On my Savant Tendencies

 While having autism has caused me no shortage of grief in my life, there is one distinct positive benefit from it. I have savant syndrome, an exceedingly rare variant of autism that is estimated to occur in about 1 in one million people. 

Though it was not known it was part of autism until much later, it was apparent I was exceedingly skilled at math at a very young age. I tested for fifth grade level math in the second grade, for example. In truth, during school it was a wasted talent, mainly due to my poor study skills. I also got in trouble for never showing my work on my homework because I would just do it all in my head. 

In high school, however, being able to do math as quickly as I could proved to be a tremendous boon in Scholar's Bowl competitions. Math questions usually required 30 or 45 seconds; if it was something I knew how to do I only needed 5. In our State Championship win in 2010, I answered two math questions in such fashion, which tied the match for us and set up one of my teammates to nail the championship winning question later in the match. 

Dates and times are also a specialty of mine. I instinctively know obscure time conversions (i.e. the number of minutes in a week) that allows me to make very specific countdowns in my head. I once counted down a new year by the minute from over two months out. A later skill I developed involved calendar dates. As a parlor trick, I started telling people what day of the week their birthday would be on in the coming year. Going a bit further than that, I started being able to tell people what day of the week they were born on, regardless of how far back it goes. 

How do I do this all in my head? With the calendar dates, there is a formula at least, as with the countdowns. But as far as actually doing the calculations in my head, it is hard to describe exactly what happens. It's just something I'm able to do reflexively, like breathing. 

Then we have my memory. My memory stretches so far back I have at least one distinct memory of being in diapers. I remember being in preschool fairly well, specific dates of things I did in kindergarten (I spiked at 105.3 degree fever on Sunday, May 3rd, 1998, for example), and so on. I could tell you the last 25 Super Bowl champions and the losing team, and could probably go back further with some application. I know offhand the last 35 NCAA Men's Basketball champions and rattle off other obscure tournament occurrences. 

I still remember questions from my days in Scholar's Bowl over 12 years ago now. One of those math questions I answered in that State Championship game was calculating the first 10 numbers not divisible by 3. The answer was 75. One particular amusing moment was in January 2009 when I interrupted "This 1964 Disney movie..." and answered it correctly "Mary Poppins". My first question I ever answered in high school occurred in October 2006  and was about the Battle of Shiloh. 

Birthdays, anniversaries, specific events on a given date all come as instinctively to me as breathing. The savant tendencies are an inseparable part of my mind and in a time where my emotions were in delayed development, I saw the world more through numbers than through normal social skills. Even as I approach 30 and my more autistic symptoms become more muted, my savant tendencies remain as strong as ever and I enjoy having it. 

Other aspects of having autism however, are and were less enjoyable. That I will discuss later.    

On How I Learned I Had Autism

 This post is part of a series of stories leading up to my next book 'The Journey Home'. 

I stared at the computer screen. I almost could not believe what I was reading. There, in the midst of the worst time of my life, the whole truth about my life was laid bare. It was in that moment I was forced to admit that I had autism. 

What led to this exact moment? It was a tortuous time in my life when I was out by myself, in the midst of the coldest winter of my life when I was struggling mightily to find purpose in anything at all. I went on one of my patented late night Internet trawls and found an answer to a mystery that had pervaded my entire life: why did I never feel like I belonged?

In 2013, I was in a bad relationship that was putting tremendous strain on my connection with my family. In June of that year, I abruptly told my parents I was moving out in less than a week to live on my then girlfriend's parents' property. My aunt Dana took me out to lunch and tried to make me realize what I was doing to my family by continuing that relationship. 

I don't remember any of that conversation except for one thing: "I wouldn't be surprised if you were on the spectrum."

Dana Olsen holds a Master's in Special Education and works as a teacher working with autistic children. She helped my mother in watching my siblings and I as we grew up as our mother worked her hardest to support us as a single parent. She would have recognized patterns and behaviors from her students that mirrored things I had done in years and decades past. 

I didn't believe her. 

I moved out, broke off that relationship two months later, then spent a long year trying to make it work by myself as a student at the University of Kansas at a dead end job that consumed more of my time than it ought to have, failed a class I shouldn't have, and entered a very dark place in my life. 

In February of 2014, I was going through the motions of a History degree and planning my return back home. Moving out had been a catastrophe, I was single at a time I had grown up thinking I'd be ready to get married, feeling more ashamed of myself than I ever had before, and trying to make sense of it all. Nothing I had planned for myself had come to fruition. So what was left?

I ended up on Wikipedia. I looked up "Autism" on there. In the past, I was aware autism existed but did not have an inkling what was meant by it. For me it was an idle curiosity that I did not know anything about and could not be bothered to learn more. Maybe that idle curiosity was a sign because as I read that page, I was forced into a corner. The behaviors described on that page were the exact same kind of behaviors I had engaged in my entire life. 

The amount of shame I had felt up that point was nothing compared to the horror I felt in that moment. I had always spent my life trying to fit in and could never quite seem to make it work. One particular incident will be reflected on in another post. In that moment, however, I was forced to admit that I was different than those around me and it was something that had been out of my control my entire life. Maybe in happier times I might have dealt with it better. In that moment though, it nearly crushed me.

It took me some time to come to terms with this diagnosis. In the year following my return to Wichita, I got an official diagnosis and worked through a lot of issues related to having autism with a therapist for several months. Still, I did not publicly admit I had autism for a full 14 months after I found out I had it. 

In the seven years since I admitted publicly I have autism, I have not been shy about it. If it comes up, I'll admit to it. After all, even years after the fact there are still things I say and do that would come across as strange to others. But as I'm on the doorstep of turning 30, I find myself not caring as much as I used to about conforming my behavior to fit in better, despite it being much easier to do so now than as I was growing up. 

This story is reflected in my book, The Journey Home. Over the next few weeks before it releases, I'll continuing sharing anecdotes and experiences of my life that have been shaped by having autism.