THANKS!

[Tom Mazanec]

During my long years of unemployment/underemployment, my father's illness and death, and going out on my own, it was my family which kept me sane.
Anybody else want a special card?

[Narnian]

It looks just like you! A regular Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

Sounds like you've held up under some tough times. Glad to see you're here.

[Tom Mazanec]

It turned out even better than I imagined! The smile, the feet, the posture...it is just a masterpiece!
I work at a group home. I told my boss (in an interview for our newsletter) that if it hadn't been for my family, I would be a resident, not a staff member. I was not putting her on. I have Asperger's, and such people do end up in group homes (we were considering one, but something came up). My nickname in school was "The Retard"...and my IQ is about 130. We Aspies (we actually call ourselves that...an ironic nickname for a "mongoose") have a heavy cross to bear.

[Doink]

I'm an Aspie too. I'm shackled with social groups at school, with people who are much worse off than me, in my opinion. My parents have been incredibly supportive and I really understand where you're coming from. Good luck!

[Ann Vole]

I am suspecting I might have Asperger's based on internet "tests" so I might have to get a profesional assesment. I am doing a rent to own on a multi-suite house and all of my tenents so far have some sort of mental abnormality. My latest one is spending some time in the mental health ward at the hospital. This makes me think that everyone's brains are not normal therefore I can consider myself as normal because, like everyone else, my brain has abnormalities. Due to my learning disablilities, I was often placed in special classes but when they tested my intelligence at one school, I was off the high end of the IQ chart so they failed me and punished me often because they figured my problem was a bad attitude. My mom almost sued the school for this sort of stupidity and fought hard to get a proper assesment of me. Family can be wonderful.

[The JAM]

I just have a mild case of dysgraphia, though I have a high IQ I had a LOT or problems early on in school (#29 out of 30 students, and that #30 had Down's Syndrome)

[T.s.a.o]

oooh a blurt your problems for no reason thread!
well it didn't start this way, I really wish I could add something good to it, but I'll wait for Fappa's day(Father's/Papa's day. Because I love him for being a Teacher and a Parent ).

[Nick012000]

...

There's a lot of us Aspies on this board.

[Sehvekah]

There's a disporporinate number of them on the internet. Even moreso within and around the furry fandom. Not trying to be a jackass here, it's just that it's becoming a cliche(hell, if I'm noticing that it's becoming a cliche, odds are it allready is one).

[T.s.a.o]

what is an apsie? is being one a bad thing?

[EdBecerra]

what is an apsie? is being one a bad thing?

Short for having "Asperger syndrome", a milder form of autism. In short, all the silly little rules of the game called "acceptable social behavior" confuse someone with this syndrome. Civilization doesn't make sense to them.

In very broad terms, individuals with Asperger's have normal or above average intellectual capacity, and atypical or poorly developed social skills, often with emotional/social development or integration happening later than usual as a result.

You can learn more about it here at the Wikipedia entry:

http://tinyurl.com/32jkn

[T.s.a.o]

wow that is the first time someone was able to detect I had Aspergers Sybndrome before, actually my father said I have ADD more, but some sides of this do take a toll in my actual socical behavior (meaning, I don't have any socical behavior anyways so whatever they call it dosen't matter to me).

[StrangeWulf13]

In very broad terms, individuals with Asperger's have normal or above average intellectual capacity, and atypical or poorly developed social skills, often with emotional/social development or integration happening later than usual as a result.

So, in other words, they're nerds and geeks? Sorry, but I'm a bit skeptical of the whole thing. I'm convinced that the shrinks are obsessed with cataloguing every little odd bit of the human psyche... and then labelling each one a syndrome that can be treated with medication and/or therapy.

In other words, I was diagnosed with Asperger's. But I'm convinced it's a load of crap. I can't say there's nothing wrong with me; Bible points out that there's plenty wrong.

But I've given up on the advice of shrinks and doctors. I've recently begun to feel they've led me wrong, and I won't heed them unless I feel it necessary.

