Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian With Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers (20 page)

Some people would say my whole fascination with gears was weird. They’d say, “Most kids would be interested in riding the bike, not figuring out how its gears work.” Maybe that’s true. But for every hundred people who ride bikes, at least one designer and a few repairers will
surely be needed. And who will they be, if not kids like me?

I ignored the kids who made fun of me and taught myself how bicycles worked. I taught myself to clean and adjust every single part. Each brand was different, but I learned them all. I taught myself how properly adjusted gears feel by placing my hands on the lever and the mechanisms as I pedaled the bikes on my bench top. I have pretty sensitive touch, which allowed me to sense the condition of mechanical things through my hands. And the more I practiced, the better my ability to sense machinery became.

As I turned the pedals on an old bike I’d feel tiny bumps as grains of sand passed through the gears. If I cleaned the chain with an oiled rag, those little bumps would go away. But that wasn’t all—I’d feel little grabs as I pedaled through tight spots, where the chain might not be properly oiled. I could even feel sloppiness when the crank bearings were too loose. I learned to feel every moving part of the bicycle with just a few simple touches. When I adjusted the derailleur mechanism I’d feel carefully to make sure the chain ran perfectly in both the top
and bottom gears. With that ability, I could almost diagnose and adjust bikes blindfolded.

Other kids saw what I could do, and they started asking me to tune up their bikes. Somehow, bikes I adjusted didn’t look any different, but they shifted better and rode smoother. It was a small triumph that gained me a measure of respect at school. I felt good about that, but pride wasn’t all I got for my efforts. They also made me lunch money.

A few years later, I applied my mechanical talents to motorcycles instead of bikes, and had even more success. My friend Juke told me about an old Honda 150 Dream motorbike abandoned in a basement. After buying it for twenty-five dollars I turned it into a smooth-running machine that carried me all over New England. That motorcycle was what allowed me to escape the confines of Amherst High into the real world. As soon as I started riding my machines through the halls of the school, the administrators threw me out.

For the past twenty years, I’ve actually made a career of my love of machines. I founded a company—J E Robison Service—that specializes in difficult service on Land Rovers, Mercedes-Benzes, Rolls-Royces, BMWs, and other fine cars. I chose those makes because they have the best craftsmanship in the world, and they are owned by people who value what they have. It’s turned out to be a good match.

My clients can see my love of their machinery, and they appreciate my talents. It’s a grown-up version of the bicycle
tinkering I did in high school. Cars are a lot more complex than bikes, but my skills have expanded to match. It’s worked out well. My social skills may still be weak, but that’s not what people look for when they bring me a Land Rover to have its rough-running engine repaired. They want craftsmanship, something a person like me can deliver in spades.

“How do you do it?” When I hear those words, I think what people are really asking is, “What do you do to achieve such a great result with my car? How are you different from other mechanics?”

There are several answers. The first is that I work with the machines I do because I have a real affinity for them.

Once I took an interest in them, I made it my business to know all things Rover. I took them apart and put them back together until I figured out how they worked. Today, I work around Land Rovers during the day. I write articles for Land Rover enthusiast magazines. I get in my Range Rover to drive home, and on the weekend my friend Dave and I pile into our Land Rover Defenders for some serious off-road driving. So I am immersed in the machinery that surrounds me.

There is a sharp contrast between people like me and mechanics who are just in the trade for money. They go to work at the Cadillac dealer, then climb into a Subaru when it’s time to go. They don’t “live” Cadillac. They don’t immerse themselves in the machines like I do. My job is my love; his is a living.

The next component to my success is practice. The saying “Practice makes perfect” does hold true. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of Land Rovers, and I’ve handled every bit of every model. Cars are like people—they evolve and change with time. Every year there are new models and little changes, and I spend the time to stay current. Even existing Rovers change as owners fix and modify them. I know how Land Rovers feel, how they fail, and what to do to make each one sing. There is really no substitute for practice and the long easy familiarity that comes from it.

The first two components of my success are within reach of anyone, Aspergian or nypical. The next secrets to my success are ways in which my Asperger’s sets me apart and gives me key competitive advantages.

Like many with Asperger’s, I have an extraordinary power of concentration. I can look into a mechanical system until it becomes my whole world. That hyperfocused concentration is a key to really understanding what’s going on at an elemental level. It’s an ability I used to take for granted—I assumed everyone could do it. Today I know it’s a rare gift. People ridiculed me for being in my own world as a kid, but no one ridicules me as a grown-up tuning an antique engine.

My unusual concentration is buttressed by knowledge, and that in turn comes from what psychologists call the “special interests.” As a kid, I was teased because when I got interested in something I talked about that topic, about trains or bugs or whatever else, until everyone around me was bored to tears. As a child, my thirst for knowledge about a few specific topics may have seemed strange. (And I’m sure my rants annoyed people around me.) But as an adult, that drive for knowledge helped me become an expert. Sure, I may go on and on about Land Rovers until you are about to scream from boredom, but isn’t that the kind of person you’d choose to make your old Rover better than new?

And when I do make an adjustment or a repair to your car, it’s done right or not at all. Sometimes I know it’s perfect right away; other times I tinker and tinker and then go back to check it ten more times. It’s just how I am. Before I learned about Asperger’s, I just figured I was a fussy sort of guy. Now I know I can thank my Asperger’s for my need to know everything possible about something, and to do my work as perfectly as I can. Just like stacking blocks back on the playground.

