The World According to Mark: The Absolutely True Story of an Eastern Massachusetts Man's Life...

By Mark C. Smith

Hello Reader,

I am Mark Smith from Carlisle, Massachusetts. Please take this message for real. I have Asperger's Syndrome (a high-functioning Autism) which makes me hard of reading people. Just like some people are hard of hearing, I am "Hard of Non-Verbal Hearing" which means that I have a hard time reading body-language and some of those social cues that are so important when it comes to meeting people, interacting appropriately at social events or in public, or even acting accordingly in ways where one can keep their job (not get fired for acting strange). No, I am entirely sane. I'm just different.
I think in black and white too much (I mean absolutions, not prejudice). I have a difficult time understanding why people act the way they do and what motivates people to say the things they say and do things the way they do them. We Asperger's Syndrome people can overwhelm very quickly and very easily whenever reading very intense vibes from people, especially when they are extremely strong at non-verbal communication.
Think of this analogy. You know how when people speak, the hard vowel sounds are the loudest and easiest for the Hard of Hearing person to hear while the soft consonant sounds are often missed? And even when the softer consonant sounds are spoken very loudly and clearly and the person is close to the speaker, they often have a difficult time differentiating between certain sounds? Well, with being "Hard of Non-Verbal Hearing," the dead-obvious, hard-to-miss non-verbal cues I pick up on just fine are those hard vowel sounds of non-verbal communication. Meanwhile, those more subtle non-verbal cues and that less-obvious, pragmatic body-language and gesturing I tend to miss or in the very least, misinterpret and twist to form a completely different message.
So, instead of making a confused face and cuffing my ear inferring I can't hear, I am instead left making that same blank stare, really focusing on the person but missing those valuable non-verbal messages. It's really hard for me to tell exactly when I'm hearing and when I'm not hearing (non-verbally, that is). And even though I now know how to concentrate and force myself to give eye-contact, I don't send enough facial expression when I talk to other people. This seems to send the message to people that something is wrong with me. But I do know what's going on when people talk behind my back. I may not be gifted but I'm not stupid. Well, if a person doesn't know me they might think I'm a bit slow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098374068

Book preview

Plan

Chapter 1: Mark Smith on…The Wrong Way to Open Doors

I remember what it was like being a college student with Asperger’s Syndrome. Some of the common norms of living in college dormitories were considered by many to be common sense or common knowledge but to me these mannerisms or norms were not coming naturally. I often displayed some pretty awkward, sketchy behavior. The worst part about that is I wasn’t even aware of how different I was acting. In a sense, this Asperger’s Syndrome patient is no stranger to the wrong ways to make new friends. Most specifically, my biggest and most commonly-made error in the realm of friend-making is my consistent and frequent attempts to make new friends by practicing in the art of befriending the perfect stranger.

One example of some of this different behavior I would display involved the concept of knocking before entry into a room. While it is apparently a common form of courtesy to knock on a door before entering into a room, the thought never occurred to me that this is what a person is supposed to do. I guess this one weakness of mine can be viewed in many different ways. It all depends on which point of view you are looking at it from. From my perspective, I was just entering into peoples’ rooms and for some reason people sometimes tattled on me after I left their room. From the perspective of the people whose rooms I entered into, I was considered me to be harassing them. I think people were annoyed by the fact that I would often simply assume I could come and go as I please. This concept of entering into and out of dorm rooms whenever one pleases might sound a bit creepy but imagine if the victim of the inappropriate room entry is a young woman. Imagine how scared a young woman would feel if she felt like a man was following her and entering into her room. People might think I was trying to stalk the person. This was especially true in my case because I used to have a habit of following people around. I have a lifelong habit of being very outgoing with people to a point where it starts getting to be borderline creepy to many people. In other words, I have always had the tendency to be overly revealing about myself and my life secrets to people I don’t even know.

Please allow me to explain this in a little more detail. I mean that I just start talking about things and asking people questions about things. These people might be complete strangers I don’t even know but I will just start talking to them as though they are my best friends. As a person who has Asperger’s Syndrome, I don’t always know the rules about how you treat the perfect stranger differently than a best friend or acquaintance. There are certain things you can talk about with your friends or family that you should not talk about to the perfect stranger. I don’t always know that. I will just start talking to them as though I know them as one of my own. Eventually, one would wait for that trademark one-liner, Do I know you? That one-liner often hurts my feelings because I was only trying to be nice to those people who were apparently pushing me away. I never had many friends so I often get very lonely. All I want is some people to talk to.

