Life On The Spectrum: Chapter 2

I remember distinctly my preparation day for kindergarten. All the parents and future students were ushered into the large auditorium and heard a speech or something (okay, some details are somewhat fuzzy). The students were then treated to a preview ride on the school bus, which was a very different experience than being in the car with your parents. It looked like a lot of fun. What I remember most about my Kindergarten Year were the Art and Music Classes, maybe because they were the most involved. It was only in the morning so I would go home every afternoon and do whatever I did in those days. We had our first School Musical, based entirely on Disney music. I was cast as one of the Donald Duck characters in the Mickey Mouse March, which I guess thinking back was appropriate since I probably frequently interrupted teachers and threw temper tantrums.

My mother would explain to me that first grade would be much different than kindergarten and that the day would be longer and other things. Needless to say I was nervous but excited, and it became somewhat more exciting when we bought our school supplies featuring characters from the then-new Disney/Pixar movie Toy Story, which of course was world-renowned by that point as the first completely computer-animated full-length movie. To say I was obsessed with the film would be an understatement. For Halloween 1996, I was Woody the Cowboy, and my little brother was Buzz Lightyear. My Uncle John had somehow gotten a video store standee promoting the video release of Toy Story and gave it to us. Sadly, my love for that hunk of cardboard with small lights did not stop my mom from tearing it apart and hanging the characters on my bedroom wall in a whole new arrangement. She said that the display was in too bad a shape, but I was crushed anyway.

When I got the videotape of Toy Story, one of the previews was for something called a CD-ROM. What is a CD-ROM I would constantly ask my dad. He told me it was a game you play on a computer. I had no clue what a computer was at the time since this was just at the very beginning of the Home Computer Revolution. I also saw an ad for CD-ROMs on videotapes of School House Rock, which were educational short films from the 1970s 80s and early 90s. These films, more of my parents’ generation than my own, were now collected by subject on VHS; I loved them and they would be invaluable to me as my education progressed. But back on subject, I REALLY wanted a computer badly. When I started First Grade, my Dad told me that a computer would be coming to our house in just a few days’ time.

But in the meantime, there was the start of school to deal with. On my first day of First Grade I discovered something odd: I would take a few classes with my main teacher, then around the third class I would be going to a completely different class upstairs before going back to my original class for the end. It was unusual since very few kids were in the “different” class and everyone else stayed put. I was completely puzzled, but eventually learned to live with it. I started by learning all the days of the week, months of the year, and that it was the year 1996. These were good things to know, I guess.

At the end of the first week of school, I came home to find a big box next to the door. I knew what it was. I raced upstairs, saw my dad setting up the computer and he showed me how to use the CD-ROM. The first game I played was a Sesame Street educational game, but I soon got around to Schoolhouse Rock, Grammar Rock, which was one of the titles I requested. I also played loads of others, I got the 2 Toy Story Games I wanted for Christmas of 1996, and I was overjoyed. I spent many hours each day sitting behind my beloved Windows Gateway 2000 Computer. Eventually I got all the other titles in the Schoolhouse Rock CD-ROM series. I probably played Math Rock every day for well over 50 days. Homework was always a challenge. I HATED it and felt it was counter-productive. (I go to School to learn, why do I have to do more at home?)

As 1st Grade winded down and the year changed to 1997, there was a change in teachers at my “alternate” class. It turned out that the first teacher was a temporary substitute. School seemed a place where I could have absolutely no control over my life.

One source of anxiety that year was my stage fright over the First Grade Musical. My TSS (Therapeutic Support Staff) at that time gave me the idea to do thumbs up after the performance to signify my overcoming of stage fright. I was grateful for that kind of help, and eventually I finished the First Grade.

And so I entered my first real summer, which I thrived in. I got really into The Power Rangers, a show that had been around for a while. But while I was only marginally interested in the show before that summer, it now became an obsession. (I found out many years later that the American show was actually a hodgepodge mix of original American footage and action scenes from a Japanese Television series called Super Sentai.)

As I entered Second Grade, things started to change a bit. There was a new subject called “Social Studies.” (In later years this would be my favorite subject and one I would thrive on.) Another thing about second grade is that we used a LOT more computers than before, which to me was thrilling. Another new subject was Health, which was taught by the Gym Assistant; in this class, we learned the dangers of smoking, drugs and alcohol from a weekly Canadian show called Zardip’s Search for Healthy Wellness. I didn’t know it was a Canadian show back then; but maybe that’s why that much later I thought universal healthcare was such a great idea. In Grade 2, I only knew that the hero, an alien from a sickly planet who actually came to earth to learn about good health practices (!) sounded like some kind of robot. I got the message that I was supposed to hate smoking, drugs and alcohol and that message has stuck very strongly in its way. But in retrospect, I think they showed us a lot of weird stuff when we were in grade school.

I still couldn’t figure out though why me and a few others were still being taken out of our main class and sent back to the same alternate teacher as the year before, I eventually just decided to go with it and not ask questions. Also starting in Second Grade, I started the After-School Program since my mom had begun to work again outside of the house. At the After-School Program, I made some “friends.” I guess they slowly and grudgingly accepted me into their circle, because at first they would take note and sometimes advantage of some of my more annoying behaviors. Also, I knew that they would talk about me behind my back. But though it might actually have taken till third grade, I think we had become de-facto friends. I found most of the After-School Program dull as hell, though and would wait anxiously for my Mother to pick me up each day.

