Friday, October 7, 2016

Book Review: Born on a Blue Day

Someday my rampage through the local library system may end, but today is not that day!

(cough)

Anyway, I took a break from the instructional and educational books I mainly seem to bring home, to pick up this book: Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant, by Daniel Tammet.  The cover immediately threw me for a loop by portraying a blue sky, when in fact the author explains the blueness of the day had nothing to do with the weather, and everything to do with how he thinks about numbers and days.  Mr. Tammet has synesthesia, or in layman's terms, some of his senses are mixed together.  He sees numbers as colors, textures, shapes, and motions, to give you a starting idea.

It only gets more interesting from there.  I won't go into too much detail in hopes that you'll read the whole book. It's a memoir, so it covers Mr. Tammet's life from birth to current time, where he has a job, a spouse, stability, and a good social life.  His life, as the title suggests, has been extraordinary.  He was the sort of baby that quite literally cried all the time, so while he eventually achieved many measures of success, the journey was hardly a cakewalk for him or his parents.  The story is told from the author's point of view, in a matter-of-fact and direct tone I found easy to read and comprehend.

As with most of these life stories, I found myself drawing parallels between my life and the author's.  Though I was born nearly a decade after the author, much nearer to the advent of Asperger's Syndrome as a publicly understood concept, both he and I suffered from lack of understanding.  But, we also benefited.  There is, in the nobler sort of human being, a tendency to shrug off differences that one does not understand.  Not ignore them or pretend they don't exist, but simply coexist with and accept them as part of that person and part of life.  It seems to me that the people most important in Mr. Tammet's life were mainly of this nobler type of humanity.  With those kinds of people, you don't need to explain away your unusual behaviors, or feel like you have to apologize for existing, you can simply exist.

Another thing I noticed is that the author seems to have avoided contracting depression.  Anxiety he has, when his routines are disrupted or life isn't being predictable, but he doesn't describe it as the constant presence I tend to think of mine as.  And while his parents certainly had their difficulties, which he describes non-judgmentally, he himself does not describe any depressive behavior.  For that reason, and others, I'm kind of envious of him.  I'm sure his success in life thus far also plays into this, but perhaps I shouldn't whinge too much, I'm not his age yet.  I guess I still have time to succeed. 

The other major envy-inducing reason is his phenomenal grasp of languages.  This is a man who learns languages for fun.  I took German in middle school, Latin in high school, and Japanese in high school and college, and while I tried hard and liked learning the culture, I never managed anything close to fluency.  I don't know if it's blamable on the anxiety, which kind of undercuts anything practice-related with avoidance behavior, or if I'm simply just not good at languages in general.  My command of written English is excellent, but some days I honestly struggle to put sentences together verbally.  Meanwhile Mr. Tammet has so many cultures and ideas and people available to him.  One of the things he did was travel to Lithuania to volunteer there, teaching English, and I sat and envied that experience.  Not only did he pick up the language, he also made a few friends there, one of which he still speaks of keeping in touch with.  He had real, good, life-changing experiences.

I miss those kinds of experiences, I guess.  The inside of my apartment is very comforting and safe, and the outside world is very hostile and scary and unpleasant, but I did once take a trip to Greece via a college program.  It was kind of an extensive experience.  We were required to pass a test on the culture of Greece to even go, and once there we had to present a topical report on an aspect of the country.  Everything from mythology to politics to history.  In addition, and my most favorite aspect of the trip, our guide was native, and actually liked what she was doing.  My crowning success of that trip was not my report, or getting to study how other college students act in other countries, but learning how to say "hello," "please/excuse me," "thank you," and "bless you," in modern Greek, without more than a trace of an accent.  Our guide made us practice, and I applied myself to trying to say the words exactly as she did.

I suppose it helped that she was also one of those nobler people that didn't mind oddities, because I followed in her wake and listened to everything she had to say.  In my defense, she had tons of interesting things to say, and I had many questions.  But she apparently didn't mind, and took to calling me her shadow.  If it weren't for the fact that travel is very expensive, I might try to do similar trips, either through the college or through other means.  I find it anxiety-provoking to not be able to understand what's being said around me, and not be able to read signs, but with the right guide, I wouldn't feel like I need to care.

In any case, travel was only part of the author's life, albeit an important one.  I think, for purposes of making the story easier to read, and perhaps also by virtue of events being clearer in hindsight, that Mr. Tammet's life seems smoother and more predictable than mine ever has.  I'll bet dollars to donuts that wasn't the case as he was living it.  So perhaps I shouldn't feel the way I do, that I have no chance of living up to this sort of example.

But I guess that brings up the last part of the envy.  In one of the last sections of the book, Mr. Tammet describes meeting a fellow savant who shared his particularity for numbers.  They connected on a wavelength I have yet to manage with anyone.  As far as I know, I am not a savant.  I do not have specific "special interests" which I pursue with zeal beyond that of neurotypical ken.  I've seen this in others with the autistic diagnosis, and it's often the key to their success: linking that special interest or singular talent into a program or job that they can do.

It makes for excellent stories.  Mr. Tammet started a company teaching languages over the Internet, which he does from home.  Other people love outdoors and animals, and so get jobs on farms where they can be around both those things.  And me?  I went into the world of autism thinking my command of English and writing, and my particular life experiences would make a difference, and... in the world of autism, I'm one of actual dozens.  And many of those have books to their names.

I don't have a special interest, or a particular impressive talent for any subject.  I think if I ended up writing a book at this point, it wouldn't be called the title I'd originally had in mind (Driving Cars Through Pudding), it'd be called Head Down: A Guide to Trudging Through Life.  My singular defining attribute, so far as I can tell, is being too stubborn to quit.

But perhaps I should take those thoughts with a grain of salt, considering I am currently very tired, very grumpy, and very much in pain thanks to lady cramps. 

Read This Book If:  

You like a good success story, or like seeing the world through a very unusual pair of eyes.  This book is well-written and thoughtful.  The author is very logical, which I found comforting and familiar.  Give it a read! 

1 comment:

  1. "My singular defining attribute, so far as I can tell, is being too stubborn to quit." Love this! I was more quitting averse when I was younger.

    Success has extra meaning for me (as it does a lot of people with disabilities) because for a normal person having a job and getting married isn't too difficult (though even for non disabled people it's harder than it once was). For me it would be an accomplishment. The fact that one in this state can't take any accomplishment of success for granted makes it that much sweeter.

    The flip side of this is when you have a disability and don't have a job or significant other people often judge you more harshly because they assume this deficit will be permanent (which it often is) as opposed to a non disabled person who they assume is just taking a breather it will get back in the game. This is why when they run stories on people with disabilities they often show them at their job (because the tacit assumption is they don't have one).

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