Often when I say meet people, I often mean just talking to random people in public places and treating them as though they were close friends or family. Whenever I treat the perfect stranger as though they are close friends of mine, I often completely overlook the fact that I don’t even know these people. I often do this because I am desperate. I might be aware in the back of my mind that what I am doing is wrong and sort of creepy but I might be too stubborn to give up on wanting to meet new people. It’s as though no matter how aware I am of the rules I just ignore them because I get angry and frustrated of those rules. I hate feeling ignored and I want people to listen to me and I am often willing to do whatever it takes to get people to listen to me. That overly outgoing aspect of my personality and my tendencies toward talking to perfect strangers all the time as though I know them is just an act of desperation and I often figure that if I didn’t try to make friends this way, there wouldn’t be many other ways I could meet people. So pretty much, If this doesn’t work, then I don’t know what will. This extra outgoing behavior I often display while in public is often, by my opinion, a last ditch effort to get to meet some people and speak with people outside of my family circle. It’s kind of one of those last chance attempt sort of concepts and I rarely ever even begin to consider the more appropriate ways of meeting people…and many times, this inability of me to learn the proper ways to meet people and make new friends overwhelms my parents and I often mistake my parents’ concerns for me as bitterness or resentment towards me for being so different. Then, I often get all depressed because I become convinced that my parents are automatically assuming that this behavior of mine is no more than a mere attempt to draw attention to myself. But if my parents think that, I would have to say that I am not looking for negative attention. I just want to get on the right track and start making some new acquaintances and it hurts my feelings whenever I feel as though my parents assume that I am deliberately pushing people away so that I don’t have to deal with people interactions; as a matter of fact, the situation is quite the opposite. I am desperate to interact with people and so much so that I often rush into social interactions ill-prepared with inadequate social relation skills and poor communication skills.

Chapter 2: Mark Smith on…Generation Differences

I always wondered how different generations would have reacted to people with Asperger’s Syndrome. My father is a great guy. A man couldn’t have asked for a better father. He is just an aging flower child who comes from a time known as the 1960s. One day, I asked my father how the Hippies and baby-boomers would have reacted to people like me who have Asperger’s Syndrome. Nobody had created a diagnosis for the disability back then. In the words of my father, They probably would have looked at it in a very non-diagnostic way. All that diagnosing, classifying, categorizing, and grouping of people into tight molds was not popular during the 1960s. We believed in just being ourselves and letting people live their lives, free of all those diagnoses and sickness classifications and everything like that. The 60s were about being free and living to do whatever you want to do. I asked, Oh, and do you think that was a good thing, you know like not looking at it in terms of me having a disability? Dad said, Well, it was good because people wouldn’t treat you like you’ve got some disease. They wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, look at this guy. He’s a goner. He’s got that disease. You’d better keep away from him.’ People just loved one another for who they were. It’s not like today. People helped one another. No one was too weird for the 60s.

I then commented, So people were coming together in unison and it didn’t matter if you were a bit different from everybody else? Dad said, Pretty much. I said, Dad, I recognize that the 60s were your generation. You were in your prime during the 1960s and that Counterculture Movement. What was it like living in the 60s? Dad answered, Well Mark, the 60s were a very interesting time. There were many people who would come together as brothers and sisters following a common cause. There were also closed- minded people as there are in any generation. There was very interesting music coming out. People were getting drafted to go fight in Viet Nam. It wasn’t like it is today? You know nowadays people don’t get drafted to go fight in Iraq but during the Viet Nam war if you got drafted, you had to go fight. When I asked my Uncle Melvin, What were the 60s like? he answered, The 60s were a very chaotic time. There were good things about them and there were bad things about them, just like there is of any time period. On Asperger’s Syndrome…Nobody knew what the disease was during my father’s 1960s generation so people just thought that it was a matter of personality uniqueness, oddness, quirkiness, and unusualness, as opposed to any specific psychological disorder. I am certain that as far as understanding of different disabilities including Autism has improved greatly since the days of Woodstock Rock and Roll, the Brady Bunch, the Hippies and Counterculture Movement, and also when Incense and Peppermints’ song, Strawberry Alarm Clock was a hit song.

Somehow, it seems to me that the more youthful population is better at understanding what Asperger’s Syndrome is a truly serious and debilitating disability while the aging Flower Children just view my quirky behavior as a personality trait. Your choice – a trait without a name or a walking disorder with some chance of a distant cure.

