A wild interview with 11 year old Aspie teenager, Lewis Schofield, by Donna Williams
DONNA WILLIAMS:
Hi there Lewis,Well, loved visiting your website.

LEWIS:
Thank you. I visited your website, too, and boy is there ever a lot of stuff on your website. You do a lot of cool things. Maybe someday I can travel around the world and talk to people about AS. That would be very good because I could help them see it is not so bad a thing to have.
DONNA WILLIAMS::
1) Tell me about where you live and what your day to day life is like?
LEWIS:
I live in a townhouse subsidized housing complex with my mom, my friend DJ, my cat Lola and my really old goldfish, Lewis. Sarah the Black Moor fish lived here until she died in September 2005 and Guapo the Calico Cat lived here until he died in October 2005. My grandfather used to live close to us and I really liked visiting with him but he died in November 2005. So now it’s just me, my mom, DJ, Lola the Cat and Lewis the Goldfish.
We live in Peterborough , Ontario , Canada . Peterborough is 90 minutes away from Toronto .
Every day, I wake up, get dressed, play with my cat and watch some morning cartoons like Pokemon, which was created by another Aspie (you can find out about him on my People With Autism page at my website). I eat breakfast and Monday to Friday I go off to school for two hours. The reason I only go for two hours is because the school people don’t really understand me and that’s about all they can take of me. Then I come home.
When I come home, I work with DJ as an audio technician apprentice because DJ is the audio technician for most of my mom’s music. She has a studio in her office. Later on in the day, my mom gives me homework to do like reading and math and business practices.

I also do minor business things for my mom like faxing and photocopying.
Sometimes my mom makes me a little crazy because everything we do is a learning opportunity. Even grocery shopping gets to be a math lesson with adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions, and stuff like that. And making supper is sometimes math (measurements) and sometimes science (mixing things together and documenting the reactions). The news can become a geography lesson or a political science lesson or a social studies lesson. Most of the time I don’t mind but sometimes I wonder why a kid goes to school if everything they learn can be learned just by paying attention to the real world. Go figure.
I get some time on my computer to work on programming and coding and such but my mom keeps tabs on how much time I spend on the computer. I don’t think I get as much time on the computer as I should but she says it’s important to be a kid and not always have my head stuck in a monitor. Moms are like that sometimes I think.
After supper, I watch Star Trek on TV because there is almost always a good storyline to follow and some of the characters act like they have autism. I don’t like Star Trek: Enterprise because it makes no sense. It’s supposed to take place in the years before Star Trek: The Original Series but they are more focused on special effects than on continuity. In the original series, characters had to actually flip switches and such and the Enterprise series has touch screens and voice activated equipment. You can see how that ruins continuity.
On the weekends, I watch the Discovery Channel and a cartoon or two but I have lots of other stuff that needs to get done. I do a lot of artwork and story writing and generating of 3D characters on my computer. Sundays I also go to Church.
I got to be a Church going kid because my grandfather said to me to pick my own religion. I picked Christianity when I was 7 years old. My mom is Metis (Aboriginal and white) and so she follows a different religion but her God is my God so even though it’s not Christianity, it’s Christianity.
DONNA WILLIAMS::
I’m not Christian or any other religion. Guess you could say I’m a humanist, also a Taoist.

2) So you have ARTism, like me, oh, and yes, also AUTism, and its rather hard to tell those two apart sometimes don’t you think?
LEWIS:
I agree with you. I usually paint using my fingers and my pinky if I want to be more exact.
DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes, I’ve done that too, with my index finger. I have a series of oil paintings that are all done with my finger 🙂
LEWIS:
Sometimes I use brushes though. I don’t actually know why I use my fingers because usually I hate the feeling of stuff on my fingers but I like the feeling of paint. I hate the feeling of mud; I hate the feeling of squishy wet soap. But I like the feeling of paint on my fingers.
DONNA WILLIAMS::
I think it’s the creativity side, that to see it isn’t to feel it, to feel the process, so doing it physically, kinesthetically, it just feels more connected, one feels more really IN the art, part of the art.
LEWIS:
When I paint, I just feel what I’m painting and it comes out the way it comes out. I don’t always know what I’m going to paint when I start painting but I get a feel for where I’m going with it while I’m painting and then when I’m done, I know that this is the painting I was supposed to do.
DONNA WILLIAMS::
Cool, very like me Lewis, I’m a very intuitive artist too…. I sense my way through a painting.

LEWIS:
I also do traditional 2D animation with coloured pencils. I have only taken one 6 weeks class in animation and that was 2 summers ago. I also have a good friend, Barney Wornoff from the Super Popular Show Studios in Peterborough who sometimes draws with me and suggests ways that I can do better with my drawing. There’s a picture on the website of me from 2005 where I’m drawing at his studio. And I also do 3D animation on the computer and that’s art, too.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes it is, and there’s a lot of opportunity in film animation right now… who knows, you may join me as a screenwriter, doing animation. I’m writing a film at present which is part live action and part animation.
LEWIS:
I use a program called Blender and it’s open source so I don’t have to pay any money

