This is very bursty, unfiltered thoughts about that.

I was labeled by the extended family just after I turned four. That incident happened about six months before this story.

A label is a diagnosis, is it not?

They kept me back a year from starting K.

So I would develop more social control I understand now.

At six I started K. and lasted three days. Then it was short bus time to the special school. Basically to be warehoused. Hopefully able to be salvaged/functional enough for menial work. Sure to be a burden on my parents for the rest of my life.

I was a passive child. If you put me in a chair and told me to set. I would set quietly for hours. I didn't need medication or attention.

I was there for 3 months before someone noticed I was reading the books they gave me to look at the pictures..

New label, back to regular school and twice weekly visits with the school therapist. Among my “peers” my label shifts from retard to freak.

Freak it will stay until high school graduation. When people asked “what’s wrong with you”? I tell them I’m a freak. A label is a diagnosis, is it not?

Fast forward junior high first year. I am 13. It's 1970. New school staffed full of young teachers. First time in my file you find the word Aspergers.

They discuss this with my parents, never me.

No one ever tells me this.

In my early 30's I read a description of Asperger's in a scifi novel. Lightbulb goes off moment.

I ask about it. Finally they think to say something. This is an exact quote.

"Oh yeah, that's what that cunt said when you were 13. I didn't let them put that label on you. That was just a fancy way of saying retard. You turned out fine."

I seek out professional evaluation and assessment. There is a disagreement about my being very high functioning autistic or extremely Aspergers.

I identify as autistic now. But only in the last 5 years. Openly just in the last two.

After a lifetime of resisting that label I am at peace with it.