Chapter 3: Mark Smith on…Special Interests

For as long as I can remember, I always recall having some sort of special interest going. Whether it was tar on the road and the various colors and shadings of it or thickness of the pavement and my god-given talent to determine how old a road’s pavement surface was, coin collecting, battery collections, or even audio and video cassette tape collecting (or most recently, non-flat-screen, non-HD Cathode-Ray Tube Television sets from the mid and late 1990s), I always had some sort of collection growing. As my father agrees, since my mind always sees a whole ton of facts and tiny little details but is always unable to decipher a big picture, I have always been bogged down by all those little details and the end result is always me getting obsessed with some sort of narrow and intense special interest. Since my mind always sees this and that and all the internal details of things, I always obsess on those little details and then in the process lose sight of the big picture. That’s sort of the same reason that even if I am successful at determining a person’s body language, I always see a whole ton of facts and literal things but I can’t figure out what the overall thing that person is thinking is. I just think, Oh, she’s mad now and Oh, now she’s happy, and She seems frustrated now and Now, she’s sad but I only see things as they happen but at the same time, I am never able to determine a big picture. I think this is true because my mind is wired differently and for as long as I can remember, I feel that my mind being wired this way has always led to me having various side-hobbies and intense Special Interests.

At one point, I asked my father, Hey Dad, what does it mean to have an over- dramatization of the way you see peoples’ personalities or the world? They say people with Asperger’s Syndrome do it a lot. Then Dad said, Maybe Asperger’s Syndrome makes it difficult for the affected individuals to see things on a larger general scale including their place within this larger universe. They tend to see things on a narrow point of view in which they hone in on such precision that is narrow, deep, and obsessive. This tunnel vision enables a narrow and focused look such that the Asperger’s Syndrome person, like a child, is sometimes caught in their own experience that is immediate and not generalized. Maybe Asperger’s Syndrome individuals like to create their own world like in the ‘World According to Mark’ because they have difficulty seeing a larger picture and bigger concepts as they actually exist so they create their own world with its own sets of rules and ideologies as a comfort factor for that lack of a context with the real world. This ‘World According to Mark’ provides the comforting factor that one has their place in a certain universe that Asperger’s Syndrome tends to rob people of. I replied, That sounds good, Dad. Thank you for your little contributions to this article. Your comments are well-appreciated here.

Chapter 4: Mark Smith on…Radio Special Interests

I think you can tell by now that radio is my dominant "special interest. I am a college graduate in my mid 20s. In college, I was known by many of my colleagues as the kid who can never put down his walkman. People always tell me I sound like [I’m] in radio" but I’m not. If you would like, I could send you a copy of my résumé.

It used to be that I was fascinated by radio DX-ing and figuring what the radio stations for different markets were…As the radio landscape got more and more commercial and Media Consolidation swept the nation, however, I was soon to become more fascinated by the remaining independent radio stations holding the Adult Contemporary, Hot Adult Contemporary, 2000s POP (not Top 40), and 80s/90s POP that have still never been bought out by the larger players and are still locally-owned-and- operated.

Oh, and I am also a huge advocate of the Internet Radio Equality Act. I have recently called up my state Senator to recite that message from The SaveNetRadio Coalition website. It’s the struggling, low-budget radio stations I crave most, which falls in line with my delight over narrow special interests. Any vague hope of this kind of radio station ever reaching the world of online radio depend on some sort of resolution being reached to these ridiculous fees surrounding online radio here in the United States. Did you know that practically all the radio stations broadcasting from Canada now streams online? I know streaming will always be more expensive here in the US but a negotiation needs to be reached. Things just don’t seem to make any sense when satellite radio and cable radio pays 50% of what Internet Radio pays. I think a negotiation should be made that would make online streaming affordable for any radio station that is terrestrial AM or FM in origin and has a legal Call sign assigned by the FCC. So broadcasting your very own radio station from your attic on Live365 would still be next to impossible but very tiny, unique, creative, "How radio should be done" AM or FM radio stations with legal call signs could have an easier time affording online streaming.

Chapter 5: Mark Smith on…Addiction

Dear Rhonda,

Although I have no chemical addictions, it appears that that cross-addiction has bitten me hard psychologically. I never drank alcohol or caffeine, been addicted to any form of drug or narcotic, and have never once gambled in my entire life…But when it comes to recording radio stations, however, oh man even a dozen tapes is never enough! I just want more and more and more! I can become so addicted to that that if I had a girlfriend I would become so sidetracked by my aspirations of month-long excursions up to Northern New Hampshire and spending all my time tuning into and recording obscure radio stations from hotel rooms that the girl might just up and say, I’m outta here! So although there are no chemicals involved, would you still consider this a harmful addiction? Yeah, sorry dear this will only take a second, What… Oh, I’ve just gotta flip this tape over. I’ll be right back in that bed in no time.

