks at eight in the evening."  Or "They push the moon on with a long stick."
But I must say, when we had misbehaved, and Dad proposed that if we ever did that again, he would go tobogganing with us, I was nearly thrilled out of my head. Because our parents never did those things with us. My sister took me. So I was a bit disappointed that Dad never made good of that promise. (Well a good thing, because in reality that would have meant a good spanking.)
But well, thanks to my Dad, I can not only understand many figures of speech, I also can use them myself pretty good.
The only thing I notice: in English I have massive troubles detecting figures of speech, or things said in earnest, but meant as jokes.
I have a friend in Texas I Skype with pretty much every night for five years now, and I still find myself awed by things he mentions like in earnest, but that actually are funny exaggerations.
I think I have torpedoed 90% of his jokes, by simply not getting them.
But again, I learned to maintain a low profile. Of course my sister always caught all the meanings. And when she saw my awed expressions, she always blew my cover: "Did you actually believe that?"
So I learned to shake my head, and say in consternation: "Sure not!"

It didn't take long until I had found a first friend in school.
Natalie. She was a real sweet girl. And scintillatingly funny. But she had club feet, and so nobody wanted to be friends with her. We were having a great time.
And what is more, we both slowly evolved do be the funny guys of the class.
We both were fans of a german comedian, and, unlike most of the other children, were exposed to him, first on records and tapes, and later on TV. TV is quite frowned upon in Waldorf worlds, so the other children had little other means coming by the jokes than by us.
I was exceptionally good at reciting the jokes, because acting like other people had become my way of life.
I still give myself the appearance of a normal person, by speaking in a very jokeful way.
I have over the last thirty years collected every sentence or word I thought that was funny, and have learned them all by heart.

But anyway, I have a feeling that this post is very unstructured, and I can't seem to make one big point here, so I better come to an end, and try it better with the next post.

I'm thinking the one thing that kept my life from being the typical Aspie-story, with constant terrible failures, is the fact that I am a little sister. And not only that, but my sister is only one and a half years my senior. Like that we did everything together.

Our theory is that our mother was Aspie too.
One reason being that she never took us anywhere.
Like that my sister was in charge of me.
And that worked really very well.
Our father worked as janitor in an elementary school, where we also lived. That was great growing up, with our own playground, gym hall, and many more pluses. One of which was that there were several different sport classes going on in the afternoon. All it took was our father letting the instructor know that we would come over, and that was it.
Like that  my sister took me to the mother-and-child-exercises, when we grew out of that to the regular gymnastics,  and from there we upgraded to the artistic gymnastics. We dabbled a bit in handball, because the instructor had asked our Dad if we wouldn't be interested. Well, we weren't all too much.
      I must say, we did all that with different success rates. My sister was really gifted in the artistic gymnastics, and trained to go to compete in tournaments, while I mostly took part in the tournaments as a "ticket" girl. The girls who had to run to the referee people with the points some other referee had given.
But I had that awesome red unitard. Red was our club's color.
Well, my sister fractured her elbow while training for a competition, and that was the end to that career.
For a little while we joined a ballet group, because again our father was asked if we felt like it, and so get a group going, but that was really just an intermezzo.
Both my sister and I never were much for the girl-things.
The only notable success I think I ever had in all those ventures was, that our ballet instructor praised my ability to "jump like a spring".
But looking back, I am so glad that we did all that. That was the reason why I never was the clumsy nerd in school, who never got selected into the teams.
Plus of course I had that great unitard to wear in school sports. That was a huge exception back in the mid seventies. Especially in Waldorf school, where no great value was placed on "Leibesertüchtigung", meaning sports so to say.
But also because there was no great value placed on sports, my pretty unitard and all didn't do anything in giving me a standing really, until about around sixth grade. By the time of which I wasn't wearing the unitard anymore I want to point out. That was the beginning of the eighties, and I wore my sweats with great pride.)
But all in all I was considered the sporting ace of my class.
Despite my inability to score any good in the official track and field competition.
Well, I could throw those little leather balls farther than most of the other girls, and even some boys. But running....  No chance in that department. And it even was worse when we had to professionally crouch-start. I needed about as long to get to m feet, as most of the others needed for half the track.
What I was really good for was shot-putting, javelin, and discus.
And what I really was great at was swimming. Or rather diving. One year I was best out of the whole school, because I dived some fifty meters non-stop.
I had to, because I never quite managed to crawl, and do the proper breathing trick every couple strokes. So I just simply learned to go on, and on, and on, until my head hit something hard.
Plus I really loved diving. I often spent time just sitting on the ground of a pool, dreaming, and feeling utterly secure. It was great, because nobody could disturb me there.