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Ah, my husband Chris is a big Linux guy, he’d be very pleased to hear that.
LEWIS:
and I can alter the program to do whatever I want and need it to do. This is very good for me because I like programming and coding as well as arting and open source saves me a lot of time and money.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Wow, you’re more techy than me. Good for you.
ARTism runs in my family, on my father’s side. There’s around 30% or more of folks from my father’s mother’s side (my paternal grandmother). So many of the relatives on that side are artists, musicians, writers and what’s left mostly work on the railways or in nursing (not sure the connection). I notice your mum is a singer songwriter (and he music is fab!). And you are a budding artist, musician, poet, and an interviewer.
LEWIS:
It is all on my mom’s side. My grandfather when he was in the War, he wrote poetry while he was in the War in his tent. He also wrote poetry as a kid and I have some of those poems because when he died, my mom went through his things and she found a box with all his old poems and they were dated.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
That’s such a lovely story. My grandfather was also in the war, in world war 1. He buried most of his fellow soldiers in a place in Belgium called Villiers De Bretenaux. He was a grave digger. It must have been so incredibly hard.
LEWIS:
He even wrote a poem for his mom when he was ten years old and it was very well done. He used to draw a lot up until 3 years ago but he stopped. He did pencil work mostly. I have his original box of pastels from the 1930s. It is very old and still has bits and pieces of the original pastels in it. He switched from the oil pastels to pencils because he liked it better.
My mom also does a lot of artwork and she could have been an artist if she hadn’t been a musician.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes, often one is many types of artist and many choose one forte. I shift between writing, sculpture, painting, composing.
LEWIS:
She did a painting when she was a teenager that is in the Art Museum in Ottawa . She painted it for a contest in 1976 for the Olympics. She put her work in alongside professional artists so that’s how good she is. She did some sketches of me when I was in the hospital last summer and they were really good. Even the staff said that they thought my mom was a professional sketcher.
There are lots of artists and musicians and poets on my mom’s side of the family. I am closely related to Thomas Osborne Davis the Irish poet and Francis Quick the American author.

DONNAWILLIAMS:
Ah, then watch this space, then!
LEWIS:
I know this because my grandfather did the genealogy of the family and he found the proof and so now my mom has those books and the proof so this is not a lie. I can prove it.By the way, just so you know, I read the genealogy you have on your site about your family and it was interesting to read.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes, some interesting stories. Australian history is a challenge because white people suppressed, even sought to destroy Indigenous culture and people, so as a white Australian I have the challenge to understand my own history in that stuff. I have Aboriginal cousins on both sides of my family but most of my own grandparents go back to convicts and the poor house clearances so they were transported people…. an interesting ‘class’ history.
LEWIS:
My grandfather’s dad (my great-grandfather) was a stationmaster for the Canadian National Railways, so you and I even have that the same with people working on the railways. And I guess my grandfather being a medic in the War means that it is like the nursing people on your side. I think we have a lot of things that are almost the same, Ms. Williams. That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes, I do 🙂

3) Do you get interviewed much?
LEWIS:
As a matter of fact, yes I do. I get interviewed for lots of reasons. I got interviewed by CBC in 2000 because my mom had paid cash for a computer through Patriot Computers and they went bankrupt 2 weeks before Christmas that year. The day before they went bankrupt, my mom was on the phone with them asking if the computer had been sent out and they said it was sent out already but they lied. It was the only present my mom was getting me for Christmas that year and she didn’t have any more money for gifts. So I did an interview on television about companies that steal money and lie and wreck kids’ special holidays and it was done because I was really upset and one of my mom’s friends started a fundraising thing so my Christmas wouldn’t get wrecked. The media heard about it and interviewed me. We were living in Regina , Saskatchewan at the time.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
What a fab word – Saskatchewan.
LEWIS:
And then I was interviewed on television in 2001 when I was the youngest kid in the Drum and Bagpipe parade.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Ooooooooo bagpipes… buzzzzzzzy.
LEWIS:
This was also in Regina , Saskatchewan . My friends Olivier and James Belanger-Parker were my babysitters and one of them played drums and one of them played bagpipes and so when they had a parade on the day they were watching me, they took me with them and I got to lead the parade in front of everybody, marching along very smartly. That was very cool.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes, my uncle is a bagpipe player, another cousin plays trumpet in the philharmonic orchestra. I play piano and some guitar. I did teach myself other instruments but had no drive to perfect my skills. I prefer to compose.
LEWIS:
Then I was interviewed by CHEX (CBC) Television in 2003 in Peterborough when they were at the Learning Disabilities Association to do a piece about the computer lab.
In February and March of 2005 I did a lot of national newspaper and television interviews when I was looking for my friend, Deryn Lamb. We went to kindergarten together and we used to call each other “future husband” and “future wife.” She moved away from Saskatchewan 2 weeks after we moved to Ontario and didn’t leave a forwarding address or telephone number. I spent 3 ½ years looking for her and couldn’t find her. It didn’t matter what I did … computer searches, telephone calls to other Lambs in the Regina phone book, requests to the Regina School Board. Nothing worked. So I wrote a song about her and a local radio station played the song to help me look for her. Then Peterborough This Week did a story on my search and the Toronto Sun did a story on my search and then a private eye offered to help me find Deryn. And pretty soon, the story was picked up across Canada and radio stations were even doing talk shows that were about me looking for Deryn. The private eye found Deryn’s family and we have been friends again since then.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
That’s so gorgeous. I found my first primary school friend too. She grew up to be such a lovely real person.
LEWIS:
The next time was in June 2005 with Lois Tuffin, the Editor-in-Chief of Peterborough This Week (local newspaper) when she did a full page interview on me that she called, “This is Lewis without the net.” I thought it was a really cool title because my website address is www.thisislewis.net.
And then I did an interview for television and print media when I was hospitalized last summer because the hospital people and the government people were treating me like I was a behaviour problem and just being a jerk instead of treating me like the person I am with AS. Later on my mom read my hospital file and it said that the admitting doctor put in his report that he didn’t think I had AS and that my mom was lying.
Except that a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a social worker in Saskatchewan tested me for two years and said I was AS in 2000, and a pediatrician specializing in autism spectrum disorders in Peterborough said she concurred with their findings in 2002, and a psychiatrist and a psychologist in Peterborough said I was definitely AS in 2004 and the current psychiatrist says I am AS. So this doctor’s lie is what started a lot of trouble at the hospital and it’s the reason the staff didn’t treat me right until I went to another hospital 3 weeks later. At that hospital, the psychiatrist and the psychologist and the mental health team all said I am AS. I am AS. The doctor at the first hospital was not a good listener. But anyway, I got interviewed because the hospital I was at originally was not doing anything to help me and it wasn’t right for them to just want to get rid of me without helping me. And it wasn’t right for them to just tie me to a bed because they were scaring me really badly and I wanted to leave and go home where it was safe.