Sometimes I would become so preoccupied with tuning into the stations that I skipped meals. That could be harmful to health. Although alcohol or caffeine hold no influence in my life, I have had a lifelong struggle with strong cravings for junk food and lots of empty calorie foods, as well as fattening things like cheese, cheese cake, cake, orderves, BBQ, Macaroni & Cheese, bad Chinese food like Crab Rangoon & Fried Orange Chicken. I do a great job at confronting this problem by not purchasing this stuff so it is not there to eat, but if offered it I usually lose it…just like a recovering alcoholic could lose it with just one drink. How do you think the old pot belly and heart problems runs in my family…Lucky for me I actually do rather well at resisting and as a result I spend most of my life wanting this food but very minimal time actually eating this food? In that case, stress due to my poor ability to handle it because of inadequate experiences with life’s real problems could also hurt my health. Even when all is well, stress can make your heart work overtime and can raise your blood pressure. Just ask your father. By experiencing your situations you have been facing, you have been building up an immunity to stress.

Chapter 6: Mark Smith on…Middle School Days

During my school days and my teenage days, I probably fit pretty well into that stereotype of being that bashful, pimple-faced, dorky, very wimpy kid who keeps glancing over at girls he has a crush on (usually the more innocent and well-behaved ones, not the tough ones) but then the instant the girls of interest look his way he wimps out. Just think back to your school days and try to recall that irritating and annoying dorky (like a white suburban version of Steve Urkel) kid who wouldn’t stop looking at you but never said a word and then during recess he got beaten up by bullies on the playground. That kid would have most likely been similar to me in many ways. I was the real pre-Spiderman Peter Parker on the school playground during my days as a teenager (the mid 1990s).

Just think of Peter Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie, a movie that was very popular when I myself was a teenager, let me tell you. Take a look at some of the things that happen to the Peter Brady character throughout the film: bully problems, fainting in health class, the girl he had a crush on already having a boyfriend (and a quite strong and intimidating one, I might add). His voice was changing, which also led to more embarrassment. Also, take note of what happened to him in the school cafeteria when the school bullies almost nailed Peter Brady with a pizza to the face or when he was at the dance with the girl he had a crush on and then the bully scared him off and stole the girl from him and started dancing with her instead. Or perhaps George McFly, who never had the courage to stand up to Biff Tannen and then Biff tried to move in on the girl he had a crush on. Many times, if I had a crush on a girl, it was most likely the scenario that a mean and nasty person with a lot of muscles also liked that girl and I had to head for the hill s or face a beating, so to speak. Or maybe I was like a white suburban version of Steve Urkel talking in my nasally voice and always having run-ins with school bullies all the time. Believe me, I am no stranger to embarrassment and humiliation at the hands of school bullies and many times I tried to play it cool by brushing it off and trying to kiss and make up with the person (so to speak) who was giving me a hard time.

Just for random facts, this one time when I was in 2nd grade, a school bully tugged on my pants. He did not intend for them to fall down but, egad, that’s just what happened. Those pants hit the floor…and just in time for the rest of the class to come walking into the room! Fast-forward to chemistry class in the 11th grade when the teacher would warn us about the high-risk hazard-level acidity levels in various chemicals we were working with and how important it was that we try not to spill the liquids or get any of that stuff on our skin. For some reason, the more cautious I got and the more fearful I got of the potential hazards of those high-risk liquids we were working with, the more my hands shook and the more jumpy I became and the more jerky my motions became. One time I almost dropped a flask full of some kind of very corrosive substance. Had I dropped that flask, I would have gotten all the stuff all over me and the girl I was working with. The instant the girl sensed how easily frightened I was, the girl started smirking at me and giving me looks of pity and then talking behind my back. Before I knew it, she had a brand new boyfriend. Needless to say, that new boyfriend of hers slammed me into the lockers a couple times when tried to talk with his new girlfriend (a.k.a. my former crush). Okay, I get the message, Mr. Mean and Nasty Bully Kid! Oh well. I guess there is no sense in trying to get the girl all the bad guys want, according to Bowling for Soup.

