Free Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian With Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers by John Elder Robison

anxious or loving gazes.
    I always knew spoken words meant something, and I always heard what people said. My hearing was excellent. But I also figured out early on that words alone often failed to tell the whole story in social situations. As a teenager, I knew I was missing something important, but what was it?
    Figuring out what you don’t know is very difficult. That’s particularly true if you grow up likeme—with both me and those around me unaware that I perceived the world differently from everyone else.
    Follow me through these stories as I begin to find out what I was missing.

(Not) Reading People
    W hen I was a toddler in my mother’s family home in Cairo, Georgia, my grandmother would pick me up and make faces at me. I didn’t know that lots of grown-ups do that to babies. How could I? One of the fundamental limitations of babyhood is that you have no life experience with which to put other people’s actions into context. So I wasn’t sure what to make of her when she picked me up and stuck her face close to mine. Mostly, she seemed monstrous and large. The faces she made were like a circus clown’s—all exaggerated and weird. I stared back, more puzzled and worried with each strange face she made. Was it funny? Was it dangerous? I could never tell. Finally, she’d had enough. “Why won’t you smile at me? You’re just a mean little boy!” And with that, my grandma Richter plopped me down on my stubby feet and marched away on her own stumpy legs.
    I was not able to fully grasp what had just happened, butI got the message that she didn’t like me very much. I sat back down and returned to my blocks. A little bit sad. A little bit puzzled. Eager to return to the comfort of my imaginary wooden-block world where strange and scary grown-ups did not suddenly appear out of nowhere to pick me up and menace me.
    As I got older, I encountered a steady stream of people who’d make “faces” at me and expect some kind of response. People would approach me with big smiles and a hand held out. Who were they? What did they want? They often looked offended when I just stared, and things really got strange if I turned and ran. Other times, people pretended to be crying. They often made snuffling noises, too. Were they hoping I’d give them candy or something to drink out of sympathy? Were they really upset, or just pretending? A crying kid with a bloody knee made sense. A crying grown-up with no visible damage, who knew what that meant?
    I never knew what to make of people like that, so I just stared. And it almost always ended badly, with accusations like “What’s the matter with you?” or “Don’t you care?” How could I care? I had no idea what was going on!
    I could never discern anything the matter with me. In fact, I never started those exchanges. It was alwaysother people who approached me and made strange faces or gestures, and then criticized me for not doing what they expected. If they planned to criticize me for not responding to them, why didn’t they just leave me alone? There I was, minding my own business, and they came and poked at me and called me names. Sometimes I felt like I was in a cage at the zoo, with nasty people jabbing sharp sticks through the bars.
    I didn’t figure out why my reactions always seemed to be out of sync with what others expected until I began studying Asperger’s and autism later in life.
    Then I learned that we have to go way back, to when we were babies, to find the root of the problem. When a mother smiles at her baby, she may not say anything in words, but her expression sends a powerful message. The baby’s brain sees the smile, and, without any conscious thought, the baby’s brain makes him smile right back. At the same time, his brain tells him to feel happy, because he’s smiling.
    My nursery school teacher used to say the same thing: “If you make a happy face, you’ll feel good. If you make a frown, you’ll be sad.” To my surprise, it’s