DONNA WILLIAMS::

Yes, I think this public trial rubbish is so infantile. As you know folks on the spectrum who are great at characterization can often pass in short bursts for non-autistic people so often its only those who actually live with people on the spectrum who get past the performance. My early photos are quite autie but after age 8 there’s only 1 pic of me at age 11, then one at 14, then nothing till adulthood. So people can see for themselves how I was through infancy to late childhood. But when people meet us after we’ve had a lot of helpful interventions they may not believe how far we’ve come. That’s their stuff, we shouldn’t make it ours. And remember one thing nobody can take from you is your self. It doesn’t matter what else they seek to discredit, you, Lewis, is something they have no expertise to discredit. You are the expert on being Lewis.
LEWIS:
But this interview is the coolest because I am being interviewed by someone who knows autism and has autism and that means that I don’t have to worry that you will maybe write stuff about me that’s mixed up or wrong. And everyone knows you so that’s even way more cool.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Ha ha, yes, a lot of people do know me.
4) What’s it like being the interviewee for a change?
LEWIS:
It’s not much different than other times except that it’s Donna Williams and that’s totally different because before it was people who don’t understand autism and sometimes people that treat me like I’m a monkey to show off.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Ah, the walking textbook thing, the autism exhibit, yup, I know both well. I’ve sought to transcend being both. I think I’ve managed pretty well doing that really.
LEWIS:
You get autism because you have autism and so you have a better understanding of me and my ideas. And you get my art too and that’s really good because sometimes people think that my mom is writing the stories and the poetry and the Lewisisms and that is not true. They are my stories and my poetry and my memories.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
That’s because people associate autism with ONLY disability not disABILTY or even DISability. They don’t realise autism is almost always a mixture of both.
My father’s mother’s side of the family have all kinds of autism related ingredients too; Celiac, Dyslexia, ADHD, Social Anxiety, Bipolar and I came across a cousin diagnosed with autism and Tourette’s tics and two other cousins diagnosed with Aspergers. On my mother’s side are mood, anxiety and compulsive challenges too but without the ARTism, it is expressed so differently.I understand you’re a kind of ‘burger with the lot’, that your AS includes added extras.
LEWIS:
Boy oh boy do I ever have extras and it’s ketchup for sure. I have Anxiety Disorder, Sensory Integration Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Learning Disabilities, Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities, Severe Allergies and Asthma. That’s a lot of things to have on a burger don’t you think?

