As I was saying there…”Love You Like That” led to Tom Petty led to humming “The Waiting is the Hardest Part” (the Waaaaaiting is the Harrrrr,desttttt Paaaarrrt) led to thinking, what do those lyrics mean? He’s in love. Don’t let it get you down. Take it on faith, take it to the heart. Say what, get you down? Take what on faith? It doesn’t make sense. Just a song, right?
Uh, no! Well, yes, it is a song, and Petty is an awesome master of music and lyric. It’s the making sense part that began to weave and bob in my mind.
A few months ago, weaving and bobbing through my early morning with the usual news show on in the background, I half-heard Jerry Seinfeld being interviewed about some new project. Then the interview turned to something about Seinfeld realizing he may place high on the spectrum– borderline Asperger’s, though I think it now sometimes gets corrupted to also meaning super bright and socially inept. I was like, right, Jerry, we’re all closet geniuses and our sometimes bad behavior in social settings can therefore be excused.
Then, he gave an example of how he came to this realization. He was at a play, and there was a line about a character being the apple of someone’s eye. Seinfeld’s immediate reaction was that’s not possible to be the apple of someone’s eye, you can’t have an apple in an eye, what is that?
Funny, right? But not funny, this is serious. And I was now paying attention, because I totally got what he was saying. His initial reaction was overridden by reasoning, understanding it is just. a. metaphor. But led him to think about similar situations where he was not quite on board with language and other stuff. And this kind of thing– inability to deal with abstract uses of language– can be a tag of high-spectrum individuals.
Why am I writing about this, I am not even much of a Seinfeld fan. Here is the thing. I have a vivid memory of a children’s story from when I was very young– for some reason I associate it with when I had mumps and chicken pox simultaneously– can you imagine– so I would have been about five. It was the story of a little girl whose mother brings her to the doctor, she seems tired and looks pale I think was the reason. The doctor says, no worry, little girl, you just should go to bed an hour earlier every night, you’ll be good as new.
The little girl goes to bed an hour earlier every night. Night one she backs it up from, 9 to 8. Next night, 8 to 7. And so on, til she is going to bed at 2 in the afternoon.
I found this so upsetting. Why did she do this? That’s not what the doctor meant! Parents, explain it!!
Even as an adult I do not enjoy Amelia Bedelia, the wonderful children’s character who takes everything, you know, so literally, with hilarious (for most readers) results. I cringe a little, kid you not. As much as I read to my son, I don’t think I ever reached for Amelia, unless he brought it to me. And I actually know the very wonderful author, Herman Parish, from our Princeton days. I understand these are funny children’s stories. You get the drift.
Then there’s the weird stuff like how when I sometimes transpose letters and numbers, 5 and f, 3 and e.
Who knows. I ended up being an honor roll kind of student; after fifth-grade testing my principal had my parents over to dinner to talk about the results and lobbying to push me ahead. My mother had been pushed ahead three years, graduating college at 18, and she felt socially stymied by it; that, and my multiple hospital stays very young combined to make it a no-go.
Now my mother was one of the most social people I have ever known, a real gift, and she also had about the best wit I have ever encountered. But she had suffered being the youngest in classes where that age difference really was dramatic. They made the right decision, my parents. I was already young, being an end of October birthday, and a little shy, and pushing me ahead would not have served me.
But it is funny how the puzzle pieces of your life can sometimes drop into place in the most unexpected ways, at the most unexpected times. It is also a lesson, I think, how rays of enlightenment and wisdom and understanding can come from anywhere: we have to pay attention, and not write anything, or anyone, off.
I don’t seek to define myself as high on any spectrum. It would explain a few things, though. And funny that I went into working with language, just like funny Seinfeld went into a life making jokes with irony and language and literalness often at their core.
Such is the stuff of our life, and our dreams. Funny.