The Opposite of Normal - Andrew Boggan (readnow .txt) 📗

make feel like I am going throw up so I can’t even put these foods anywhere near my mouth.

Today when I cook for myself, most of my meals are still very bland. As I am a very routine based person I tend to cook the same foods every day. Usually my diet consists of lamb chops with steamed vegetables – without the potato, chicken stir fry or sausages with vegetables. While I get the regular intake of fresh vegetables, I don’t like the thought of learning to cook other things and I only stick with what I know when it comes to preparing food. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I get bored eating the same foods all the time but by cooking these same foods everyday I know what is going into my system and that’s what is the most important thing to me.

I’ve shared homes with a number of different people and I’ve never really adapted to their cooking. In my last relationship my partner had a real passion for cooking, especially exotic international dishes. One night when I came home from work my partner had cooked up an Indian dish. When the plate was put in front of me my first reaction was “who threw up on this plate”. I watched him dig right into the meal, absorbing every bit flavor in the food while I sat there staring at my plate for 5 minutes. My partner knew that I stuck with very bland meals but I was begged to at least try it. I somehow managed to eat everything on the plate but after several hours later the food didn’t agree with me and I begged my partner to never make another international dish for me again. I was probably so sick from the food because my body wasn’t used to having different spices go through my system. Well it was either that or I had some mild form of food poisoning.

My eating habits have no doubt had a major impact on my life in terms of what foods I eat today, however I want to apologise to my parents if I made them upset when I was younger. I know now it was unnecessary stress that I put them through and for that I am deeply sorry.

In my much younger days, my mum used to babysit her girlfriends 2 daughters while their mother went to work. Her daughter’s name was Lucy and Naomi. I don’t remember when my mum started babysitting the two girls but I do that I formed a very close relationship with Lucy and she was probably one of the very first people in my lifetime that I made a friendship with. There were many days before I started preschool where we would sit on the living room floor watching the morning cartoons or playing with toys in front of the television.

Although I didn’t have my own bedroom, I always shared it with my older brothers; when they were at school I could call the bedroom my own room. I had lots of great toys when I younger like a massive model aero plane collection, huge set of matchbox cars with the streets on a plastic map and of course lego blocks. My matchbox cars and play mats were my favorite toys as a child. It was a game I could always play on my own where I didn’t need anybody to compete with.

One morning Lucy had came in to play with me. She walked in uninvited and began playing with me. Immediately I started kicking and screaming in a huge rage of emotional anger. My mum said she had coming rushing down to the bedroom only to find that I was throwing this around the room while my face was glowing red. Lucy hadn’t done anything wrong to me, but she had invaded my personal space – uninvited.

Perhaps this was the first sign that something was not quite right when it came to my social relationships. I had always seemed to have gotten along with other kids totally okay. I always played with the friends of my other siblings and was close to my cousin who was the same age. Although I was too young to recall, I am pretty sure there would have been more than one occasion when this incident happened. It’s not that I didn’t want to play with Lucy, in fact I remember enjoying having her around, and it was more of the fact that my personal space had been invaded by an uninvited person.

As an adult my personal space is extremely important and those who know me to the bone know very well not to invade that space. It could have also been that this incident was the first sign where I started to learn how important my personal space was. My personal space had always been my own little comfort zone where I could let any level of emotion flow free with repercussions. In any other normal child when they were playing alone, I’m sure if another child joined in the other child would just accept it and they would both continue to play freely but with me it had the opposite effect.

I commenced pre-school in 1987, and we used to always play with toys from what I can recall. Once a week we played pass the parcel and I always watched the other kids rip a sheet of paper off the parcel. One time when we played and the parcel had got to me I started to rip the paper off the parcel because I wanted to have a go. It seemed like everyone else got a chance to rip the paper off the parcel and I wanted to have a go. As soon as I began to unwrap everyone started screaming “no” at me and suddenly everyone was looking at me. The feeling was very embarrassing because at the time I didn’t remember that it was your go to rip the paper from the parcel when the music stopped. Perhaps here when I first started to learn how to socalise on a much larger scale, that the very early signs of Asperger’s syndrome became visible.

From memory, one particular day at pre-school stands out in my mind. During one cold winter’s morning of 1987 all the kids had congregated on the carpet for show and tell. At the end of show and tell I can recall the teacher allowing everyone to have 15 minutes free time where we all had to team up with 3 other kids and pick a toy from the toy box. It had to be one toy per group. Even tho I quite clearly heard the teacher’s instructions, my instincts had taken over and I walked up to the toy box by myself and grabbed a toy all for me. Without making any effort to team up with anybody I sat alone on the mat and played with one toy all by myself. I probably looked like a lonely child but I knew that I was perfectly happy sitting by myself playing with the one toy. However I do recall the teacher coming up to me and asking if I wanted to join the other children, I think I politely declined.

My teachers must have observed changes in my behavior and how I related to the other children in my class. The teachers had become rather concerned with my social interaction skills with the other children and had advised my mother to make an appointment so that the mum and my teacher could sit down and have a chat about my persistent choice to play in isolation. Looking back at these events now, I can honestly say it wasn’t a choice to play in isolation, as a 4 year old you simply do whatever comes natural. If only the medical profession was aware of Asperger’s syndrome at this time during the 1980’s then perhaps my teachers would have been able to implement better techniques to try and get me to socialize with the other children more. At 4 years of age I was doing what naturally came to my mind and little did I know that the adults in my life were beginning to get concerned with my life.

Prior to me, my mother gave birth to three other children. 2 boys and 1 girl. My brothers and my sister were all very sociable and outgoing people. From the time that I was born right up until they all moved out of home, we always had people come over to play with my brothers and my sister. My sister usually had her girlfriends stay over on weekends while my brothers were out the back playing cricket with the other boys from around the neighborhood.

On one beautiful summer’s afternoon I followed my 2 brothers and their friends down to the park which was at the bottom of our street. I can’t remember if I was invited or if I asked to go with them. None the less I followed the older boys down to the bottom of the park. A new slide had been constructed which was bigger and better than the old one and everyone was eager to give it a go. We all raced off down the street, all competing with each other to see who could get to the slide first. I happened to have come last at this race and unfortunately I missed out on getting a chance to have a go on the slide. So I decided to go over to the swings and sit and watch the older boys play on the slide while I sat on the swings until they were ready to go home. I do remember feeling somewhat disappointed, because had I been able to run faster than I would have been noticed by my brother’s friends and I could have joined in on their game; however that was not to be. As I grew up, this was not the last instance where I was forgotten about, I didn’t know it at the time but there were many more times just like this that I would have to face in my life. Because now that I am an adult, my social interaction skills have become somewhat predictable and when I’m faced with social interaction, I can’t help but become the “quite observer” by sitting back and analyzing the crowd around. I’m still trying to work out if that’s through force of habit from my days as a 4 year old or if it’s some sort of protection that I have to mentally and emotionally protect myself from embarrassment.

As time had progressed by through my pre-school and primary schooling, all my teachers through one way or another had some dealings with my parents about my lack of inability to social or choosing to remain isolated from the other kids in my school. My mum had known that things weren’t quite right as my brothers and my sister had been the total opposite of what I am when it came to choosing friends or socializing with other people. Mum had begun to put a lot of blame on herself about these instances and she truly believed that she failed in her part as a mother. I do often wonder if other mums of asperger children feel that they have failed in their role as a parent too, however looking at myself today with the values and beliefs that I presently hold, I can honestly say that there was simply no way that both of my parents had failed in raising me correctly. While it’s true that each child learns to make up their own mind and develop their own true identity, my parents have had