I had joined Cub Scouts around the same time and enjoyed all the fun things we did; I especially loved our Den Meetings, where a small group of scouts from the Cub Pack would meet every few weeks at the Den Leader’s home, where he would tell us stories ranging from the history of the circus to the ups and downs of Elvis Presley’s career. (He was a huge Elvis Fan with an Elvis phone that would play “Jailhouse Rock” instead of ringing, which was what phones back then would usually do.) I really liked this, and the Den Leader’s son and I became close friends.

One day in early 1998, I overheard my Mother talking about moving to a new house and out of our twin house, where I had lived since I was born. I had heard of moving before and wondered why one would want to, considering you become emotionally attached to your home—even though with the addition of my brother that home had become a bit crowded.

A few weeks later I was on the school playground and saw this boy wearing a Navy blue sweatshirt with yellow trimming. Why he stood out to me from all the other kids is something I still don’t understand. After school that night, my Mom told me we were going to check out a new house that was for sale. We drove toward the very edge of the Township we lived in, coming to a cul-de-sac with streets named after trees all surrounding a circular main road called Timber (of course). Compared with our twin, this house was huge—what I immediately noticed was a stained glass window high above the main door in what I know now is a foyer. As we walked in the door I saw someone familiar on the stairwell: it was the boy with the blue and yellow sweatshirt I had seen on the playground earlier that day. We were given a grand tour of the house, which my family and I all seemed to like immediately. After we left, It was pretty much decided that that we would be buying the house from the boy’s family.

After Second Grade wrapped up, I spent most of Summer 1998 in the summer program at the Elementary School. In reality it was just an extended version of the After-School Program. My only condolence was the Power Rangers coloring pages, which I would fill out in anticipation of going home to watch Power Rangers re-runs. At this point I basically ate and slept Power Rangers. I was completely obsessed.

For my parents, the process of buying the house seemed to take up the whole summer; at the time, I had no concern as I was happy enough in our twin home. Then at the very end of the summer we were ready to move. On Saturday morning, my brother and I were at my Grandparents’ house, where I glued myself to their television–since that morning was the beginning of a big Power Rangers Marathon.

That night, just two days before Labor Day, I was taken to my new home. We christened it by watching a videotape of The Wizard of Oz. That helped make it seem more like home, but the place had a different feel and even smell than our old house. But we really liked our neighbors, especially the family next door, and after a Halloween and a Christmas season, I began to feel more at home.

But more important things than the new home filled my mind over next week, which included my first day of Third Grade and the premiere of the second half of the Power Rangers in Space series. In fact, most of the rest of my memories of that year survive in the context of the episodes of Power Rangers in Space. My basic daily routine was go to school, which now featured me going to two completely new classrooms, one actually being in a trailer outside the school proper. Then I would eventually get home, and settle in to watch Power Rangers. Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog was another show on Fox that also aired at the time and I became very serious about Arthur, an animated PBS show featuring an 8-year-old talking Aardvark and his talking animal friends. For a brief time I was interested in the Animorphs series due to its theme of “Morphing” as I so loved with Power Rangers, at least until I noticed a disturbing graphic in the opening theme of a disembodied human ear that had a slug in it (in fact, a major plot point of the series). So that was the end of that for the Animorph series, though I still collected most of the accompanying novels (which for the most part, I never read.)

At this point I also learned a certain four-letter expletive that begins with an F at a Cub Scout meeting. When I related this, my mother punished me that night despite the fact that I had never heard the word before and had no clue what it meant. Well, my friends and I were obsessed with using curse words at the time so that did not help my standing at home.

The major highlights of my life that fall were the debut of the silver Power Ranger, and in November the episode “Countdown to Destruction” the Epic Finale of Power Rangers in Space, which was probably the most “adult” the show ever got. It was also the seeming end of the franchise since said episode resolved all the existing plotlines.

Also in November 1998 I was sent to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for an MRI of my brain, which I thought was for a potential tumor. (I found out years later it was part of my Mother’s paranoia that my Asperger’s syndrome meant that something was actually physically wrong with me.)

With the arrival of 1999, things started to slowly change. Things seemed to move normally early in the year, as I got excited for the new Power Rangers Lost Galaxy episodes. One morning I saw a cartoon on the television that looked kind of strange. I asked my father what it was and he told me it was “Speed Racer”. Soon, I’d hear all my friends talking about it, and found out that the show was actually called Pokemon. (I found out later that the reason my father thought it was Speed Racer was because Japanese-based Animation or Anime was not as commonly dubbed in the States as it is now when he was growing up; Speed Racer was one of the few early anime shows adapted and dubbed into English.) I would hear crazy words on the playground like “Charizard” “Pikachu” “Bulbasaur” and “Squirtle.” I saw the kids playing with the Card Game and all the merchandise. My brother was younger and into it before me. I was reluctant to buy into it at first, but eventually these creatures hooked me as well. Pokemon was an obsession that frustrated my parents; its credo of “gotta catch ‘em all” was taken very literally by me and Kevin, and we wanted Pokemon merchandise with an enthusiasm that left common sense in the dust.

In May 1999 I visited my cousins in Delaware and we took a trip to see a movie that would change my life forever.