“I tried to show him things, but he didn't seem to study what I showed him. Usually, he just put whatever I handed him in his mouth. He would try to eat anything. I fed him Tabasco sauce and he yelled. Having a little brother helped me learn to relate to other people. Being a little brother, Snort learned to watch what he put in his mouth.”

~ John Elder Robison, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

“Last summer, when he thought I wasn't looking, I observed Cubby telling one of the neighborhood six-year-olds that there were dragons living in the storm drains, under our street. 'We feed them meat...and then they don't get hungry and blow fire and roast us.' Little James listened closely, with a very serious expression on his face. Then he ran home to get some hot dogs from his mother.”

~ John Elder Robison, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

“Soon I was spending all my time in the basement, and I had moved from taking things apart to putting new things together. I began by building simple devices. Some, like my radios, were useful. Others were merely entertaining. For example, I discovered I could solder some stiff wires onto a capacitor and charge it up. For a few minutes, until the charge leaked away, I had a crude stun gun.

...So I decided to try it on my little brother. I charged the capacitor to a snappy but nonlethal level from a power supply I'd recently removed from our old Zenith television.

'Hey, let's play Jab a Varmint,' I said. I tried to smile disarmingly, keeping the capacitor behind my back and making sure I didn't ruin the effect by jabbing myself or some other object.

'What's that?' he asked, suspiciously.

Before he could escape, I stepped across the room and jabbed him. He jumped. Pretty high, too. Sometimes he would fight back, but this time he ran. The jab was totally unexpected and he didn't realize that I only had the one jab in my capacitor. It would be several years before I had the skill to make a multishot Varmint Jabber.”

~ John Elder Robison, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

“It must be my logical consideration of a decision many see as purely intuitive or emotional that throws other people for a loop.”

~John Elder Robison, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

“The hard part was living the contrast between being rich and being broke. It was like being smart, and waking up one day to find yourself dumb as a rock, but able to remember your former brains.”

~ John Elder Robison ~ Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

“When we pulled in, the customs officer looked in the back. The back of the wagon was filled with cases stenciled PINK FLOYD--LONDON.

'Got Pink Floyd in the back of the car, do you?' he asked.

'Righto, mate. We shrunk 'em and stuck 'em in fookin' boxes, we did,' said Nigel.

Amazingly, the customs officer laughed and waved us through.”

~ John Elder Robison ~ Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

Damien Rap

Damien's Rap for Theater Arts ~ I find it amazing that a child with autism that never wanted to participate in anything has come this far. I know it is difficult to hear him, but as a mom of a child with autism, I am more proud of the fact that he is up in front of the class doing this than anything else. I'll get the words from him and add them later. According to his teacher and his classmates, he was the best in the group. Move on over Eminem.

“Unlike some older brothers, I never set him on fire, or cut off an arm or leg, or drowned him in the tub.”

~ John Elder Robison