DONNA WILLIAMS::
It’s plenty, for sure. But in my case diet, medication, cranio-sacral therapy, tinted lenses, an understanding and fitting environment, hypnotherapy, patterning program, treatment for primary immune deficiencies, gestural signing and use of representational objects, lots of Donna strategies, means that my own added extras are at a much more manageable volume, so its easy for observers to then presume the problems were never there. This is a reflection on their own ignorance of how conditions and treatment works. And the autism world adds to that, constantly stating there’s no ‘cures’. Well whilst I’m not looking for cures, there are a lot of things that help some people and I’m lucky to be one of those whose been helped a lot.
5) Do things like anxiety and compulsive challenges get in your way?
LEWIS:
Yes they do but not always, just a lot of the time. For instance, I will be compulsing over things like if I go away on a holiday like I did at Christmas time, I will keep wondering if I turned off my computer and if the power on my CD player is off and if the filter in the fish tank was changed and if there’s enough food and kitty litter for the cat. It makes me nervous and scared and agitated and it interferes with enjoying the holiday.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I understand. Yes, my social phobia does that stuff too, anything to drive me back home. But my OCD was more about symmetry, balance, completion. I went through the checking version but got over it, the symmetry/perfection version was much harder to tackle, so I’d start a process and be unable to stop, or unable to concentrate if things weren’t completely balanced around me. With a language processing problem the distraction made it harder.
LEWIS:
And even if I phone home and ask DJ if the computer is off and if the power on my CD is off and if the filter in the fish tank is fine and if the cat has enough food and kitty litter, I didn’t do it myself so it really bothers me still even if DJ says everything is under control.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I love telling myself ‘so what will happen? Will your head fall off? Will the world as we know it disappear in a puff of dust?’… that sort of thing… I also say ‘whose life is it, OCDs life or yours?’. Progressively this helped a lot. I know its really hard to pull away from this stuff but one has to actively identify self version condition to tackle anxiety and compulsive disorders.
LEWIS:
I also worry about lots of stuff like what could go wrong at school every morning before I even get there.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
This is like Generalised Anxiety Disorder… that’s an awful beastie… the ‘chicken little, sky is falling’ sort of experience… you know remembering Chicken Little’ is a really good way to identify GAD and keep it in perspective. I also say to myself ‘live in the moment’… like a chant… and that helps… because GAD is all about projecting feared realities. And GAD plays along with Social Phobia, giving it reasons to justify why one ‘can’t’ leave the house today. Well a stagnant pond kills all life, water must flow for life to generate… I tell myself that one too… and Social Phobia is addictive, it demands the stagnant pond… and if it wins, the self begins to shrink and die progressively so how dare I let Social Phobia have the privelege. yeah, I dance with my fleas and that’s tiring but in time its a wonderful new record and the old one gets weaker in volume.
LEWIS:
Lots of things could go wrong. The school has a habit of changing my schedule without giving me any warning so I’m always worried about what the changes will be before I get there. And then I worry about the changes and what will happen .. will everything go smoothly, will I understand what they want me to do, will they understand what I do, will someone laugh at me, will someone yell at me (I get that one a lot), will someone make fun of me … stuff like that. And while I’m at school, I worry about my mom … is she all right, is everything going all right at home, is her computer working fine … you know, kid stuff worries. I guess I spend a lot of time worrying when I’m away from home and that gets in my way.But when I’m home, I don’t feel so anxious. I am still pretty compulsive though.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I had to choose medication in the end. It’s a tiny amount but it took the burden off immune deficiency which was being weighed down by untreated mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders. But I did all this AFTER all other treatments so there was far less left to medicate. At first I was scared to commit to medication, felt it would reduce my selfhood and ARTism, but it didn’t, not at all, it’s facilitated it.
LEWIS:
I also worry about kids when I hear stories on the news or read about it in the newspaper and the stories are not good stories. I’m talking things like bus crashes where kids die like this week in Toronto or when they are talking about babies getting taken from their moms because they have meth in their bodies (that was on the news last night). I worry about what is happening with the ozone. I worry about a lot of things that most people never think twice about. I think that it’s not so good sometimes to be that way but I also think it’s very good because it makes me want to change things in the world so kids and babies feel safe almost all the time.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Artists are passionate, Autists are sensing. Passionate and sensing people struggle in this blatant world that plays melodrama like a broken record for shock effect. We need to keep it in perspective, which is hard. Passion isn’t about perspective. Sensing is about being very open, often too open to feeling things on a detailed, intimate level.
6) Or do they also drive the WAY you do things?
LEWIS:
When I am obsessing over how to be a good kid, I get really compulsive about doing stuff and so that’s good I think. It makes me do things that have to be done and because of the anxiety, I have to make sure I do them as well as I can. So that’s a good way of having those things in my life.
It’s really good for my art and my writing and my music as well because it makes me make sure that for what I’m working on that everything is right and not just ok. It means that if I need a specific word that I will find that word instead of using something else that means almost the same thing.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I totally try not to let judgment or anxiety dictate my art to me but I do allow aesthetic sense to dictate when something is ‘complete’ because it feels ‘beautiful’, ‘poignant’, ‘right’ and I let this dominate any and all judgment. So I’m blessed to have as much ARTism as autism.
LEWIS:
It means that if I need a specific colour that I will keep mixing paint until I get the right colour.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Oh yes, I know what you mean 😉
LEWIS:
That’s where it’s really good to have anxiety and be obsessed. It means that it really matters a lot to do things exactly as they are in my head. Some people say that’s bad to be that way but it’s not. It’s perfect for me.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
In the artistic realm, I agree, it works, its put to constructive use. And yes, sometimes that makes us compulsive artists because its one of the places where autism can be channeled so constructively.
LEWIS:
And it’s also good because it makes me want to do things to help other people. Like the art cards that I have for sale on my website … that’s to help autism organizations and to help people with autism. Maybe it’s not so much help but my mom always tells me if everyone does what they can, then a lot of people doing what they can will change the world. I think she is right. It’s important to make the world not so mean and safer for kids and babies.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Sounds good to me.
I think help comes in many forms; financial, emotionally supportive, inspirational, giving working examples that empower others.
Bipolar makes me a particular kind of autie.
LEWIS:
I had to look up what bipolar is. It must be really hard for you to be bipolar because sometimes you must be really, really sad and being that sad is not good for your heart.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I’m so lucky that most of my bipolar has been mania and that my severe depressive episodes last only about 45 mins. I’m not like those who get bipolar in adulthood because I’ve been having ’emotional fits’ since 2 years old and these were probably episodes of Rapid Cycling Bipolar which is very fast shifting… people can have wild swings several times a day, a week, a month, a year. But with usual adult onset bipolar its only a few episodes a year. My bipolar is as Rapid Cycling as ever but the extremes are far less and the rate of these cycles is often far less than it all was before diet, treatment for gut/immune disorders and medication.
LEWIS:
It’s ok to be sad because things will get better but it does not feel like it will when you are so sad. I’ve been that sad before. I was that sad last summer after my fish and cat and grandfather died. For a lot of months after that I was way too sad and wanted to die because I didn’t think I would ever be anything except so sad and I was missing all of them so much.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes, this is more like true depression. Imagine having episodes like that where you plummet from ‘normal’ into that depth in 45 mins and it feels just as certainly ‘forever’ and then, wildly, you end up in giggles soon after, even ending up manic… its quite a rollercoaster… but I did have 2 years of mostly depression between age 9-11. It was VERY hard. Thing is with mood disorders one has to accept one has this, and is equal to anyone else, and that this is not ALL they are, nor reflective on them as a personality. Then I think its manageable, especially if you have friends and ‘family’ who understand and accept you as this wildly diverse creature.
I have relatives on my mother’s side with depression and addiction and suicides , so I see up close that depression creates something quite different to bipolar. The mania of bipolar is the opposite to depression. Depression is a shut down state, it’s rigid, limiting and a place of lethargy…. its sort of minimalist! But mania is FLUID and EXPANSIVE, and ENERGETIC it can be pretty exuberant. In my case the mania aspects of bipolar drive my ARTism to a point I feel compelled to live through fairly constant creativity.
LEWIS:
I am my most creative when I am emotional and it doesn’t have to be just negative emotions. It’s positive emotions, too.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
7) Does this make sense to you?You describe yourself as having some pretty wild, pretty fluid, expansive ideas.
LEWIS:
It does make sense. Sometimes when I am emotional I get my best ideas for solving problems or for explaining to people something they need to learn about who I am as a person. Sometimes it’s not so good because it interferes but not too often. It only interferes if I have too much to say all at one time.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Ah, yes, I have something I call ‘googling’ when I spout off into categories and systems in wild expansive floods of thought and feeling and it can really do people’s heads in. In me it gets pretty full on when its backed up by manic cycles… its like living with Roger Rabbit….maybe you’re too young to know of Roger Rabbit.
8) What are some of your most wild, innovative ideas?
LEWIS:
When I was 4 years old I was doing an experiment with water and salt and such that had to do with making a face cream that would prevent skin from wrinkling. I figured that if I could just find out what the right salt to water ratio was that I could create the best cream ever. When my mom told me that salt was a drying agent, I was surprised to hear this because I had never seen a photograph or watched a nature program where the animals in the ocean were wrinkled. They all have such nice, smooth skin.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Cool.
LEWIS:
And also, when I was 5 years old, I was thinking about ways to make the garbage trucks more efficient and would make it cleaner for the workers to clear away trash. Where we lived, there were huge trash bins in the back alleys that were used by lots of people and once a week the garbage truck would come by and two big metal arms would grab the bin, life it up and dump it out into the truck. What fell on the ground was picked up by the garbage men. That didn’t make sense to me and so I created a plan for a truck that would bring a bin inside the truck where it would be doused with a chemical mixture that would disintegrate the contents almost instantly, reducing them to something no larger than what would fit into a 24 ounce jar. Then the truck would put the bin back to its original place. This way, no garbage would be flying out of the bin and on to other people’s property and the garbage men wouldn’t have to touch the garbage until it was in the 24 ounce jar.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Fab
LEWIS:
Another thing I thought about creating when I was 2000 was the Lewis 2000 Mega Mind Brain Chip. It was a chip that a mom could sew into a kid’s clothing or that could be put in a person’s wallet or purse. The minute you left home, it would start recording longitude and latitude and altitude. If you stopped moving for a set period of time, the chip would think that maybe you were hit by a bus or fainted on the sidewalk or something and it would take all those co-ordinates and make a map and instantly transmit it wirelessly to the police department so they could send help right away.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yup, people have now made things like that!
LEWIS:
One idea I had when I was 7 (and that would be really good but that the government will never do) was to have cars that ran on their own exhaust which would mean less gas consumption and a better environment for the world. Exhaust would not go out of the car but would be recycled back into a battery in the car and that would drive the vehicle. This would mean less bad emissions that hurt the ozone layer. I also thought about a static electricity car that would run along hardwood streets. That’s for sure something that won’t happen because no one likes to clean highways so who’s going to clean hardwood streets?
Then there’s the Aspie Space Station where all the Aspies would live together to get away from people who don’t understand Aspies. If an Aspie broke a law on the space station, they would be sentenced to live for a set period of time with neurotypical people and when they returned to the space station they would understand the need for the AS laws on the space station.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
oooo, wild. But I’ve met some lovely non-autie people, so its not all of them who are so daunting… some are wonderfully diversity friendly… and its up to folks like us to help remind people why they should strive to be so.
LEWIS:
That’s just a few of my ideas.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I’m rather embarrassed to say some of mine as they are too influenced by bipolar rather than genius 😉
I believed that pink street lights were a pathway to the experience of God… wow they made me buzz into mania express, total euphoria… and if euphoria doesn’t feel like meeting God, I don’t know what does.
I was going to change Christmas for the whole world and make it Thank You day.
The first really wild idea I had was when I was 9 I believed that if I went to school in a purple leotard and believed I was a rabbit that I would become one.

