I’m On the Spectrum; I Just Can’t.

Seventh grade, near the end of a class. The spirited conversation between classmates crosses into animated argument territory; the volume exceeds appropriate indoor levels. Enter our teacher, to calm, quiet down, and inquire all at once.

“We’re talking about what blind people actually see,” says one student, quickly adding, “Not see see, but what, you know, is there to them.”

I haven’t participated in the conversation, but I’m interested in hearing the theories of my classmates.

They insist that because blind people still feel and think from inside their heads, some image, or at least some awareness has to be present.

A few assume it would be like looking into the sun, but without pain. A blob of light, so to speak, with no shadows.

The majority, (or at least the loudest) insist that the blind must see pitch black. Black to them is the most logical because it always means the absence of everything. A void.

“Of course they don’t see black,” says our teacher. “If they are totally blind at least, they don’t see anything.”

“But what is there?” asks one of the more invested kids in the conversation.

Our teacher’s reply has always stuck with me.

“Nothing is there,” he says. “What do you see out of your hand, or your feet? Do you see solid black? Of course you don’t. You see nothing out of your hand, because a hand doesn’t see. That is the experience for someone totally blind. They see nothing.”

A pregnant pause, and then several simultaneous objections as to the logistics of there being literally nothing. “Surely, your brain has to know something that your hand can’t,” is the amalgamated version of all their responses.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but by now it’s clear; my classmates were not so much rejecting our teacher’s explanation on its face. Rather, their reaction was the best response they could muster to a concept to which they could on no level relate. Black voids or white blobs they could at least imagine. But true “nothing,” such as that seen with a hand? They had no metric by which to understand this sensation because they had never been blind. This frustrated them.

Yet, you could no more instruct them to just “understand it,” than you could instruct an actual blind person to “just see.” They can’t. The requirements simply are not there, no matter how much someone else wants them to be, or how close we think they are to getting there.

Blind is blind.

And someone’s Autism is someone’s Autism.

That’s why since becoming diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder late in life, my former teacher’s words on blindness have come back to me again and again.

I can of course speak only to my own place on the Spectrum; every person on it experiences different manifestations of it. Yet I’m confident enough to opine that there are near-universals. One of them is being unable to transfer a complete understanding of our obstacles and perceptions to those who are neurotypical.

Odds are strong that you would view me as a “normal” person in 90% of public situations. My variety of Autism, (what used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome) is not evident to the outside world. I am by and large independent. Verbal. So if you were to tell me to multi-task at work, and do so quickly, you may just assume my failure to do so was some half-baked Bartleby-esque objection.

“You know how to do Action A. You know how to do Action B. You know how to do Action C. Just do them all on time for me. I don’t see the big deal. Why can’t you?”

“Because, I can’t,” would satisfy few people and zero supervisors. I could say, “because I am on the Autism Spectrum,” but that sounds even more obtuse. Yet both answers are the best I can give because they are true. I cannot multi-task quickly, because I am on the Autism Spectrum.

It may not be at all complex to you. It may shock you to learn that in fact it’s not at all complex to me either; I just can’t do it. I lack what is required under the conditions in which it is needed, despite the overall lack of complexity.

“Of course they don’t see black…they see nothing….like seeing out of your hand.”

You might see me in conversation with an attractive woman. When she departs, you might ask me if I got her phone number.

“No.”

You could point out how “hot” she was, and ask me if she was into me. If she was showing interest.

“She didn’t say if she was interested in me or not. I don’t ask those kind of things. I just talk.”

“How the hell can you not sense if a girl is turned on without her saying anything? Didn’t you think she was pretty?”

“Very.”

“Then how could you not have her number? How could you not just automatically try? What is wrong with you?”

“Of course they don’t see black…they see nothing….like seeing out of your hand.”

Sometimes it’s a matter of degrees — possible, but not inevitable.

Yes, I realize most people prefer to maintain eye contact for 60% of the conversation, and that’s why I did it just now. But I need a nap because it’s exhausting to put on a show so damn contrary to my default position. No, I can’t “just do it all the time,” anymore than I could just climb five flights of stairs while wearing five pound ankle weights all the time. I could get it done here and there, but not over and over and over again all day and night.

And so on.

Yes, all of us opt out of some things we don’t want to do, even if we could do them with some extra motivation. I’m no exception to that, and neither are you. Still, instead of assuming I’m being obstinate or lazy or non-conformist for the sake of being a curmudgeon, take a minute and ask yourself how well you can see out of your hand, and then try to explain why you cannot.

Apply that to those of us on the Spectrum. It may be a first step toward understanding. Because unlike us, and unlike the truly blind, you can choose to change.