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My preschool teacher told my parents that she also
was concerned about me because I was on the swing
set by myself and not with the other children. My
parents took me to see my pediatrician in Roanoke
again, and they told him that I needed to see a
specialist. He sent me to see a neurologist in Roanoke.
The neurologist sent me to see a speech therapist.
That speech therapist would not let my mom sit in
the room with me while she was evaluating me. I
did not like sitting in a room with strangers so I did
not talk to her and I started seeing another speech
therapist in Bedford who allowed my parents in the
room. She said that she thought that I had a form of
autism called Asperger’s Syndrome. She had traveled
to Sweden and other countries in Europe where she
worked with students with similar behaviors. My
mom arranged to have an elementary school speech
therapist come to my preschool to work with me.
My family were members of Main Street United
Methodist Church in Bedford, Virginia. We started
sitting in the balcony the first few years of my life
when we went to church. There was a man who sat
up front and he recommended that we come sit with
him when I got older. The reason he did that was
because he had children and when they got older
he and his wife made them sit in the front because
they thought that it would help them focus and he
thought that if my parents took me to the front that
I would focus better. I nicknamed this man, “Mr.
Sillybritches” because one time in church he had on
golf pants and I had read about a character named
“Mr. Sillybritches” in a book. There were many good