I did warn you my ideas were more influenced by bipolar than genius 😉
I think we share the whole tumbled info experience, which makes it a struggle to learn like others. I have to rote learn pretty much everything and I learn best through physically DOING. Just showing or telling me things makes my body scream and its really disempowering because I can’t work with that type of learning.9) What style of learning works best for you?
LEWIS:
I do audio learning best because when they talk to me, I can see it inside my head.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Ah, one of Temple Grandin’s visual thinkers. Not moi. I just hear noise and unless I use gestural signing or representational objects to make sense of it, it often ends up as an insult upon my ears and senses. Listening with meaning is tough work for me. But I love physical expression… though I’m NOT huggy. I guess I’d do great if life were a silent movie.
LEWIS:
I am also very good at physical learning because sometimes audio learning isn’t enough. Sometimes I have to see for real what they are talking about because I can’t visualize what they are talking about.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
That’s where I am.
LEWIS:
Usually it’s because the words they are using are not exact and so that causes lots of trouble with visualizing what they’re going on about.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Not for me.
For me its because if a word can’t be signed it has no concept.
The visual processing part of my brain is rather delayed.
Things have to have a physical form and/or movement to make sense to me.
See, all auties are different.
That’s what I liked in your approach, you know we’re all different.
10) If you know how you learn best, what’s the biggest obstacle? Is it the autism related challenges or finding others who can get their head around a different style well enough to help facilitate new learning?
LEWIS:
I would have to say it’s the second one because usually people don’t use exact words and then they tell me I should know what they mean. I don’t. For example, I got an F on a piece of work because the teacher said to work out the probability for various questions and to express it as a fraction. I got an F because in every situation except the first one, he kept adding stuff that wasn’t part of the original question.
The original scenario was: You have a bag of jelly beans with 15 jelly beans inside. There are fewer green jelly beans than red jelly beans and there are fewer red jelly beans than blue jelly beans. Express this as a fraction.
If they were all equal, the fraction would be 1/3. But green jelly beans had the fewest and blue jelly beans had the most. I decided to express the equal situation as 2/6. Then to reflect the unbalanced situation, I said green jelly beans would make up 1/6 of the bag, red jelly beans would make up 2/6 of the bag and blue jelly beans would make up 3/6 of the bag.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
That’s the sort of language that a teacher could go on for 3 hrs and I’d not get. But if she used sign and objects, with minimal speech, I’d get it.
LEWIS:
The next question went like this: There are as many yellow jelly beans in this bag as there are orange jelly beans. How many of each are there expressed as a fraction.
My answer was not a fraction. My answer was: “You changed the question completely. There are 15 jelly beans but you haven’t told me how many colours of jelly beans are in that bag. My first answer is wrong if there are any yellow or orange jelly beans in the bag. My first answer is right if the answer to the yellow or orange jelly beans is 0/6.”
The teacher didn’t give me all the facts before asking the questions so I could not answer the questions. That is not correct thinking to make people guess how many differently coloured jelly beans are in the bag of 15 jelly beans.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I’m dizzy just reading that! Woah.

