Re: CHAT: OT CHAT: Asperger's syndrome

>From: Roger Mills <romilly@...>
>The NY Times Magazine, Sunday 6/18, had an article entitled "The Little
>Professor Syndrome.....They talk like adults and often have sky-high IQs,
>but their social skills are nonexistent..."  (The cover blurb was
>"Brilliant
>little boys with an awful syndrome".)  The official definition, according
>to
>the Learning Disabilities Assn. of America: "a severe developmental
>disorder
>characterized by major difficulties in social interaction and restricted
>and
>unusual patterns of interest and behavior".  ..."the syndrome was only
>made
>official among psychologists by entry into the ...Diagnostic and
>Statistical
>Manual of Mental Disorders in 1994."
I was like that as a kid.  The shrink thought I was autistic.  I was kinda
like, well, intellectually a Lisa Simpson, but socially a Bart Simpson.

And now I'm a Homer!  (Already fat; the baldness is on its way.  Still
looking for Marge...)

>Well, God bless the medico/psychologico/educational establishment.  It must
>be terrible for a teacher to be corrected by a 10-yr. old.  (BTW we're not
>talking idiots savants or "Rainman" type disorders.)
I did that, but I think a more accurate description of me would be
"smartass".

>Other highlights:  "Scholars have retroactively applied the Asperger's
>label
>to oddball intellectuals ranging from Glenn Gould to Vladimir Nabokov."
Uh, I thought they were just eccentric geniuses.

>  Who needs them, anyway? ]  OR:  "Asperger's kids often memorize
>everything
>there is to know about the oddest things:  deep-fat friers, telephone cable
>insulating companies, exotic species of cicadas."  Deep-fat friers, that IS
>weird; perhaps we could substitute "languages both real and artificial"?
Let's see... In my life, I've had an unusual obsession with:
1) flags of the world
2) street names
3) language phonologies
4) scripts/alphabets
5) state and national capitals
6) golf clubs
7) music theory
8) Frank Zappa
9) Metallica (before 1992)
10) Elton John
11) Beethoven
12) current events
13) political parties
14) Catholic dogma
15) the Bible
16) the Qur'an
17) The Book of Mormon
18) races and ethnic groups
19) first names
20) Jim Carrey
21) Drew Carey
22) game shows
23) supermodels
24) Pentium chip models
25) family trees
26) weddings
27) funerals
28) law
29) criminal justice
30) mental disorders (duh)
31) medications
32) vitamins and minerals
33) breakfast cereals
34) flavors of ice cream
35) pizza toppings
36) Ireland
37) India
38) Egypt
39) Russia and her Republics
40) Australia
41) Greece
42) Turkey
43) Korea
44) the Caucasus
45) Iran (see below)
46) my ex-fiancée from Iran
47) the girl from high school I've been in love with since 1988 but I was
too much of a wimp to ever ask out
48) lists like this
49) phone numbers
50) alphabetizing things
51) the areas covered by the first three digits of American Zip codes
52) meteorology
53) numerology (especially the number 117)
54) microtonal scales
55) deaths of famous people
56) wondering if I left anything out of this list.

So that has to mean something...

>Apparently the good people in pharmacology are looking for a remedy.  Just
>what this poor world needs, a pill to suppress intelligence.
Yup.  A chemical lobotomy.  I was put on a psychiatric medication in late
1996 that made me very sick.  After I was taken off of it -- weeks too late
-- my mind has been fuzzy and my memory is pretty awful; I've also had a few
seizures and delusional episodes.

Well I better run; Jesus wants me to help the Green Party win some seats in
Congress.

Daniel A. Wier  ¶¦¬þ
Lufkin, Texas USA
http://communities.msn.com/DannysDoubleWideontheWeb
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com