——

I sure wish I could have seen my future when people called me names as a kid. And it wasn’t just the other kids—even teachers made fun of my focus and interests. It’s ironic how that works. Even today, psychologists say special interests and extreme focus are abnormal in a teenager. But if the person is twenty-five, the same shrinks call him an expert. That’s what happened to me.

The world really does get better for Aspergians, and indeed for all sorts of geeks and misfits, as we grow up.

W
hen I look back at the stories in this book, a few key insights come into focus. These are the highlights of what I have discovered while struggling as an Aspergian throughout my life, albeit unknowingly for the first forty years. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my experiences, and that you’ve learned some helpful tricks, hints, and techniques that you can apply to your own life. Here’s what I suggest.

The first secret is that you must figure out what you’re good at and stick with it. In school a lot of emphasis is put on identifying your weaknesses and then improving them. That’s important if your weaknesses are holding you back, but it’s not the path to greatness. Greatness happens when you find your unique strengths and build upon them. Building up a weakness just makes you less disabled.
Building a strength can take you to the top of the world. Where would you rather be? When you discover a unique ability, there’s no limit to what you can achieve.

I credit the adults in my life and the environment where I grew up with helping me find what I loved and excelled at. My parents’ gift of a computer kit started me on electronics. My mother’s uncle Bill and his tool kit introduced me to the world of machines when he helped me take apart my pedal car. My grandfather Jack bought me a Fender Showman amplifier and a bass guitar to start me off in music. Once grown-ups gave me a start I moved ahead on my own, but it all began with them.

Environment played a big part once I got moving. Since I lived in a college town there were really great resources at my disposal. I found well-stocked labs at the university and helpful faculty and grad students. My father taught philosophy there, so all its doors were open to me. To some extent the Internet makes knowledge available anywhere for today’s kids, but there’s no doubt that my location was a factor in my success, and that your location still matters today. There’s a big difference between reading about something online and actually handling it in a university lab.

Every kid has areas of strength, and it’s the job of grown-ups to help those kids find their unique strengths and then encourage them to develop them. Once I had my interests nailed down, I spent countless hours studying and practicing until I knew them cold. There were
periods when I immersed myself in electronics and cars ten or more hours a day, seven days a week. There is just no substitute for that kind of concentrated practice.

I was very lucky to pick interests at fourteen that would last me a lifetime. Teens who know what they love and pursue it with single-minded determination have an undeniable advantage. If you look at the superstars in any field, you’ll find people who took up their life’s work as young adults. My friend Ron Feldman, for example, was the Boston Symphony’s youngest cellist at nineteen. Bill Gates has written about immersing himself in computer programming as a teenager, which led to the formation of Microsoft a few years later.

When someone grows up to be successful, people are quick to say, “He just has an ability I haven’t got!” But it’s more likely that he found his area of interest and invested in it at a very young age. It’s focus and hard work that truly bring success.

Right from the beginning I found people who appreciated my abilities and were willing to pay for them. You couldn’t miss my special interests, because I seldom talked about anything else. For example, anyone could see my love of cars, and love of fine machinery. With all my enthusiasm, it’s no surprise that folks would enlist me to fix
their cars when I got older. My love of music and electronics was obvious, too, and that led to jobs working on sound equipment for local bands.

In both cases, my special interests were visible enough that opportunity came my way with relatively little effort on my part. One successful job led to another, and I took on more and more complex projects as my confidence and ability blossomed. Once I recognized that pattern I was able to continue seeking opportunities to earn a living doing what I loved. If my social skills had been better I might have progressed further and faster, but I still did pretty well with what I had.

Many people seem to go through life with the opposite perspective. They don’t find their special interests, or ways to apply them. They reach the end of school with the question
What do I want to do?
unanswered. They pick a major in college, or select a trade, based on some arbitrary factors, like an uncle in the business or a magazine article or a recruiter who promised fame and fortune at his company. They lack a focus—a purpose—to their life. That’s a problem I have never had.

Aspergian focus helped me become successful by allowing me to concentrate on my interests to the exclusion of all else. The tricky part was choosing productive things as my targets. If Apspergians can do that, there is really no limit to what we can do. My exceptional focus kept
me on track, and my Aspergian brain helped me soak up new knowledge at a rate few nypical competitors could match.

Teenagers have a lot of time on their hands. It may not seem that way at age fifteen, but when you look back from the perspective of fifty, it’s obvious. I had limitless energy when I was young. I’d get focused on something and stay at it till two in the morning, then get up at six and start all over again. Without really trying, I used that time to become a world-class expert in a few areas. And it’s those areas of expertise that catapulted me to such success in my early adult years.

There is no substitute for hours and hours of practice. Music teachers say that about practicing the tuba or the bassoon, but it’s true for anything. Whatever you want to be—an auto mechanic, an engineer, even a tracker of wild animals—you can’t truly be an expert without putting in the hours. Asperger’s can help you with focus and concentration, but we all have to put in our time.

Resolve is another secret to my success. I’d like to paint this in a noble light, but a lot of my resolve is probably just common pigheadedness combined with Aspergian obliviousness. When I was young I would decide I wanted to do something, and more experienced older people would laugh and say, “You can’t do that!” However, my Asperger’s made me blind to their skepticism, which might have
discouraged a nypical kid. So I went ahead, and many times, I succeeded.

Sometimes being oblivious of the skepticism and ridicule of others can be an advantage. When you combine that with my Aspergian way of solving problems, it can lead to some pretty striking accomplishments. And my focus keeps me going, even when it looks like I’m about to fail. I can stay the course, try again, and ultimately succeed—all because I’m too stubborn to do anything else.

Finally, I worked hard. And you can, too. Work those gifts for all they’re worth.