I think a short while after I had started school, my sister and I tried handball again.
And this time it was perfect.
We both loved it, and it remained our passion until we were grown up.
But while my sister excelled again, and made herself a widely known pivot, I was at certain odds again.
One reason was that I could only be for one year with my sister. Then she had to go on into the next age group.
    In handball it is so, at least in childrens teams, that the more gifted players play the center, and the lesser gifted ones get placed on the outer positions.
So, I usually played on the outer, or the half-outer position.
My job was to catch the ball, and then pass it back quickest possible. I don't think I ever attempted to shoot at the goal.
Well, it wasn't long that our opponents had me figured out. I was absolutely set on passing the ball back to the player next to me. If that wasn't possible, I froze up completely, unable to decide what to do with the ball now. Really. I just stood, my heart beating up into my throat. So more often than not my opponent just simply plucked the ball from my outstretched hand, and ran a quick counter, more often than not ending in a goal for the opponent team.
That process actually got refined into a strategy all throughout or opponents. They got instructions to just block my neighbor, and then just simply take the ball from me.
But before my team could get really frustrated, I got lucky. Our goalkeeper was ill one day, and we had no substitute. So on a hunch our trainer tossed me the jersey, and declared I had to do it.
Her thinking was that I was most dispensable field player. But it turned out that I was even better than our regular goalie. Even without any proper training.
So, I stayed in the goal.
I'm not saying I was exceptionally great. My biggest problem being that I never quite understood the details of the game. But my advantage was that I could concentrate completely on just the ball. I was never distracted by any of the nifty tricks that get played to distract the opponents, because I never saw the tricks. I had no idea what was going on, except that somebody soon would attempt to get the ball past me into my goal. And I was quite good at thwarting those plans.
I worked best in penalty situations.
When the opponent got a free shot from seven meters distance.
My reflexes are not outstanding. But I was unbeatable at figuring out the player who shot.
No matter all strategies, at one point they have to look into the direction where they want to shoot at. And since I had figured that out before, I had enough time getting there.
One match we won, because I had defended all four penalty shots.
But that gets easier as the numbers go up. Once one has a reputation for keeping those feared penalties, the shooters start getting nervous.
    So, again like in school, I had my own little niche, in which I felt safe, and could at times shine.
Really, the greatest thing about being a goalie in handball, as opposed to football (soccer), is that everybody has to stay seven meters away.

So now, here is another blog about somebody with Asperger's.

I think in the broad strokes my life has been mostly typical for Aspies. I've had constant troubles in school, and in my grown-up life I never could get a foot into the door so to say.
I have been married, but after just five years that ended in a little bit of a catastrophe, and so I raised my children alone after that.
But in detail I must say, my life is not quite the usual Aspie story.
Yes, the other children in school thought I was weird, and I did get my share of mobbing. But I went to a Waldorf School, or a Rudolf-Steiner-School as it is known in many countries, and which places great value on arts and crafts.
And I am good at arts and crafts.
I always loved to paint and draw.
And so, right from the first grade, I was the class's big talent in the arts department.
That fact gave me a kind of unique standing. I was never mobbed just the same bad as several others of my class mates, who were different from the main group in other ways.
So, my childhood hasn't been bad really.

But that fact also never let me feel completely on the wrong planet.
I kind of thought of myself as a bit batty and eccentric.

I've had some great friendships all throughout my childhood.
And as I grew up, I even managed to have a couple of boyfriends.
I was never able to become friends with people when I had the wish for it. But very constantly people came to me, and offered me their friendship.

