It wasn't as though I hadn't heard of Autism back then.It's just...well..the criteria for diagnosis was different in the late fifties and early 60's. .My mom worked as a part -time registered nurse a few nights a week during a time when most women worked at home as "housewives." Though she was a shy woman, she ocassionaly attended the numerous "coffee parties" in the neighborhood.
As the other mothers' did with their children, she would drag me and my siblings along, where we would be relegated to the basement where the girls would cut out paper dolls and the boys would play "Army" or "Cowboys and Indians." The highlight was drinking red Kool-Aid from frosty, happy-faced Kool-Aid mugs.
I always looked forward to these parties because even as young as four years old, I was acutely aware that I was different than the other kids, and that they knew it too.For me, each party was an opportunity to figure out what "dumb things" I was doing that caused the other children to so cruelly exclude me. It was always going to be better "next time," except it never was.It was never long before all the children,both boys and girls, would proclaim and then chant that I had "cooties" and I was ordered to leave the group lest my nastiness, my "cooties" were to jump on them.
That is how I always wound up curled in a ball at the top of the basement stairs, the door opened just a crack,while I listened in on the conversations of the women drinking coffee and gossiping at the formica table in the kitchen of the home of which ever woman was hosting the party. That is where I heard the "grown-up" stories about the divorcee' down the block who was "up to no good" with her tight little capri pants and her "kitten heels." This is where I would also learn about the "mongoloid child'[ now known as "Downs Syndrome"] and his mother, and someone would mention that maybe "next time" the woman and her child would be invited so that the mother, "the poor dear" would get a break from her "miserable yet 'terribly blessed" life." After a bit of debating, it was always decided that it probably wouldn't be a good idea [ even at four I was aware of the hypocrisy in their decision, but I also wondered if the child in question had "cooties," just like me ]
That is when the room would get quiet as my mother would share that as a nurse she knew about a horrible disease that was much worse than being a "mongoloid," or especially the mother of one. It would be much worse, infinitely worse to be cursed with a child with autism because those children had NO SOUL.Like zombies.
I would think about the zombie movies that would sometimes be shown after "Looney Tunes" on "Cartoon Day," [Saturday] and picture zombie children, dripping with seaweed as they walked out from the ocean, their eyes black holes, the bags underneath them even darker. Decaying flesh would fall in strips from their wet, rag covered bodies and as they moaned in anguished soullessness, they relentlessly approached their victim, falling on her when she tripped and fell on the sand in exhaustion.
So, in retrospect, it was actually a good thing that I had no clue for half a century that I was Autistic. To know that I was without a soul and damned for all time...yeah...definitely worse than "Cooties,"
As the other mothers' did with their children, she would drag me and my siblings along, where we would be relegated to the basement where the girls would cut out paper dolls and the boys would play "Army" or "Cowboys and Indians." The highlight was drinking red Kool-Aid from frosty, happy-faced Kool-Aid mugs.
I always looked forward to these parties because even as young as four years old, I was acutely aware that I was different than the other kids, and that they knew it too.For me, each party was an opportunity to figure out what "dumb things" I was doing that caused the other children to so cruelly exclude me. It was always going to be better "next time," except it never was.It was never long before all the children,both boys and girls, would proclaim and then chant that I had "cooties" and I was ordered to leave the group lest my nastiness, my "cooties" were to jump on them.
That is how I always wound up curled in a ball at the top of the basement stairs, the door opened just a crack,while I listened in on the conversations of the women drinking coffee and gossiping at the formica table in the kitchen of the home of which ever woman was hosting the party. That is where I heard the "grown-up" stories about the divorcee' down the block who was "up to no good" with her tight little capri pants and her "kitten heels." This is where I would also learn about the "mongoloid child'[ now known as "Downs Syndrome"] and his mother, and someone would mention that maybe "next time" the woman and her child would be invited so that the mother, "the poor dear" would get a break from her "miserable yet 'terribly blessed" life." After a bit of debating, it was always decided that it probably wouldn't be a good idea [ even at four I was aware of the hypocrisy in their decision, but I also wondered if the child in question had "cooties," just like me ]
That is when the room would get quiet as my mother would share that as a nurse she knew about a horrible disease that was much worse than being a "mongoloid," or especially the mother of one. It would be much worse, infinitely worse to be cursed with a child with autism because those children had NO SOUL.Like zombies.
I would think about the zombie movies that would sometimes be shown after "Looney Tunes" on "Cartoon Day," [Saturday] and picture zombie children, dripping with seaweed as they walked out from the ocean, their eyes black holes, the bags underneath them even darker. Decaying flesh would fall in strips from their wet, rag covered bodies and as they moaned in anguished soullessness, they relentlessly approached their victim, falling on her when she tripped and fell on the sand in exhaustion.
So, in retrospect, it was actually a good thing that I had no clue for half a century that I was Autistic. To know that I was without a soul and damned for all time...yeah...definitely worse than "Cooties,"
