There’s an odd little interplay that results when I go out somewhere.  If we’re going to a social situation where we’ll be expected to converse with people I don’t know, then I’ll get nervous and want to leave.  If, however, we’ll be packed in somewhere with a bunch of strangers who we aren’t expected to talk to but whom we have to put up with while waiting in line or while going from point A to point B, then I tend to be fine.  I call it social anxiety versus crowd patience.

When it comes to conversing with people, I have very little patience.  This has nothing to do with the people I’m talking to, mind you.  It’s just that talking to people makes me nervous.  I have to remember their name, past conversations we might have had, talk about topics I may or may not have an interest in, and keep in mind all of the social rules that come naturally to those who don’t lie on the autistic spectrum.  I might be sitting there talking, but mentally I’ve bolted for the door and am halfway down the stairs.

(Side note: I’m constantly amazed how B can recall conversations months or years later.  In general, I have a very short conversation-memory. Who I talk to about what tends to fade quickly most times.)

However, crowds don’t seem to present much of a problem to me.  This is actually quite odd as people with Asperger’s can find crowds an overwhelming sensory experience.  However, while there might be chaos all around me, I can usually filter it out and hyper-focus in on what I’m doing at the moment.  I just regard people as moving obstacles to avoid when walking or to wait behind if on line.  Social expectations are low.  So long as I don’t cut in front of anybody or knock anyone over, I’m fine.  I don’t need to know the name or interests of the person in front of me.  It’s perfectly fine for me to retreat into my own head and ignore everyone walking around me.

All my "crowd patience" goes out the window if the crowd is a party, however. Parties aren’t about impersonally navigating past people to get to a destination. They are social events and all of those conversational social rules apply. Furthermore, I can’t just treat the people around me as if they were faceless obstacles. Anyone near me is a potential conversation. The entire situation quickly moves from uncomfortable to overwhelming.

This doesn’t mean I *WANT* to leave, mind you.  In fact, I often *WANT* to join in but the more I join in, the more uncomfortable I feel until I *NEED* to leave.

The give-and-take between my social anxiety and crowd patience can make outings quite "interesting."  Will the activity tend towards the impersonal crowds enough that I will be able to put up with it?  Or will it be social enough that I’ll begin to get nervous?  Add in NHL’s social/sensory concerns and anxiety and it’s no wonder why our social calendar can be tough to manage.

NOTE: The crowd image above is by ainlondon and is available via MorgueFile.com.

While watching the horror that took place in Boston, a few things struck me.  First of all, one evil person can do a lot of damage in a short period of time.  With one act, they can end some lives and seriously injure many more people.  They can cause property damage on a large scale and inspire terror in many folks’ hearts.

In addition, while good people can help, they for the most part can’t do so with the same speed and reach as the evil people.

At first, I felt discouraged, but then I realized something.  Good people might not have scale or speed, but they have numbers.  When you see the video of the bombing, there are many people running towards the carnage to help the injured.  Police, fire fighters, and medical workers rushed in despite the fact that they could have easily been walking right into the range of another explosion.  They did this to help as many people as possible.

It wasn’t just the first responders, either. Plenty of ordinary people helped out in any way they could. I’ve heard reports of people living in the area bringing out blankets and lending the use of their bathrooms and phones.  In the days to come, I’m sure we’ll hear many more stories of good deeds being done in the midst of this tragedy.  Even if each of these deeds was small, they add up quickly.

There is a reason that events like the Boston Marathon bombing are so shocking.  It is because our nature is not to be cruel.  Our nature is not to cause harm to people.  It is to help and heal.  Evil is only an exception to this rule.  Evil might be able to make a big impact every so often, but as long as good people keep performing acts of kindness, evil won’t be able to tip the scales in its’ favor.

My prayers go out to those affected by this tragedy.  In honor of the wounded and in memory of those killed, please go do some good deeds.  Let’s tip those scales.

NOTE: The images used in this post were created by combining two images available from OpenClipArt.org: Scales of Justice by johnny_automatic and Stone by Angelo_Gemmi.

I’m a fraud… a total fraud.

Ok, not really.  However, there are times when I feel this way.

I’ll be at work planning out a web application and suddenly I’ll feel a wave of anxiety.  A voice inside my head will start telling me that I’m not really good at this stuff.  After all, the voice says, there are people much better at web development than I am.  Therefore, the voice concludes, I must be a total fraud who will be found out and fired soon.

The truth of the matter is that the voice is right in a small way.  There are people whose web development skill dwarfs my own.  However, that’s true of any pursuit.  No matter what you choose to do, there will be someone better at it than you are.  Very few people can point at an accomplishment and say "Nobody is better at this than I am."

The voice takes this grain of truth and skews it… spins it until it is proof positive that my web development skill is zero because others surpass me.  All of the websites I’ve coded, the applications I’ve written?  They’re dismissed by the voice as no proof whatsoever.  It must have been luck that enabled me to do all that but one day my luck will run out and I’ll crash and burn.

The voice isn’t just limited to my vocation, but to my parenting skills.  It will tell me that I’m not good enough to parent my boys.  I lose my temper too much.  I don’t know how to handle certain circumstances well enough.  I rely on my wife for things that I should know how to do myself.

Again, there’s a grain of truth in this.  I do lose my temper more than I’d like to.  This mainly takes the form of my Asperger’s butting heads with my NHL’s Asperger’s.  Working on controlling this is one of my biggest parenting challenges.  I also can be clueless when it comes to handling some circumstances such as navigating school politics.  Finally, I do rely on my wife for a lot, but this is true of any marriage.  Marriage should be a partnership.  Show me a marriage where one spouse does everything and the other does nothing and I’ll show you a marriage that is doomed.  Besides, my wife has some strengths in areas where I am weaker and vice versa.  Each of us supports the other so that together we are stronger than we would be individually.