When I was around twenty, I had a near normal life.
I had a very good friend, I had a boy friend, I got married, I had a baby, and I had a job. Because my husband didn't earn very well in his part time kindergarten-teacher job, I started working the night shifts at McDonald's. And despite it all, I really enjoyed my time there.
Yes, I still got into troubles with other people, but I was a very good worker, and so had found myself, just like in school, a little niche.
But my marriage was doomed actually right from the beginning. It ended in said catastrophe, and from that point my life just got weirder and weirder.
For a short while I managed to keep up kind of a social life, by doing handyman work at our Waldorf School, where by now my children went, too. The janitor there had kind of a soft spot for me, and we had something like friendship going.
But after a year or two he got fired, and after my Dad had passed away, my son's only attachment figure besides me, the boy ran into huge problems in school, and in the end got kicked out and was sent to a special school. (I'm thinking he has Asperger's too, but he isn't too keen on getting a diagnosis.)
So, I just didn't seem to be made for contact with people, and started to hole up at home.

I have so often wondered what might be wrong with my life. Clearly something was. But I have to say it never occurred to me that maybe I was totally fooked up, or maybe even mentally ill or something.
I always rested assured that I am a friendly, very polite person, and if people don't get that, there must be something wrong with them.

I sure was aware that in those recent years I have acted more and more not so polite, but of course I racked that up to all the stress I had to deal with.