Sometimes, my emotional strength and sense of character would get tested whenever I got presented with a flattering offer from my tormenters where they would promise not to bother me anymore but that would actually, between the lines, hint that the bullying was in fact not over. For example, sometimes the bullies would try to play make-believe and pretend that they were turning over a new leaf and being friendly to me. They might tell me that we have a lot in common and that we should really be friends. They would start being so friendly that I would grow suspicious that they were being deceivingly friendly and that they actually had something else in mind. I was weak- minded, however, so I played along. I wanted so badly to believe that the bullies were ready to kiss and make up and that my days of being tormented and bullied endlessly were now finally over. Meanwhile, however, the bullies would be sneakily swiping various belongings of mine without me looking. Fast forward to when I am waiting in the lunch line and the lunch lady in the cafeteria says, Okay, Mark, that’ll be a buck-fifty. I would be searching my pockets frantically, only to discover that the money was missing! Meanwhile, I would think, angrily, Hey, those bullies tricked me! I can’t believe I fell for that trick. That is, like the oldest trick in the book! I felt like such an idiot, as if I am a complete moron or something. Oh, how humiliating! I am, like, so embarrassed now it is not even funny…Totally.

Of course, this bad experience with lockers wasn’t my first situation I ever experienced during my teenage days in the mid and late 1990s. I recall one time in the 7th grade when I tried to ask a girl out to a school dance. Did that girl say yes? Well, let’s just say I ended up being slammed into the lockers. Darn, I never realized that girl could be so strong. I suppose she didn’t want to go to that dance with me. Oh boy. Well, I always did have a way with women. Oh well, at least I gathered up the courage to ask…but I suppose asking is half the battle and if the girl does not want to go with you then you are out of luck. As I say, girlfriend-getting was never really a strong point of mine and I always had a way with women (being unappealing to them, so to speak). But hey, at least I asked the girl. Hey, I wouldn’t have known that the girl was grossly disgusted with me and even the very thought of going out with me had I not asked her if she didn’t want to go out with me (or rather wanted to go out with me). You never know if you don’t ask, I guess. Then one time in the 10th grade these kids locked me in my own locker. When a friend happened to walk by the locker, he said, Hey, Mark! Is that you? How did you get in there? I just said, Oh, let’s just say it’s a long story. The kid said, Well, are you alright? Is it any way uncomfortable in there? I replied, No, not really. It’s much more comfortable than I thought it would be. It’s so peaceful and quiet in here. I almost wish I could stay here in this locker for the rest of the day. The kid said, Yeah well, would you like me to help you out of there? I replied, That might be good thing to do. The kid then opened up the locker and I prepared to spring out of that locker to go to class. Oh yeah, that reminded me. I asked the kid, What time is it? When the kid told me the time, I said, Oh man, could you please put me back in there and let me stay in there for another 20 minutes? The kid asked me, Why is that? What’s wrong, Mark? I replied, I have US History class with Mr. Joseph. It’s a very hard class. The man is like a total genius and he makes us do all kinds of very tricky and difficult assignments. You’ve gotta put me back into that locker. Please put me back in that locker. The kid just told me, half-jokingly, Come on, Mark. Get to class. I just said (somewhat to myself and also to the kid who helped me out of the pickle), Oh man. Well, at least I tried. Much to my dismay, my story about being stuffed into a locker by bullies was not a very believable one. What would I tell Mr. Joseph next, that the dog ate my homework? Well, actually that did really happen to me once in elementary school. One could only guess whether or not the teacher believed me. Let’s just put it this way. Do you know your A, B, C’s? A, B, C, D, E…eh, well, here’s your grade, Mark. I guess you can say that this high school locker experience and this dog eating my homework in elementary school experience both did not really factor into helping me make the mark in school.

