Though they're not as dramatic as they once were, I still have my fair share of Alice moments. Luckily, I have grown more adept at handling them over the past decade. I now know my right from my left and my up from my down. Unluckily, my terrible sense of direction remains. For me, to live in New York City is to never be able to meet someone on the northeast corner. It is to never ever make a smooth entrance, always to get caught looking lost on the street. The only subway I can exit and begin striding forth with confidence is the one by my home, as there is a gigantic park on the right-hand side and I know I don't live in the trees. I am dating someone who lives near the 7th Avenue stop in Brooklyn and an odd phenomenon occurs every time I visit. When I leave his apartment, I go into the subway through the same entrance. The next time I arrive, I find the entrance, go up the familiar staircase, and it spits me out across the street from where I need to be. I have no idea why. We're all mad here, said the Cheshire Cat. I'm mad, you're mad. Of course, I keep this recurring befuddlement to myself because a) no harm done, it's just across the street, and b) part of me still wonders if I'm making this whole thing up.
The biggest problem with my problem is that other people think they have my problem. People get lost going to the airport. They make plans for Tuesday the 16th when the 16th is a Wednesday. It's not their disability, it's their life. Most people will claim they are "terrible with" something. Names, faces, tipping in restaurants. They expect no special concessions. Should I confess to the encumbered nature of my thinking, they're only too pleased to offer an "I know, Ib
For a long time, I agreed with them. I grew up watching TV with my mother while she faux-diagnosed sitcom characters as having ADHD or Asperger's. I rolled my eyes and wondered where all the plain-dumb kids had gone. Why did there have to be a diagnosis for everyone? Were the cave people on Ritalin? I didn't think so. I was my own worst sympathizer and took an entire adolescence to realize something really was different with me and I couldn't outsmart it.
When I told a friend I was writing this, she said she knew someone who had facial blindness, a kind of recognition dysphasia that makes it impossible for her to recall faces of casual acquaintances and old friends. To compensate, she goes through life taking photographs and being dangerously friendly to strangers. I found this woman's existence extremely comforting. Here was someone else who hid her problems in plain sight, compensating for her disability with no end of odd behaviors, working double-time just to keep up with everyone else's standard of "normal." I wondered how many of us there were out there with severe learning disabilities, walking among the mortals like anti-X-Men with useless or detrimental powers.
Recently my sister hosted a barbecue at her home in New Jersey and the best means of getting to her house is to take the bus. I had the opportunity to leave the country for the weekend, so I took that instead.
"We were making fun of you," my mother recounted, "saying, oh, she's going to South America because she's too cool to take the bus." Fine, I thought, let them think I'm a snob. Let them think I'm lazy. Anything is better than admitting the effort it takes to do what the rest of your percentile does with ease. Anything is better than the feeling of loneliness that comes of falling down the rabbit hole and realizing the Cheshire Cat has a better sense of direction than you do and the White Rabbit has facial dysphasia and doesn't recognize you and it's not as if you can read his pocket watch anyway...
But then my mother, still the parent of a genius toddler, continued: "And I thought, that's not it. She won't get on a bus because it'll take her too long to translate the schedule. And then she won't know which direction to go when she gets off. But it's no problem -- I'll just stand at the corner. And when she walks down the stairs I'll be there to meet her."
About the writer
Sloane Crosley lives in New York and works in book publishing. Her essay collection, "I Was Told There'd Be Cake," will be published by Riverhead Books in April 2008.
Related Stories
Buying time
Disability becomes fashionable among the prep-school set when it equals extra time on the SAT.
Story finder (3 ways to search Salon)
Salon Directory (browse by topic)
