sixtyPercent: Cochlear Implants, Aviation, Technlology, and Philosophy 2005/12/14
Autism and Headwinds
There's a funny thing about flying small planes — it always seems like no matter where or when I fly, I'm fighting a bit of a headwind. There's a logical explanation for this of course. If I fly due east at 100 knots, and the wind is from the east at 10 knots, then I will progress over the ground at 90 knots. But it's a bit more subtle if the wind is from the south. Assuming I still want to fly east, I'll need to point the plane just a tiny bit south — perhaps to a heading of 095 degrees to counteract the wind's desire to push me off course. The result is I lose a tiny bit of forward speed, and just like that a crosswind turns into a headwind. Generalize that example a bit and you can see that in flying, more than half the time one faces a headwind.
A couple of years ago we discovered that our deaf son is also autistic. He is what one might call "high functioning" so it's not always obvious that something is a bit off — especially at a very young age. But there are many things that are obviously not quite right. So we are facing yet another challenge just as felt like we were out of the woods with the first one. (See my discussion on Cochlear Implants to learn about how Brendan deals with deafness).
Not long after we received an "official" autism diagnosis, we began to notice other things. One day, I spilled an alphabet puzzle onto a table to play with Brendan. 26 pieces, each shaped differently and painted like an animal on one side. About half landed right-side up, and half upside-down. Brendan turned to me and said "where's the N?". I said "I don't know," and began flipping the pieces looking for the "N", which ultimately wasn't there. It turns out it was on the carpet.
Puzzled, I tried a different test. I flipped the pieces all upside down, took one out, and asked "what's missing?" You can see where this is going — he could quickly tell which piece was missing, with just a glance at the collection of upside down pieces. Months later, he got a gift of three similar puzzles which were much like the original letter puzzle. It consisted of uppercase and lowercase letters, and numbers 1 - 25 — so 77 pieces in all. I can pull out any piece, hold it up to him with the letter facing me (so he only sees the piece shape and color), and 9 times out of 10 he can identify the piece.
His memory seems endless and nearly perfect -- recalling calendars, lists, books, dates of events, and so on. He is also puzzlingly imperfect -- he can't or won't recall some things that seem obvious to me. He knows the names of all the kids in his class (in alphabetical order), but has trouble recognizing them especially out of context. He can usually remember the color key to any of the dozens of color-by-numbers he's done, but is only just now having real conversations.
He truly has some amazing gifts, not just despite of his challenges, but probably because of them.
I'm flying "uphill" again, fighting a headwind -- there always seems to be a headwind. But crap — I'm flying! It's an amazing thing to see the sun light up the Sierra on a clear afternoon while flying down the California coast. At a few thousand feet in the air, I have a beautiful view of the mountains, but am still close enough to the sea below to appreciate the waves breaking on the cliffs. If the wind were at my back, I'd only land sooner.
by David Creemer : 2005/12/14 : Categories life flying autism : 0 trackbacks : 0 comments (permalink)