LEWIS:
The teacher thought I was just being difficult and rude. He didn’t understand that he was not using exact language and was not clear in his description of the situation. When that happens, no one can give a correct answer without worrying that something has been overlooked.People don’t understand that. They get upset and say that I am using my AS for an excuse not to answer questions like the one in my example. So at first, the second part of your question is the biggest problem and then the other people make the first part of the question the reason for the problem. It’s not right.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes, there are very exact thinkers and those of us who are very literal. And its hard for an exact thinker to think inexactly and hard for a literal thinker to think beyond the literal. I hope folks quit the blame game one day.
11) What about friends?
LEWIS:
I love to be alone. If I had a padlock, I would make it so the only time I would leave my room was to go for food and for other essential things. I would lock myself in my bedroom and use a radio to keep up with the outside world. I would do this not because I hate the world or because I hate people, but because I really love being alone.
When I’m alone, I’m happy and my imagination runs wild. I can imagine all kinds of different things when I am alone and my thoughts aren’t interrupted by people bugging me for stuff that isn’t important at the time.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I love being alone because I can be social with creativity. Also I get away from receptive speech, which is a struggle. I feel about receptive speech like I do about reading – fine in small doses, kept simple. But I love people, don’t even mind company as long as I have a physical job to stay peripheral and be able to observe people.
LEWIS:
My best friend is Lola my cat because she understands me and she loves me no matter what. My best human friend is my mom because she just loves me the way I am and doesn’t want to change me into something different. My next closest friend is Connor Coppens who is my age but sometimes we argue because he doesn’t understand me from time to time. My mom says that sometimes that happens to friends who are both AS and sometimes it happens to friends who are both not AS. I guess that sometimes arguing with my friend is not a bad thing or an AS thing, it’s a people thing.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I agree with your mum. I think its important just to see PEOPLE. And I don’t like the description of folks as ‘neurotypical’ because a lot of non-autie people are as diverse as the rest of us.
LEWIS:
I have zero friends at school because they don’t get me and they bully me and try to make me feel so embarrassed about myself that I will leave their school forever. This has been true ever since I started school. I hate school.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes, that’s a shame. Its the conformists who can’t handle eccentrics and also narcissists who seem to need to create hierarchy stuff.
LEWIS:
I love learning. There’s one kid at my school – Brett Wilson – who used to be a bully and this year he will sit next to me sometimes and read comic books. That’s kind of like being a friend I guess. At least he doesn’t get me in trouble with other kids and adults anymore.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Cool, maybe he’s maturing… one can hope.
I love my own company. Aloneness never feels alone (except in depressive benders of bipolar and WHOA they feel alone of the ‘on the precipice of an abyss’ type of alone… fortunately medicated). But I also feel deeply in company with the process of creativity.
12) How is aloneness for you?
LEWIS:
Nature is my friend. This past Christmas, my mom took me to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee (there’s a picture of me there on the INFO ON AS page). We hiked on a lot of trails and I felt happy and loved by nature. I saw a lot of squirrels on the Appalachian Trail and a deer on the Jake’s Creek Trail and rabbits on a lot of trails but no mountains lions and no bears. It’s probably good we didn’t see any lions or bears but I would have liked to have seen more animals. The trees in some places were so high that they made like a ceiling over us and it made me feel tingly inside.
It was scary sometimes though because there were signs like the one that read: DANGER! Falling deaths have occurred. Closely control children. High vertical drop-offs ahead along trail and at falls area.” When you read stuff like that, you know it’s not always safe to be out there with Mother Earth. You have to mind your manners like you do with your real mom or bad things could happen. But nature is still my friend.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Never let negative thinking extinguish the magic. The magic will lead you to a good life, the negative thinking seeks to extinguish life. It’s up to you which to side with and listen to.
LEWIS:
I also have a friend that I made on the computer with computer animation at www.neopets.com. It’s not a real pet but it’s a virtual pet and there’s lots of cool games and interactions you can do. At the site you can also do a lot of math, puzzles, English, strategy and other games likes that.
And then there’s HarleyBear (written like that) who was my mom’s teddy bear before she was my teddy bear. She’s been my closest and best friend since I was a baby and we have lots of pictures of me over the years doing things with my bear. When we lived in Saskatchewan we used to go to the B*A*S*H Bear’s Picnic every June and they wou
ld have tents set up like the M*A*S*H television show. HarleyBear would go and get examined at various tables by different doctors and nurses and medics that were all part of the army (there was a base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan so it wasn’t so far for them to come for this event) and every year, HarleyBear was diagnosed with Acute Super Cuteness, or AS Cuteness as I would tell people.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Yes, I have some friends like this… Mc Gibbon is a toy gibbon, Travel Bear is the reincarnation of Orsi Bear mixed with Travel Dog, … and a few others.
LEWIS:
I feel friends with anything familiar – person, object, nature, activity.
DONNA WILLIAMS::
13) Does it amaze you how bored many people are?
LEWIS:
It does surprise me and it doesn’t surprise me. It surprises me because a lot of people should be helping other people and doing things to help other people and that sort of stuff. They should be working hard at things they like and sometimes hard at things they don’t like so much. I have trouble with the working hard at things I don’t like so much but I see my mom and our friend Tom and our roommate DJ working hard at things they don’t like but they work hard anyways. I try to be like that.
It doesn’t surprise me because most people are all about being too lazy to find something interesting to think or say or do. They’re all about getting attention and about having things done for them. I think people that are bored just like to complain a lot so they can complain a lot. They are selfish. They only think about themselves.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
There’s a personality trait called the Leisurely trait where people like to be lazy and do as they please, another called the Dramatic trait which is about wanting attention all the time, and one called the Devoted trait which is about enjoying being taken care of by others all the time. I think those of us who don’t have these traits don’t understand those who do so we see them as selfish. But if we’re not like them, we don’t actually know. Same way those who aren’t Solitary personalities imagine that solitary people are selfish always keeping to themselves… that sort of thing.
14) Do you think it’s because they feel the only friends are human ones?
LEWIS:
Sometimes yes but sometimes no because sometimes you will see friends together saying they are all bored and there’s nothing to do. If there’s a group of human friends together, you would think they could figure out something really cool to do or talk about, wouldn’t you? But that’s not always the case from what I can see.People are creating all kinds of wild worlds on line. But they are still pretty reluctant to understand or accommodate wildly different perceptual, communicative, cognitive or social worlds of people with developmental differences