I will not depend on drugs or someone with a doctorate for my happiness. I'll depend on friends and family. It got my ancestors through hard times. So why shouldn't it work for me?

[Ann Vole]

There's a disporporinate number of them on the internet. Even moreso within and around the furry fandom.

No real surprise there... when people have problems with social interactions in a physically personal basis, having a computer or a fur suit or a hand puppet inbetween them and the outside world makes things much easier.

In very broad terms, individuals with Asperger's have normal or above average intellectual capacity, and atypical or poorly developed social skills, often with emotional/social development or integration happening later than usual as a result.

So, in other words, they're nerds and geeks? Sorry, but I'm a bit skeptical of the whole thing. I'm convinced that the shrinks are obsessed with cataloguing every little odd bit of the human psyche... and then labelling each one a syndrome that can be treated with medication and/or therapy
...
But I've given up on the advice of shrinks and doctors. I've recently begun to feel they've led me wrong, and I won't heed them unless I feel it necessary.

Asperger's = geek? no but maybe a higher chance for both "conditions" to occur. There is lots of money to be made on medications and especially for the vague area of mental disorders. Most of them are purely chemical imbalences that can be cured with vitamins and minerals but you cannot patent those. I always seem to know far more about all the possible conditions I might have then the doctors and it is then a battle to gett hem to test for such. So far I have found several problem/solutions and they have all been vitamin or mineral levels (both too high and too low). For all those aspergers people out there, all those other meds have 30-60 percent sucess rates and the dozens of double-blind tests with high doses of B6 (and the minerals that are depleated from high doses of B6) show 80-90 percent success rate. Mineral level tests must be done regualrily though so do it with doctor assistance. The same thing can be said for several other brain disorders (increase in some sort of vitamin or mineral, usually a B vitamin, has high levels of success rate at showing improvement). Many of the newer perscription drugs are really similar molecules to the vitamins that help and made different purely so the new molecule can be patented and marketed. Doctors in my area (Canada) are paid by how many people the visit and how often. Actually curing you will not help them at all so there is no use going to them until you have a good idea what you might have. I have been "diagnosed" as having just about every condition in the book but others say "no its not that"... they really do not have a clue.

Eat healthy, take your vitamins and develop a digital social life.

[T.s.a.o]

I'm not a geek, but I do believe that people with either ADD or Aspergers have a higher chance of 'Renessaisce Men,' and become extremely prodiguous in several areas. My math teacher saidthat people like Issac Newton and DaVinci both have weird biographies, it's possible that there was a boom of Aspergers and ADD individuals during the Rennessiance peroid.
I heard that SecondLife, a new 3D community, has an 'Island' for Aspergers people. I don't know if SecondLife is the right title, but it may be worth checking out....

[EdBecerra]

I'm not a geek, but I do believe that people with either ADD or Aspergers have a higher chance of 'Renessaisce Men,' and become extremely prodiguous in several areas. My math teacher saidthat people like Issac Newton and DaVinci both have weird biographies, it's possible that there was a boom of Aspergers and ADD individuals during the Rennessiance peroid.

I look at it as if the brain is an engine with a certain amount of horsepower. If you're NOT using the horsepower to figure out and play the game called "human social customs", then that horsepower is available for OTHER uses - painting, writing, sculpting, math...

You get the idea.

[T.s.a.o]

then maybe I could go arrogant/shonen-style and say I have the horsepower to do Both. Well, not really.....

[StrangeWulf13]

Actually, Ralph had a theory that was similar to that. He thought maybe those who were geeks in high school were simply working towards their academic future, and didn't have the time (or the need) to play all the social games to win popularity. On the other hand, the popular kids who didn't get very good grades possibly spent all their mental effort on attaining social status. If this is so, then a great many people in public school are wasting their mental energies on becoming prom king or queen, when they could be preparing for college or a high-level job.

'Course, then there's always those "fluke" kids... Y'know, Mr. or Mrs. Perfect who can achieve high grades and are incredibly popular. The ones you want to slather in steak sauce and leave them in the woods to find...