Speaking of bullies, I am going to tell you a story that I think you will like. Remember how Napoleon Dynamite was in the locker room at his high school. The school bullies asked the awkward kid (who is somewhat similar to me) to recap how he had spent his summer. Napoleon tried to impress the bullies by telling what I always believed were white lies to those bullies in an effort to scare them off so they will not bother him. Napoleon told the bullies that he had spent his past summer with his cousins in Alaska hunting wolverines. When the bully asked Napoleon if he shot any, he insisted that he had wounded about 50 of the deadly wolverines he had encountered, employing the use of a freakin’ 12-gage shotgun. The bullies just laughed at him and the next thing you know it he is in a headlock. Then, of course, there was that way he always used to show off his tetherball skills to his female students. Oh my goodness! That so totally would have been me! Then after Summer Wheatly (portrayed by Haylie Duff, the older sister of a favorite celebrity of mine, Hilary Duff) returns to Napoleon Dynamite a slip of paper where his friend, Pedro asked if she would accept his permission to take her to the school dance, writing a big and bold rejection in form of the single word, NO!! it skips ahead to a point in time when the bully walks by Napoleon Dynamite and then slams him into the lockers. Then roughly 5 to 10 seconds later the locker-slammed Napoleon returns a weak kick. Of course, when Napoleon asked to see one of the pins during a vote for Summer campaign, tosses it, and then runs off, that would have been something I might have done. The incident with the potato tots in the classroom was also a situation that resembled what used to happen to me in school. One time, the same exact incident happened between me and a school bully, only the thing that got squashed by the jerk’s foot was a can of Sprite. Eew, what a mess! Oh man, then you would never guess just where on my pants the liquid from the destroyed can of sprite spilled into! Oh boy, then we had a situation relating to pants all over again! Everybody thought I, well, you know what! Oh well, that Sprite can incident was nothing. I remember one school prank that used to be very popular back when I was a teenager (and a student at the Carlisle Middle School in Carlisle, Massachusetts). The idea was to open up a can of chocolate pudding and place it in the middle of a person’s chair when the person least expects it. The laughs come when the person takes a seat and they get all this brown goop all over the bottom of their pants. I can’t tell you how many countless times I had that done to me.

Regardless of all those other pranks pulled on me during my teenage days (7th grade during the spring of 1996, to be exact), one of the most memorable experiences with school bullying happened when an attractive girl (one of whom I had a crush on) told me to please kiss her. Of course, knowing me one could only imagine how hesitant I was to do so. Well, eventually I finally gave this girl a kiss. Suddenly, out of nowhere a big and strong male student with a big build and all sorts of muscles sprang to his feet from behind the table and then he came over to where I was standing and said, Hey you there! Are you hitting on my girlfriend? Stop hitting on my girlfriend! Get away from my girlfriend! He then tossed me over the table. I only weighed about 115 pounds as a teenager so I was not difficult to get flying over the table. The girl’s boyfriend wore a football jersey and obviously played on the school football team. Of course, his arms did not jiggle like mine. They were rock hard and full of muscle, much to my most painful discovery. The kid told me, Hey MerkSmitt! I don’t ever, ever want to find you around my girlfriend again. I just turned to him and said (as sweet and innocent as ever), Are you having a bad day? I guess I came at a bad time. You guys have a nice day. I’ll come back when your boyfriend is in a better mood. The kid than called me all sorts of names, including a wuss, a wimp, a dork-face, a coward, a kiss-up, a Mr. goody-two- shoes and a chicken but of course I was not bothered one bit by the round of name calling. Looking back on the whole situation, I think the boyfriend wanted to fight with me more than anything. He wanted to see what I was made of and he would stop at nothing to get me into a fight with either him or any of his friends. He just wanted to fight with me and he wanted the specified physical confrontation to happen so badly that he was trying to come up with any excuse he possibly could.

Mark Smith on…Counter-Masculinity and Over-Protective Boyfriends

I think regret is the number one causer of disloyalty. Regret leads to stress in the daily life so don’t regret. You’ve heard the phrase, What have I done! before, I’m sure. But what you do is done already. What’s done is done. No regret is the best regret. I always look toward the future and that is how I avoid stress.

People like me who are often called a geek, spaz, dork, wimp, nerd, or wuss always seem to be the most caring people out there. We are also the ones who tend to get bullied the most and that is a shame. Then other kids would call me a fag or faggot because they would think my over-kindness is a sign of counter-masculinity. I don’t know what it is but most straight men (including myself) tend to get very angry when a bully uses that name. I also know, however, that fighting is never the answer, even when name-calling is present.

Sometimes the teased individual may break the rules a little in an attempt to feel a bit of power. The teased people are not always 100% innocent. I know because I’ve been down that road before. What’s worse is that the most attractive girls always end up being taken by abusive, strong boyfriends who are quick to think you are stepping into their territory just as an excuse to kick your ass just for the hell of it because you look pitiful and weak. How do I know this? Life experience, believe me. Those men, to me, are the ones who are the slime of the earth.

