Kevin: student, scientist, Aspergian

Whenever I think of science, my thoughts often travel to my friend Kevin. He’s a meteorology major in Florida. We met in fifth grade, right after I’d moved to Minnesota. He’d been sick for the first week I’d spent in class and he’d forgotten that there was a “new girl” in class. When he finally came back, he spent the first half hour staring at the back of my head. It was utterly creepy and irritating. Oddly enough, we became close friends.

Kevin was not the easiest to get a long with in elementary school. He clearly had to be the leader in our friendship, the one who made decisions, and enjoyed telling me what to do. He told my parents how to drive, infuriating my father by telling him what roads to take. He ignored common courtesies like looking at me while I was talking and holding doors open. He often interrupted my conversations, often to talk about himself. If I ever disagreed with something he said, Kevin would argue until he proved his point, or utterly disregard what I said. For some reason, he liked me. Maybe because I didn’t tell him what to do (like his parents) and I let him act like a “jerk,” instead of deserting (like most everyone else).

One day, in junior high, he told me that he has some disorder that I’d never heard of, something sounded like “Hamburger’s.” I didn’t know what it was, but it had something to do with autism. I still didn’t really know what that meant, having never met someone with a developmental disorder before (actually, I’d spent my entire life before moving to Minnesota in Catholic school, so I didn’t know what a lot of things were. Like Lutherans, Jews and homosexuals). All I knew was that Kevin was really uncomfortable about it and told me not to tell anyone. Not having many friends other than him, it wasn’t much of a problem. So he went on about his “hyper senses” and how fire alarms hurt his ears, and overcompensated for whatever inadequacies he felt by constantly proving he was smarter than me and obsessing about grades. It didn’t bother me much – I’d gotten used to his weird quirks by this point (more or less) and just let him roll.

Not everyone got along with Kevin so well. If he got upset with someone, there was a lot of fireworks, harsh words, and then inevitable silence, until someone apologized – usually not Kevin. He and another one of my friends – Ashley – had a lot of spats, perhaps because they had too much in common. In high school, Ashley found out that she had Asperger’s disorder (in fact, her parents had known for years and put her through therapy when she was younger) and I suddenly had the word for what Kevin had told me back in junior high. Except that things were suddenly infinitely more complicated. I had a way of explaining what was different about him, yet I didn’t exactly understand what Asperger’s entailed.

Kevin did open up about it in senior year, when were discussing the AP Psychology class I was in. Kevin took more AP science classes than most high school students humanly should. Yet he didn’t take psychology – for reasons he would tell me. He said that when he was little (long before I met him, I imagine) his parents took him to a psychologist of some kind at the Mayo Clinic. The psychologist diagnosed him with Asperger’s, OCD, and ADD (which, thinks to co-morbidity, is possible. The people I’ve met with Asperger’s – and I know three – tend to have control issues, short attention spans and obsess about little things). He thought it was absurd that he’d been diagnosed with so much and I could tell from his tone that he (and probably his parents) didn’t think of the psychologist – and psychology in general – as “real” science. This would be a point of some awkwardness when in my second semester of college I would change my major from music education to psychology and cultural studies. Kevin labeled all of his friends in his mind, and when one of us changed our “label,” it caused some difficulty for him. Going from music – something Kevin knew well, being a member of our high school band – to something he disliked (psychology) and vast and nebulous (cultural studies) was hard for him. Even by the summer, when I’d already declared my major, Kevin was still asking me if I was still going to get a degree in music. Though he used to joke that I was his therapist when he would talk about his troubles with me, I’m not sure he every predicted I’d be a psych major (I don’t think I did either, for that matter).

Since Kevin had never been treated for Asperger’s, some things are easier for him than others. He’s pretty outgoing and good at meeting new people. He’s way better at science than I will ever be, and he seems to understand like astronomy and physics that generally leave me with my head aching. However, he loves structure and things like short cuts in mathematic formulas and gray areas in interpretation (in subjects like philosophy and literature) drive him nuts. He firmly believes that he cannot understand art. Too often, he will get into an argument with a teacher and tell them, to their face, that they are wrong. He isn’t very adaptable, but on the other hand, he is very constant. Perhaps because of this, he is the friend that I’ve had in my life the longest.

This presents the difficult quandary I now find myself in – would it be better for Kevin to admit that he has the disorder, or to continue to live in denial of it? When my dad studied psychology in college, Asperger’s didn’t exist as a disorder. Now it does, but the way it affects people varies widely (I tried reading Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robinson but his life with Asperger’s was so different than what I was expecting, I actually was unable to finish it). I’ve done some reading in the past year to learn more about Asperger’s, to better understand how Kevin thinks and how he sees the world, especially in relationships. He came out as gay in our senior year and shortly after began a rather dramatic love life, as he has trouble expressing and understanding emotions. It’s interesting how he handles being gay compared to having Asperger’s and how he happily admits one but not the other, a portrayal of how two separate stigmas are addressed in his life. Labeling disorders, especially developmental ones that carry the baggage of being thought as “retarded,” have a lot of stigma and can be dehumanizing. I’ve never associated Kevin only with his disorder, but the more he does things that frustrate me, the more I think, “Oh, it’s because he has Asperger’s. He can’t help it.” This keeps me from getting angry (most of the time) but on the other hand, I don’t want to overlook the things that are truly Kevin (even if they are vastly frustrating). Oliver Sack, in neurology, has asked that we not ask what sort of disease a person has but what sort of person the disease has a hold of. I think this is a good place to start, to try to find a balance between tagging someone only by the symptoms presented in the DSM, and ignoring differences that can make someone’s life vastly more difficult. A search for balance that I’m looking for in my own life.