Stewart Shapley

I never passed for normal, but they wanted me to try. I'm 61 years old, and the only person I ever fooled was myself. I made this realization, and others, while writing my memoir, The Poisoned Well.
My profile picture shows me at age 15, holding my mother's hand as she holds my brother's, and he holds my father's. The photographer gave the signal to jump and fling up our free arm, and then he snapped the picture. Dad raised his free arm, and you can see that I am coiled and ready to raise mine, but I failed to perform on cue. The photographer asked us to do this several times, but I failed every time. I was ashamed and humiliated. I did not understand this was dad's way of telling me I had brain damage. My memoir shows how treatment of High Functioning Autistic kids in the old days, was abusive and cruel.