Which brings me now to what had finally triggered the finding out that I have Asperger's.
Well, one of the weirder episodes of my life was a clash with my doctor, who insisted that I couldn't have the back pains like I was claiming I had, but rather was a junkie who only wanted the funny little pills he had been prescribing so generously while I was the baby sitter of his little baby son.
Suddenly it didn't seem to matter anymore that he had diagnosed me with a real crappy spine, which has a tendency to get inflamed, and a bunch of slipping discs.
The inflammation business is all over my body actually. He had seen that at work when he pricked me with acupuncture needles, and those prick marks grew totally out of proportion and healed very poorly.
Leaving that fact apparently unconsidered, he sent me to a clinic for a withdrawal treatment.
That treatment included a catheter inside my spinal canal, where they could inject stuff that would take the pain away, while I withdrew from the pills.
Really, if he thought I was making up the pain, why do something like that?
Well, I'm not saying that doctors are smart people.
The catheter lay inside my spinal canal for three weeks, (IV ports get inflamed after about three days.), and when it got pulled on the day I was discharged from that clinic, I felt something pop big time in my spine, and my lower legs were numb.
When I said so, the nurse only said "That can't be."
I insisted, and so they "graciously" offered me they could send the neurologist in. But they kept saying "He must be here in about fifteen minutes.", until they knew I had to leave in the afternoon, because I had to get home to my children.
Walking worked still. It was like when one walks when one's legs have gone to sleep.
Over the following weeks it got from bad to worse, until I could only shuffle slowly for some meters, and I insisted to see a neurologist.
She did one of those tests where they see how fast information travels through the nerves, was flummoxed that there was hardly any traveling going on at all, and prescribed a wheelchair.
And that was that.
Nobody talked about it again.
Well, I liked my wheelchair, because it let me get around again.
But I vowed to never ever let a doctor get anywhere near me again.
Knowing that, one might be able to see my point that I always acted a leetle bit on the aggressive side, (Though I want to point out that aggressive means rolling my eyes at all their dumb questions, and make it a point to show that I totally was not pleased being there.)   when the authorities who are in charge here of people out of work sent me to see authority doctors who would then decide if I am able to work. Ever since I got divorced I am out of work, because of course my husband never took care of the children like it was agreed upon, so that I had to keep calling in sick, and after a half year quit my job altogether.
I have then stayed at home, because of my son's difficulties in school, as well as my own health issues.
During the last recent five years I have started to insist that the job authorities should see now that I can get a job, but first I had to see the doctor again.
And this time he kind of insisted that I should see a psychiatrist, because I was acting a little bit strange.
I thought that was weird, because I had told him the story why I don't like doctors very much.
He said ya fine, but still, he insisted on the psychiatrist.
Okay. Since it isn't like I'm mad or something, I did agree to that.
But the whole thing got me thinking, and as soon as I was back home, I went on Google and looked up Asperger's.
The thing is, the very first time when I heard of autism, I thought hoo, that kind of sounds close to home. But of course I can speak just fine, and I don't reject people's touches quite so violently.
Then I heard about Asperger's, and thought wow, that really sounds like me.
But the first thing I found out was that Asperger people are number geniuses, which I so am not. So I didn't go on searching there.
But it kind of stayed in the back of my brains.
So when the authority doctor told me in detail how I had acted strange over those years I had been made to see him, the Asperger tag came out of its remote spot, and made himself comfortable right smack in the middle of my mind.
And this time the first thing I found out was, that not at all all Asperger people are numbers geniuses.
Some are, but ever so many aren't.
So I went on researching, and it was just like I was being described on the internet.
Next step was one of those tests one can find online.
I had no doubt by then that I have Asperger's, but I just so love tests, and can't get enough of scoring high.
And boy, did I score high.
There is one test that scouts out both ones Aspie points, 200 of them all in all, and ones neurotypical points, 200 too.
So, one answers all those questions, and in the end one sees how many Aspie, and how many neurotypical poinst one gets.
My result was 188 Aspie points, and only 11 neurotypical points.
Actually I was absolutely thrilled. I so felt like I had finally found the key to that rusty old padlock, that seems to be sitting on my life.
So, I went to see the psychiatrist.
But man, was he a bore. He only asked the same stuff the other doctor already had.
Well, I answered all that with a bit more patience, because I thought he sure would notice that I have Asperger's, and then I wouldn't have to go through a lengthy, very time consuming diagnostic marathon.
But that guy never even said anything remotely connected to Asperger's.
So, when he was done interrogating me, I kind of blurted out: "Don't you think I could have Asperger's?"
He said instantly no of course. I shouldn't worry. I am totally normal. It just was so that I've had some extremely weird episodes with doctors, and so it was to be expected that I'm reacting a tad on the aggressive side when contact is forced on me.
Yeah. That for sure was exactly what I had told the doctor who had sent me there, but not at all what I wanted to hear right now.
He told me in the most friendly fashion that he would put that in the testimonial, and also that he thinks that I cannot work properly for the required three hours the authorities are after. Like that I would get the time to finish my graphic design training, which I have started last year, and then I would have the liberty to go find a work I like, rather than getting put in some crappy old call center job by the authorities.
Well, at least that sounded okay.
It didn't matter that he hadn't diagnosed me with Asperger's. It is so that only very few specialists know enough to do so.
Which is why the diagnosis takes so long. Most of the time is spent waiting for an appointment.
   Funny thing: when the psychiatric testimony came in to my case handler at the job authorities, he called me up to let me know that I've been diagnosed with a psychosis, and that I should consider treatment, best in a facility that can handle weird people.
And also he told me because I am not fit to work for three hours, I had to file for retirement.
Well, I cannot say that bothers me too much.
They have put a whole lot of energy into finding out that I am weird, and now they have to accept that I am acting weird. I so don't care their demands that I have to retire, that I have to move, because my apartment is now 30 Euros too expensive...
Right now everything came to rest, because I refuse to let myself be pushed into any kind of spot where I only get out again when experts give their okay.
Because besides all my weirdnesses, I am also a person with an IQ of 134, and a generally accepted talent in arts, and by extension graphic design.
I just know that I can do better than retiring with only just five years of selling burgers in my records.

Well, the next step was to get a diagnosis.
My doctor (yes, despite my vow, I did have to find a doctor for a weird thing with my leg, about which I will tell more soon.) listened to what I had found out, and encouraged me to get a diagnosis, because "everything was pointing into the direction Asperger's". Only he doesn't have the required skills to give me the diagnosis.
After never even getting so far as to get an appointment to get an appointment with the renowned specialist in Hannover, I finally called a foundation that means to be help to people with Asperger's, and asked for a list of doctors who are able to diagnose it.
And lucky me, there was one doctor on that list who not only was very close by my home, but also not yet known to the Asperger community as a specialist.
I called her, and no two weeks later I had my first appointment.
She was great. She made no great ado, like many other doctors do, like sending the patients to other doctors, have brain scans done, and invite the whole family to do a complete research.
Right after the first appointment she told me that she had no doubt that I have Asperger's,  but she just isn't allowed to say so after just one hour. So I had to come back again for a second appointment.
But no more.
So now, since the mid of April 2013, I am officially weird, I am officially diagnosed to have asperger's autism.