Life On The Spectrum: Chapter 5

Any transgression of mine on September 10, 2001, would soon be a thing of the past. The next day of course would be a day I and almost every person in the world—or at least in the United States—will never forget.

It was a typical morning when I went to school, a beautiful late summer Tuesday. Things rolled on as usual in school that morning, until the teacher’s aide ran into the room shouting “A plane has just hit the World Trade Center”! I was initially confused, thinking it must have been an accident. But only a few seconds later we found out a second plane hit the towers and one of my classmates said “Terrorism.” It was not a word I had heard much before; it had never before seemed relevant to my life.

We turned on the radio to hear what was going on. An obviously panicked person was talking to the reporter via phone about what exactly happened. Soon we had heard that yet another plane had hit the “Pentagon” (that was the first time I had heard of such a building). I spent the next hour or so contemplating who could have done this, my first thoughts were either a homegrown terrorist angry at the world or something like that or possibly China since I remembered there had been a diplomatic dispute regarding a US spy plane that crashed in China earlier that year. (In retrospect, both ideas were kind of stupid.) I took comfort in the words of then President George W. Bush (which also seems stupid in retrospect) in his “We will find them and they will be punished” speech. Eventually, after hearing about a plane that had crashed in a field in our own state of Pennsylvania, we of course were sent home early. Before I left, my classmate reminded that the date was September 11 or 911 day, not so humorously a reference to the emergency telephone number we had been told to call only if we were ever in trouble.

When I got on the bus the radio was on, and you could hear the noise of sirens in the background. Then the broadcaster mentioned that the buildings were collapsing, soon afterward I heard him say that one of the towers was completely destroyed, and finally the announcer said with a sadness that could silence a room,” The World Trade Center is no more!” I got off the bus walked up to my front door wondering if what just transpired really happened or if this was just some bizarre dream I was having.

My dad opened the door with a kind of distant look on his face. I asked him if anything significant had happened, he confirmed that this was no dream and I asked him point blank, who did this? He said they think it was a man in the Middle East named Osama Bin Laden! I spent the rest of the day watching the continuously looping footage of the planes hitting the towers on the news, just searching my mind for anything that could explain what just happened. While no one I knew was hurt or killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the day was a turning point in my life. On that day I saw true evil and the damage it could cause to the lives of thousands of people. To me, it was the day my childhood ended.

After 9/11, the Teachers’ Strike ended and the “mainstream” students came back to wreak havoc on our IU class. With all that had transpired, I suddenly realized that the kids in my class were not as ready to grow up as they should have been. I was ready, which in a way was very confusing since at the same time I did not want to grow up at all. We had behavior specialists drumming “Maturity” into our heads, which I found humiliating, since in retrospect I was the most mature person in the class.

The first few months of Middle School were probably the most confusing period of my life, I was discovering who I was and the realization of who and what I was caused me to feel as if I was worthless. Things were going crazy, with the country going to war with Afghanistan because of the 9/11 attacks. Fear was everywhere, both in the world and in my world. Fall 2001 brought one element of fear after another for me. First and foremost, I feared that I would not be accepted and made fun of by the kids at the school who were outside my class. I also feared that maybe I was like the other kids in my class with their bizarre behavior and mental challenges.

Another major fear, a bit quirkier, came in the form of an anti-smoking poster in the Nurse’s Office where I went every day to take my medication. This poster depicted a terrifying image of a woman with completely crusty charcoal-black skin and a cigarette in her mouth accompanied by the caption “If you were turned inside out and you smoke, this is what you would look like.” Said poster was eventually removed when I reluctantly explained my fear of the poster to the Teacher’s Aide to explain why I was inconsistent in going to the Nurse’s Office for my daily meds; the nurse (who was very nice, by the way) obliged me by removing the freaky poster.

One of the few bright spots in that timeframe was the release of the first Harry Potter movie, which made me into a Harry Potter fan despite having been barely being interested in the books before. It also introduced to my life the specter of (actress) Emma Watson, whom I eventually developed a MAJOR crush on. Also. My TSS at the time was fantastic, a young guy who helped me try to keep moving on.

In December, the fear continued in the form of Woodshop. My Woodshop Teacher was an impatient tightass who hated any goofing around. He also criticized my poor motor skills and told me to “eat your Wheaties.” By December 2001, I was terrified and did not wish to go to school at all. I spent every night and woke up every single weekday morning scared of what might happen that day.