DONNA WILLIAMS::
15) How do you make sense of that seeming contradiction?
LEWIS:
That happens, I think, because on the Internet you can be whoever you want. But that also happens in real life with people who are lying about who they are. Sometimes lies don’t have to be big to cause trouble and make people think things that aren’t true.
I don’t know why the people who are creative enough to make ‘wild worlds online’ can’t accept people who are different than they are. Maybe it’s because they’re afraid because people like me really are different. Maybe it’s because they are afraid they are like me a little bit or a lot. Mostly, it’s because they don’t take the time to learn what those differences are all about and they don’t take the time to get to know people who are different. They make assumptions and run with them. Assumptions aren’t very good because they make people think a lot of things that usually aren’t accurate or true. That’s not so good.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Very observant Lewis. I do think problems happen when any of us make assumptions and run with them. I always wonder why people don’t just check the reality of their assumptions… seems so simple but people can be so confident about what they think they know. I also think that many are afraid of being different and others wish they were because they want to be unique so resent folks who are different either way. This is why its important not to label all non-auties as neurotypical. I think that term demeans them, calls them ‘mundane’ some how, and thats neither true nor fair. If we want them to respect us we have to model that respect too.
I have some special abilities, sort of like ‘X men’ 😉
I can look almost 90 degrees away from something and still describe what it’s doing.
I map the pattern, theme and feel of people in 3 seconds via very subtle movement, tone and pace patterns.
I’m face blind so the division of strangers and friends is not clear cut.
I’m object blind so the meaning of what I see is more illusive, flexible and I use other ways to identify things.
I use gestural signing and representational objects to externally track thought and speech.
I have pretty phenomenal spatial and serial memory and can replace the most mundane actions I’ve observed, even 30 years on.

16) Do you have some special abilities like this too? What are they?
LEWIS:
I use sound effects and body gestures to fully explain things to other people.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Ah, me too 🙂
LEWIS:
Sometimes words just are not good enough to express something. Sometimes you need sound effects and body gestures to give the most complete sense of the situation or object being described.
I am not so good at being able to identify people I know whether they are in a crowd or just by themselves when I meet up with them. It’s aggravating for me because I feel stupid that I can’t even recognize someone I have gone to school with for years or something like that. My mom is like that, too, and she is trying to teach me ways to figure out who someone is without letting on that I don’t know who they are right away. She says I should let them talk first and listen to what they say because they always give clues in what they say. They default to what is in common for both of us and that’s a good way to figure out who they are.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I just say, sorry, I’m face blind, can you remind me who you are.
And when I meet new people I say, ‘I just want to let you know that if I see you somewhere else I may not recognise you because I’m face blind so please don’t think I’m ignoring you and just remind me who you are’.
LEWIS:
I have a photographic memory for what I’ve heard and also for what I’ve seen if we’re talking situations I’ve experienced or something I’ve read. I can describe the situation as if I am a camcorder or a sound recorder with exact dialogue. It’s a good thing to be able to do but some people get really upset and angry with me when I do that and they know I am correct. I know they are angry with me because they get really angry looking and usually say, “That’s not what I meant.” It doesn’t matter what they meant because I am telling them what they did and what they said. I can’t figure out what they meant because I’m not a mind reader. I can only describe what really happened.
I also can sometimes feel that something is going to happen before it happens, like telling my mom that the phone is going to ring and then it rings. I think it’s because I have super sensitive hearing and I can hear the connection being made in the line before the ringing starts.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Maybe. I can sometimes feel things about to happen because people have these shifts in very subtle movements and tones and they may not even be conscious of the change about to happen but their shifts give it away and I’m usually the first to know.
LEWIS:
You know when someone calls you, they hear a ring on their end when the line connects but the person being called doesn’t get that first ring. Their first ring is actually the other person’s second ring.
And I have phenomenal night vision. I can see things in the dark long before other people do and at a very far distance.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Ah, me too 😉
LEWIS:
I think this will come in handy when I am a grown up and have a driving license and I am driving home late at night from wherever I was.
DONNA WILLIAMS::
It’s been nice meeting you Lewis.