Mark Smith on…The Tough Guy’s Girl

This gets me into the next concept I am about to write about. I have spoken about this concept many times but only through spoken word. I never wrote about it before. One thing I could never stand in a girl is something I call the tough guy’s girl. What is this? Well, the tough guy’s girl is my own slang term for women who find pleasure in sicking their boyfriends on boys they don’t like or that they think are wimpy or weak. Summer Wheatly (portrayed by Haylie Duff, the older sister of a favorite celebrity of mine, Hilary Duff) seemed to have done this in the movie, Napoleon Dynamite, always sicking her football player of a boyfriend on the weak and defenseless wimpy kids of the high school. My father tells me this character trait is often influenced by low self-esteem. The tough guy’s girl often does not feel sure of themselves so they wish to seek comfort any way they can. In the case of what happened to me one time in the 7th grade, this girl was a cheerleader of whom her boyfriend was a big and powerful football player. The scam that she and her boyfriend were supposedly pulling was to get all the wimpy, weak, dorky kids to kiss the girl so then her boyfriend could pop out of hiding at the last second and exclaimed that the kid was hitting on his girlfriend. That was supposedly a perfect excuse to beat up the poor defenseless kid. Many kids got beaten up from falling victim to this scam, including yours truly. I was obviously one of the victims to this scam. Of course, nobody came to any of our rescue because all the other kids really cared about whenever a fight broke out was that it was good entertainment. People wanted to see somebody kicking some ass and since the victims to the scam were often scrawny weaklings like me they often knew that it was a no-brainer that they were going to see someone get seriously hurt. Cool, huh? Well, it all depends on the perspective you are looking at it from.

Mark Smith on…Total Wimpiness

But my reactions to certain medical descriptions like that sort of spills over into other aspects of my life. For example, I was always afraid to jump off of high diving boards, had no problem with heights unless there involved a high risk of falling, and someone who always hoped that any girls I knew could help protect me from bullies (rather than me protecting the girls I liked). For example, those scene in Napoleon Dynamite when the bullies were giving the protagonist a hard time, back in the mid 1990s when I was often in that predicament, if any girls I knew well were around I would have hoped they could have been around so I could start talking with them so the bullies wouldn’t have me isolated anymore. Then the girls would often get perturbed with me because they would sense I never had enough courage to stand up for myself and they seemed to be annoyed with the fact that I tended to be a scrawny weakling.

But I always wondered what most girls’ reactions would be to guys who wimp out too much or who are scrawny weaklings. Let’s put it this way. Sometimes as a teenager when some girls I knew in school were playing around and then pushed me not too hard and I just went flying. And usually by complete coincidence the girl who ended up beating me up by accident happened to be one of the smaller and scrawnier-looking ones. Then they would often laugh after seeing me go flying and I might say, laughing, Well, thanks for your concern. Oh yeah, and then there was that time during the high school’s Senior Prom when I thought that the door to the hotel the prom was taking place at was locked. My prom date didn’t have to try that hard and the door opened right up. I felt all embarrassed and the girl sort of smirked and had herself a little laugh. Then she said jokingly, What’s a matter, Mark. Are you getting a little weak? She than lightly punched my upper arm (right where the triceps are supposed to be) and I just held my arm and said, Ow! That hurt. The girl then just said, Oh come on, Mark. I didn’t hit you that hard. Then I said, I feel so safe around you. The girl then looked at me funny but I have no idea what she was trying to tell me with the face she gave me.

Unfortunately, she never told me what she was thinking so to this day I have no clue what that face meant. I think some friends of mine tried to explain to me what a look of pity face is and tried to get me to memorize it through rote memory. I think I now assume that whenever somebody makes that face that automatically means they feel pity for someone but I cannot remember the face off the top of my head. Oh yeah, and did I mention that in various games of truth or dare (a well-known game amongst teens and tweens during the 1990s) I learned that all the girls I knew best as a teenager could beat me at an arm wrestle seemingly effortlessly…even the girls who appeared to be the weaker ones via appearance; although the girls who were weaker beat me but the victory wasn’t as extreme as it was for some of the stronger ones. Oh yeah, and sometimes my backpack got too heavy for me to lift it myself…and the really creepy thing there was the fact that I was not joking!

Mark Smith on…Nerdiness

Oh, after watching more episodes of my favorite show it has become perfectly clear that I am a completely different person. If I didn’t have learning disabilities I probably could have aced school but coulda-woulda-shoulda never got people anywhere in life. No, I’m not brilliant but I’m smart enough and that’s all I have to be.

Anyway, I am more of the eccentric, one-of-a-kind, different-taste kind of geek. This means that I am not the kind that does crossword puzzles, fixes computers, or answer trivia. I am just unique and have a very uncommon taste for pop music that has gone out of style long ago. I’m different but not really the nerdy type of different, more the one-of-a-kind and eccentric different. Whenever I was a DJ at school radio stations, I would always have very interesting ways of doing the job.