In October through November 2001, I was also preparing for my “Confirmation” in the Catholic Church. I was originally baptized Presbyterian because my Mom had been raised Presbyterian. But because my Dad was Catholic and Mom wanted the family to share a religion, she converted to Catholicism when I was 9, taking Kevin and I along the same path. I had been taking the CCD Program for years in preparation for Confirmation, in which near as I figure you became “officially” indoctrinated into the Catholic Church. In preparation for Confirmation, they had a big meeting for all the Confirmees (for lack of a better term). We were all shown a video called “Broken Toy.” The title really made little sense to the film’s plot, which was about a young shy boy named Raymond who is frequently bullied in school by a gang of “cool” kids. (To me, this sounded way too familiar.) One day on the playground, the other students who like to laugh and tease him, gang up on him. As he tries to escape from them, he runs into the road, is hit by a car and is critically injured. The bullies end up devastated by their remorse, and to top it off the school counselor explains that the boy’s parents and brother had been killed in a car accident 3 years earlier.

It was way over-dramatized, featured minimal dialogue, and had narrative subtitles like an old silent film. (Internet Movie Database lists it as having been made in 1915 and remade in the 90s with a copyright date is 1993.) The string-heavy music sounded like a mix between a horror film and a eulogy and the bullied kid Raymond was depicted as a stereotypical blond geeky kid (think “Christmas Story”), while the bullies were portrayed as stereotypical wise-ass kids. It was also filled with weird camera angles and filters.

The end result was a ridiculously stereotypical Public Service Announcement-style instructional video about the dangers of bullying to be used by School Counselors to scare potential bullies, and maybe that’s an important message, though I don’t see how such an overdramatic presentation would really get it across. And why it was being shown to a group of 11-year-old kids about to be confirmed into the Catholic Church I still don’t understand. Nevertheless, being the emotionally insecure 11-year-old boy that I was, one who was currently experiencing serious emotional problems and was in a similar social shape to the Raymond depicted in the video, the film hit too close to home. I burst into tears toward the end, and had a complete emotional breakdown. I had to be escorted from the room so I could speak my mind to one of the catechists.

The film had heightened the fear and doubt that I was feeling at the time. I was already out of the room by the time the film came to its happy ending. (Raymond survived and returned to school three weeks later to welcoming schoolmates, which I now know because I am watching said film on YouTube to refresh my memory as I write this.)

Things did not get much better after the video ended, when we were sent back into the church to have a briefing from the Pastor. Still overcome with the feelings evoked by the video, I was looking down and up and around trying to come back to reality. The Pastor noticed looked in my direction and told me to “pay attention” because of how serious confirmation was, stating that the Archbishop of Philadelphia (who was to confirm me) would not stand my “chatting with my friends,” which I was not doing but it might have looked to him like I was. For those few seconds all the attention in the church seemed to be on me. I slowly nodded my head and the Priest continued his speech. I re-live this memory in my mind very frequently and my parents assured me (and do to this day) that the Priest was talking to someone else in my general area but I know he was talking to me singling me out from my peers for being “disobedient.”

For my Confirmation “name” which means a saint name the Cardinal refers to you as when confirmed was Joseph after both Saint Joseph and my grandfather. I lined up my Aunt Donna as my “sponsor” but nevertheless was scared to death when my day of confirmation came; I feared that I would make an ass of myself in front of the archbishop as the Pastor had suggested I might. When it was time to go up the Archbishop noticed how frightened I was and put the “sign of the cross” on my head with water and said to me “That wasn’t so bad, was it? That day I became “Sean Michael Joseph Callaghan” as a tribute to my grandfather and to complement my existing middle name “Michael” after my father. I have proudly worn the “Joseph” name ever since.

Christmas 2001 was really interesting because of the fact that it was celebrated with 9/11 still fresh on our minds so its significance was enhanced to all of us. December 2001 was also notable as I started taking weekly Karate lessons.

As 2002 dawned (the celebration for which ABC used the WDW Reflections of Earth music as though we were starting all over again) I was a completely different person from the excitable optimistic boy I had been only a year before.

Eventually a few good things started to happen, my “Darth Vader Mask” art project somehow made it into the School District art show that winter. In May 2002 came the release of Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones, for which I had spent three years of anxious waiting. But mostly that spring, I succumbed to my first really deep depression. In response, I tried to dive deeper into my Star Wars, Power Rangers and Harry Potter interests. (This also involved maintaining my massive crush on Potter’s “Hermione Granger,” actress Emma Watson, whom I had found out was only a few weeks younger than me.)