17) Is there anything you’d like to say now or ask me?
LEWIS:
This is important. There are people that I look up to and they are my mentors. They are:
1) Victor Lucas who is the co-host of Electronic Playground and Reviews On The Run because he is kind and he’s like a big kid in a lot of ways. He likes kids and he likes games like Pokemon and sites like Neopets. He doesn’t talk down to kids and he treats them like the people they are. This is good.
2) Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, an open source code computer operating system because he encourages young programmers to create in the fashion that is true to who they are. He also donates some of his money to charities like Sick Kids hospitals around the world.
3) Barney Wornoff, creator and animator of the Super Popular Show and comedian and lead writer of the comedy group, The Shrimps. He has taken time to show me how to animate, how to render art into 2D animation and how to do voice overs. In fact, my voice can be heard on his animated short, “Peterborough Times: Desperate Voices in Desperate Times.” He loaned me an animation table for a long time and there’s a picture of me at his studio working on art on the Lewisisms page on my website.
4) Thomas D. Taylor, my mom’s best friend and a really awesome painter. He has taught me a lot about painting and about art. He also has taught me a lot about AS and about being a boy with AS. He has helped me feel not so alone because he helped me understand that there are lots of autistics in the world and all of us are very special even if lots of people who don’t understand autistics keep telling us we are wrong and need to be fixed. He doesn’t treat me like I need to be fixed. He treats me like I am a person and that’s good because I am a person and I like being treated this way.
5) My mom is also a mentor because she has always been there for me. She teaches me about copyrights and activism and about doing what’s right when the most people are against you. She teaches me all sorts of other things, too. She teaches me how to have fun and how to find what’s good in bad situations and how to be happy with who I am. When I told her that I wanted to be a baptized Christian, she supported me even though she isn’t part of the religion that I chose. She takes me to Church every week and on all the special occasions and she never makes me feel bad that I want to do this. She doesn’t make fun of what is important to me.
6) Our roommate DJ teaches me about audio technical stuff and technical computer stuff. Because of what DJ taught me, I was able to build a functional computer that functions online even though it was built out of obsolete parts. We did this last year on the March school break and again this year on the March school break. And DJ also watches cartoons with me and plays games like Monopoly with me.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Ah, that was like the credits rolling at the end of a film 😉

18) Have you been to www.auties.org ?
LEWIS:
Yes I have.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
19) What did you think of it?
LEWIS:
I think it’s a very interesting website and concept. I hope that when I’m older, it will still be around so I can join the clubs like the dinner club and so I can be part of the entrepreneurial/self-employment part of the website. I thought about adding my information on the website but I have to read through the entire website.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
some kids have joined. There are kids looking to start dinner clubs and activity clubs with others their own age.
LEWIS:
I like that you and your husband are the owners of the website. It means to me that people with autism won’t get treated wrongly because both of you understand what autism is all about. This is very good for people like us, Ms. Williams. Understanding is really important. It’s where all good things begin, don’t you think?

DONNA WILLIAMS::
Understanding is a good place to start and caring helps too. Lots of folks on the spectrum are stuck in anger so can’t move to caring till they get past anger. Many do get past it, which is great.
LEWIS:
And you know what else? I like that you support FIrefox because I use Firefox and Thunderbird all the time. I use it because it’s not so easy for hackers to get into your computer and that’s always a good thing. Make life hard for people who are busy breaking the law. And make things easy for people who like to customize their own themes and extensions.
DONNA WILLIAMS::
20) Will you list on there?
LEWIS:
Most websites don’t let kids under 13 join or participate. I want to make sure that I’m not breaking your rules by putting my website info up on www.auties.org.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
We check everyone listing pretty thoroughly. If we think they’re not child-friendly we would address that. We’ve seen no need to apply age restrictions to the site and hope we never have to.
LEWIS:
I don’t want to be an exception because I would rather be a role model for other kids under 13 instead of an exception. An exception would make other kids with autism feel like maybe they aren’t as good as I am and that’s not true. They are perfect and good just the way they are just like I am good just the way I am. So first, I have to make sure I am not breaking any rules of the site and then I will join and put my website info there.

DONNA WILLIAMS::
You’re fine, come and list when you are ready to.
I hope you enjoyed the interview.
LEWIS:
I totally enjoyed this and you are my first over the net interview. You asked different questions than what most reporters usually ask me about autism. And I felt very comfortable answering your questions which is something that doesn’t usually happen for me. Usually questions make me feel scared that I will say something stupid and they’ll mention what I said in their report and then I will look superly dumb which is not true. I am very smart. I just sometimes look dumb to other people because they don’t understand how I am thinking and how I am expressing myself.
I hope you enjoyed reading my answers and that sometimes you will email me just to talk because now I feel you are my friend and I hope you feel the same way.
Sincerely, your friend,
Lewis

DONNA WILLIAMS::
I feel familiar with you Lewis and I feel you’re a pleasant and likeable person.
Remember that friendly isn’t friend.
You can decide someone friendly would make a good friend and that’s fine.
But friendly isn’t always the only ingredient of a friend.
I get a bucket of email daily and with a film of my book hopefully getting made next year chances are I’ll be swamped with even more email.
Sometimes, people who’d make great friends just get so overwhelmed and busy they aren’t easy to access.
It’s kind of good too because it means I have to have fewer friends so I can spend reasonable amounts of time with them.
I am, however, honoured you would want me as a friend and call me one.
I will certainly consider you a lovely young man I’ve met through this interview.
Who knows, you may interview me too one day!

Warmly,

Donna Williams *)
www.donnawilliams.net
www.auties.org