Thanks to a pair of humorous tweets by @muskrat_john (of Apples To Apples and Munchkins fame), I now know that this feeling has a name: Imposter Syndrome.

Most days, I’ll push the voice out of my head easily, but other days it is tougher.  I’m pretty used to it by now.  I’ve battled this for decades and it likely won’t stop anytime soon.  I’ve just got to keep my accomplishments in mind and know that I didn’t stumble upon where I am today.  I worked hard, made mistakes, learned from them, and gained much knowledge along the way. 

Have you ever had to battle feeling like an impostor in your own life?

A few days ago, NHL lamented about how rough his life was because I was sending him to bed without him having dessert.  (Dessert isn’t an "every night" proposition in our house, but the kids keep lobbying for it to be a required part of dinner.)  This "hard knock life" moment was contrasted with a program we attended at the New York State Museum.  During the various components of this program, NHL got to see just what immigrants (especially Jewish immigrants) who came to America in the early 1900′s had to deal with.

Driven Far From Home

We started out with viewing the opening scenes from American Tail.  The Mousekewitz family is celebrating Chanukah when a gang of cats (belonging to the Cossacks) raids their village.  Their home is burned to the ground, but luckily they survive.  This was actually a pretty good portrayal of the real happenings in Russia at the time.  Jewish villages would be raided and Jews would, at best, lose much of their meager belongings.  At worst, they could lose their lives or the lives of their loved ones.  The situation was horrible with no chance of improving, so they left everything they knew behind to head to America.

I spoke with NHL about this and asked him to imagine being in that situation.  I told him to pretend that we were leaving and he could bring one item with him.  Maybe a stuffed toy, maybe a book, but only one.  He said that he didn’t know what he would choose, realizing what a horrible decision it would be for a child to have to make.

Sea Sick and Worse

After a long trek to a port, the fleeing refugees would be packed on a ship.  And I do mean packed.  The ship’s owner was earning profits based on how many people were stuffed onto a boat.  The more on board, the more money he made.  Whether these people had enough room to move around (they didn’t), had room enough to sleep (they didn’t), or had enough food (which they had to bring with them) didn’t matter.  What mattered was putting a few more paying customers on the boat so that the boat’s owner would get more money.

The trip would take months.  Kids, cooped up below decks on the ship, would go stir crazy.  I’ve parented kids who went stir-crazy after a few too many days stuck indoors due to bad weather.  That was tough.  But in my case, my kids had adequate food, facilities, toys, etc.  The kids-stuck-on-an-overcrowded-boat-for-months-with-nothing-to-do level of stir-crazy strikes any parent with sheer terror.

Speaking of adequate facilities: At one point, the presenter described the "facilities" on the boat.  You would get a bucket which you did your business in.  As she said this, I noticed two girls at the far end of our group.  Their faces showed overwhelming disgust at the thought of this situation.  Of course, once the presenter mentioned how you would then be responsible for dumping your "business" overboard and washing out the bucket for the next person, the girls looked like they would be sick right then and there.

Destination Reached… Or Was It?

Once the weary travellers arrived in America, they would be processed at Ellis Island.  Many would get through, but sometimes individuals would be identified as being ill.  (After all, crowded boat + "no facilities" + no medical care + long trip equals illnesses running rampant.)  If you were marked at sick, you would be put on a boat back home.  It didn’t matter if your entire family had gone through already.  Children would be sent home by themselves while their parents would be let through.

Tough Life In The New World

If the travellers were admitted into America, they didn’t face "streets paved with gold."  Instead, they would get to share a tiny apartment with 6 other people.  Four of those apartments would share a single bathroom.  There would also be a language barrier (which one presenter simulated by speaking to us for over five minutes in fluent Hebrew while we looked puzzled).

Perhaps the worst, though, was the presenter who described the working situation.  Children as young as 9 would work long days – 6am to 10pm.  They would earn five dollars a week, if they were lucky, but would also often have their pay docked for such things as renting the chair they sat in, paying for the thread they used in their job to sew garments, and taking too long going to the bathroom.

This presentation led to NHL and me talking about how he would feel about being forced to work like this.  NHL is a big early bird, frequently waking up at 5:30am, but were we living in this time, he would need to wake up as much as an hour earlier.  In addition, while he goes to sleep at 8pm now, were he working like the immigrants did, he wouldn’t get to sleep until after 11pm.

Reevaluating The Hard Life

After this presentation, NHL not only came away having learned about a big part of our history.  Perhaps even better, he left with a renewed appreciation for his own life.  He gets to sleep in a comfortable bed, the extent of his "work" is homework for school, has toys to play with, and has plenty of room to move around and play.  His life is infinitely better than that of our immigrant ancestors.  Of course, were it not for them leaving everything they’ve ever known behind and braving unimaginable hurdles, our lives would not be as good as they are.

Yesterday, I went to work feeling completely naked.  No, I didn’t somehow neglect to clothe myself.  (I’m not *THAT* forgetful.)  Instead, I went out without something very important to me.  My watch.

I feel completely naked without my watch.  Sure, I could get my time from my phone, computer, car, cable box, or any of the other dozen clocks that litter my field of vision.  Still, glancing at my wrist is a force of habit ingrained over the years.

Unfortunately, the battery in my watch is dying.  This means that watch keeps running slow.  Even if I reset the time, it quickly falls behind.  The only thing worse than no watch at all is a watch whose time you can’t trust.  Until I get it fixed, the watch is staying off my wrist.

What items (beyond "clothing") do you feel naked without?