I also started to read books about Asperger Syndrome, remembering mostly the bad things they said—warnings of violence, depression and lost lives. I started thinking that I was a freak, certainly no better than my classmates who had begun to so annoy me. I started speaking frequently how I wanted it all to end and seriously considered suicide. My mother reacted by having me meet with a psychiatrist and counselor, but I believe they accomplished nothing. When the school year ended I was a total wreck; my opinion of myself had fallen to a point where I completely hated myself and wished I had never been born. I truly believed that my family would be better off without my pathetic existence.

Interestingly, my parents really did not look into the conditions at the school and signed me on for a second year. But that summer they sent me to a day camp for children with “Special Needs,” but it turned out to be mostly severely autistic and mentally retarded children. I pleaded to them that I hated it and wanted to stay home but they would not listen, and my opinion of myself sunk even lower. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, my brother Kevin actually enjoyed this camp, maybe because he was three years younger.

After my release from the day camp, the month of August featured my first real experience outside the United States, when my family plus my Aunt Pam and then 2-year-old cousin Amanda drove up to Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada. The Falls are just barely in Canada, as New York State is pretty much visible nearly everywhere in the town. Nevertheless, it was an international trip and my first time across a border. We had a ridiculously easy time getting into Canada, which my Aunt thought was crazy considering the post-9/11 terrorist scare but I found Canada to be charming and welcoming. (From my observations, I think Canadians tend to be more empathetic and nicer that Americans when they meet someone.)

The Falls were amazing; we went on the “Maid of the Mist” Boat, which goes practically right under the Falls. However, one strange thing I noticed about Canada, at least this town in Canada, was that I felt I had never left the U.S. It had all the familiar American “cultural” institutions—places like McDonalds, Burger King etc., were just as prevalent as in the U.S. While in Ontario, I decided to buy a miniature Canadian Flag (using Canadian money, which still features the Queen of England for reasons I couldn’t comprehend at the time). When I got home, I put this Canadian flag next to the miniature American flag in the planter in front of our house. According to my father, a neighbor asked, “Which one of you is Canadian?” My father explained that none of us were and putting the flag there was “Sean’s idea.”

Fall soon came, and I entered my second year of Middle School hoping for the best. The IU class had gotten a new classroom but also brought new kids. I strongly admire my teacher for putting up with that class. His was a remarkable attempt but it just would not work, as classes were absolute chaos almost daily. I was also a Catholic Altar server at this time, a job that I loved doing.

When 2003 came, I started taking Social Studies classes in the “mainstream” classroom, meeting with varying degrees of success. It made me confident but also made me an easy target. One day a girl in my Social Studies Class asked me if I was smart, I responded yes (because most people thought I was) then she asked “What Grades do you get?” and I was honest and said C’s D’s and F’s and she rudely responded “Then you are not smart.” I don’t know that I had ever before thought that marks and intelligence were all that strongly correlated.

It had become my lot in life basically to be beaten up on by people, including at home by my brother and mother. Eventually I just accepted it and tried to live with it. One day in Spring 2003 another specialist had a meeting with me. He asked me things about life, School etc, and we actually talked a bit about Star Wars, which was awesome. As with the last mystery therapist I’d seen (in summer 1999) it turned out there was a purpose for his meeting me. It turned out his sister was the Principal of a certain “Vanguard School,” something that at the time meant nothing to me but would soon become extremely important.

When my Mother first explained to me the premise of the Vanguard school, as being “perfectly adapted for children with disabilities,” I wanted none of it. My parents had already gotten me into a mess with the Intermediate Unit and I did not trust them any more. What I really thought I wanted was to go back to my local School District and continue life like a “normal person.” But my parents insisted that I should tour the school first and see what I thought. We arrived on what felt like a mini-college campus with many different buildings housing different facilities of the school. After my meeting with the psychologist and hearing about all the stuff that the school offered, which included having the option of continuing your education there after graduation and until you are 21 (to my mind thus “delaying” adulthood, which I still feared) I decided that I just had to go there. The last few weeks at the old Middle School wound down and on my final day in my IU-assigned Middle School I vomited on the floor on my way to class. I was at home by 10:00 that day, although I don’t think this final act was in any way a voluntary move on my part.