Did I say that out loud? *coughs* ...........

*runs and hides*

[EdBecerra]

'Course, then there's always those "fluke" kids... Y'know, Mr. or Mrs. Perfect who can achieve high grades and are incredibly popular. The ones you want to slather in steak sauce and leave them in the woods to find...

Did I say that out loud? *coughs* ...........

*runs and hides*

I'm old fashioned - I prefer wrapping them in wet rawhide and leaving them in the middle of a desert at dawn...

[RHJunior]

It's not MY theory, actually, it's been posited by several other highly observant people.

It breaks down like this:

First off, the modern public school system--- also known as the PRUSSIAN school system-- is not built to create a fully educated, self sufficient and mature populace. It's designed to create a <I>functionally literate</i> one.... in short, to produce interchangeable cogs with just enough education to fill their role as productive factory laborers....with an elite few put on "the fast track" to be leaders and rulers. (these are, in fact, the stated goals of the inventor of the system!) Everything, from the drabness of the buildings, the arbitrary nature of the room-to-room shuffling and period-bell system to the ingest-and-regurgitate curriculum, is designed toward those ends as a form of chronic conditioning. Even Kindergarten--- which was specifically instituted to, and I quote, "remove the child from the interfering influence of the parents at as early an age as possible." (Of note, this was bad enough when the material to be learned was worth a spit in the wind. The problem amplified a thousandfold when the hippy leftists, poster children for Useless People, got in charge and turned the curriculum into "advanced political correctness studies.")
http://www.utmost-way.com/wtdwytk1.htm
http://www.educationreformbooks.net/
http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/press/cooper1.asp
http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/200 ... 00gatt.htm
http://www.thomhartmann.com/realschool.shtml
http://www.sntp.net/education/school_state_3.htm
http://www.schoolreport.com/schoolrepor ... m_7_96.htm

One of the side-effects of this dreary, arbitrary, and soul numbing environment is that it produces... well, consider. You have a population of unwilling individuals effectively trapped together in a closed environment for a large majority of their waking hours, overseen by a bare handful of largely disinterested keepers, forced into performing dull, repetitive, meaningless, and (absent any social context) nonproductive tasks, and otherwise left entirely to their own devices and more or less expected to maintain order among themselves.

In short, you have the same social structure as a typical prison.

In this sort of environment, with the above general listed conditions, absent any meaningful social framework, the "inmates" will automatically begin forming both cliques and a heirarchy... and position in those cliques and heirarchy will be based on (to an outside viewer) the most arbitrary and trivial measures... in short, your position of power is determined by your POPULARITY, and your popularity is determined by some of the most arbitrary and arcane sets of rules imaginable. Clothing. Music. Makeup. How you walk, how you talk, how you look, how you comb your hair, who you talk WITH....

This isn't just limited to schools. Sociologists have observed it in ANY environment where you have a concentrated population seperated (by walls or by cultural norms) from society and left to their own devices--- with no meaningful context to evaluate themselves. Among celebrities, for instance, or in a previous century among the high society ladies of the well-to-do.

This brings us to the nerds.

In any environment like this, the social rules are incredibly subtle, arcane, and volatile. Those at the bottom of the social ladder are those who cannot or simply do not follow the rules. In some cases they cannot--- ADHD, asperger's syndrome, physical, emotional or mental handicap, or even more cruelly simply because they are physically unattractive or too financially disadvantaged to keep up with the ridiculous demands of status-climbing (buying the "right" clothes, music, accessories and toys).
In other cases they simply don't bother, because they don't give a tinker's damn. People who have their eyes focused on the outside of the prison don't tend to get along with the inmates. <I>And smart kids generally have strong interests outside the school.</I>

Ironically, little miss and little mister popular are most likely expending just as much brainpower and energy on maintaining their social position as the average ubergeek spends on science class. In the end, the nerd will have something that lasts past graduation....

Assuming the "educational" system doesn't break him on the way there.