Angry Birds and Jesus...

Looking back, I can see very clearly that I have had a lot of special interests over my life. As a little girl it was dinosaurs, cars and my Mum's collection of incomplete sets of cigarette cards. When I was three and a half I wrote my first book - a heavily-plagiarised (ie copied out) mash-up of How and Why Wonder Books (Dinosaurs, Prehistoric Mammals and I think one other). I still remember the thrill of writing out the long words and seeing them appear on the page. 

I read voraciously, books I shouldn't have been anywhere near but I was the youngest by a long way of four bright children so there were plenty to choose from.

My bedtime book of choice at 4 was Mayes Handbook for Midwives. I remember marvelling at the 'shiny baby' (aborted foetus) opposite page 112, and I remember shouting downstairs to ask, "What's a plakenta?' [sic]

I devoured Thurber cartoons and short stories, My Family and Other Animals and as I grew slightly older, one horrible book called The Bad Seed about a child murderer called Rhoda which chilled me for years, and a Dennis Wheatley which was my first and last foray into horror. I discovered early on that my imagination was too inclined to hang onto horror and magnify it at night.

My brother taught me little bits on the piano, and when I began lessons at 10 I felt as if the piano was a friend who really understood me. I would thud out Beethoven if I needed to get rid of anger, play Chopin waltzes when I was feeling wistful, Haydn to cheer myself up and Kabalevsky if I wanted to pretend I was a concert pianist - as my Gran had been planning to be until the war stopped her finishing her training in Berlin. 

I was fascinated by languages and remember trying to learn some French from my mother's See it and Say it in French! I spotted a copy the other month, and although it was almost 60 years since I had read it, I remembered the first few pages very clearly. I also spent weeks working through a jumble sale purchase called The Book of Charm and assiduously practised getting out of cars, taking gloves off and generally being ladylike, although I always puzzled (still do) over the solemn instruction, Avoid ringing doorbells suddenly. 

I longed to be elegant and sobbed when I realised my legs had stopped growing at a treacherously short length, certainly not legs to grace a ballroom or swing into a taxi whilst effortlessly plucking off a glove. To this day that sense of Not Quite Fitting In haunts me from time to time, I sometimes think it must be a little how trans people feel. I've just always felt I'm in the wrong life, rather than the wrong body. I know autistic people are shockingly prone to suicide and I wonder if that's why. Not Belonging is a huge mental and emotional burden which can't easily be resolved.

When I was 14 I became a Christian. (A long story, for another time). I suppose you could call it my teenage rebellion as it certainly shocked my non-church family. Looking back over that time through an ASC lens is quite something. I see how my tendency to take things literally not only made me a shoe-in for the Evangelical Church I found myself in, but I also realise how it is that I have ended up with such an in-depth knowledge of the Bible. It was my Special Interest for decades. When we were told to have a daily Quiet Time I took it to the extreme and would spend an hour to an hour and a half reading and studying. 

I used Matthew Henry Bible Commentaries - the equivalent of a young cook today using Mrs Beeton as her inspiration - and analysed and prayed over everything I read. And finally - I belonged, even though I didn't realise I wasn't doing Christianity quite the same as my peers. Church was an easy place to hide, with its scripted liturgy, patterns of worship and clear behavioural expectations. I suspect it is a refuge for many autistic clergy.

I still read the Bible but not obsessively. But I do still have the occasional obsession - in recent years it's been playing Angry Birds. I find them very soothing and I enjoy the mental effort required to solve each problem. 

Special interests are something I still need to spend time thinking about and unpacking. I think I will find a lot I had forgotten. I value that ability to dig into a topic and wish I could do the same with housework... wouldn't that be an amazing special interest to have!