When I had a radio show at college, I always played the songs that were less popular! I know, but it made me happy. People were always trying to tell me to at least try to pretend I liked all the popular Current Top 40 music that the in-crowd listened to but I continued to lay down the obscurities and eccentric playlists just because I wanted to do what I felt happy doing. It just made me happy when I did it. A close friend I have in the radio business kept telling me that if I want to make it in the radio industry I need to learn to go with the flow a little more. I have other ideas but they don’t seem very realistic (although they would make me happy if I could carry the idea out).

I like the ABC show, Ugly Betty a lot because of that theory of being different (in your own unique way) but wanting to do something that makes you happy even if the particular industry is swaying toward a more manipulative, narrow-minded direction. Well, I will say that Radio is more of my direction. If I was ever forced to work at a fashion magazine the publication would probably go bankrupt in days! I was always very indifferent to trends…That’s the kind of different I am.

Chapter 7: Mark Smith on…Square Peg Into A Round Hole – Fitting In

Have you ever had the temptation to help someone out who looks a bit different than you? For example, did you ever see someone with a known disability and you feel a sudden need to be extra nice to them? I saw an episode of the Family Guy (one of my favorite television shows) and there was one episode that addressed public reactions to people with disabilities. That episode, named A Hero Sits Next Door addressed the fact that the Griffin’s new next door neighbor, Joe Swanson was a paraplegic and required the use of a wheelchair to get around. People got curious of Joe Swanson’s whole wheelchair situation and started giving him all this extra attention. They started to treat him like a hero and people asked him how he got into that wheelchair. People seemed to look at his wheelchair not as a crutch but instead as a battle scar (or at least it would seem). Peter Griffin begins to get jealous of all this special treatment that his new neighbor was receiving. Eventually, Peter Griffin let the cat out of the bag and confessed that he believed Joe Swanson was receiving all this extra attention from his neighbors mainly due to his, well, newly-found physical challenges. He made some very immature and thoughtless remarks about people in wheelchairs, including, this particularly cruel and cynical one: You’re not supposed to admire wheelchair people. You’re supposed to feel sorry for them.

To make a long story short, that episode had me thinking about something. I started to wonder if it is really necessary to go through the extra effort to try to make people with disabilities and all sorts of different challenges feel more welcome. I support some sort of middle-of-the-road approach. I believe I will take a stance that falls between what Peter Griffin thought and what his other neighbors thought about the topic of people with disabilities. I believe that it is best to not overwhelm people with disabilities with too much unwanted attention or shower them with too many gifts but I also think it is important to always store in the back of your mind that the person with disabilities is a bit different and, thereby, make some extra efforts to appropriately accommodate to those people’s differences. (For instance, don’t park in handicap parking spaces if you are not handicap and be aware of whether or not your business has a handicap access ramp.) Peter Griffin made a good point. He was a complete asshole for making that statement but he did make a good point. Yes, it is very important to be generous to people with various challenges but we don’t want to fall into that trap of appearing that we are only being nice to those people because we feel sorry for them. Sometimes, just as ignoring that somebody has a disability can be rather irritating for the person with the disabilities, I’ll bet that receiving too much attention or having people be mysteriously too friendly to them also gets on the nerves of the person with disabilities. Well, we’ve gotta give him a break. After all, he is Peter Griffin and who could stay mad at this guy? We’ve gotta love Peter Griffin.

Mark Smith on…Problems are Problems, No Matter How Big or Small

I heard most of a friend’s conversation this one time back in 2005 and I was very sorry to hear all that. I told various friends and family members how guilty I felt when listening to that speech. Hearing people spill out major life experiences affecting life and death makes me beat myself up for every single second I can remember taking for granted the advantages I have been given in life. I feel so ashamed. I am so sorry for that person’s unfortunate experiences in life and don’t want the individual to think I am any better or superior to them, vice-versa. Deep down, we are all the same.

If it makes the person feel any better, I have endured my own heartaches throughout this mysterious thing called Life although I am sorry to inform that they were all based around things somewhat more trivial than those experiences. I am very sure the individual may have heard me consistently beating myself up for being picked on in school or even pushed into lockers for trying to ask girls out (without first making sure they have boyfriends!). Wait! Don’t get jealous of the issues that may seem minor compared to yours. Problems are Problems, no matter how big or small and it doesn’t always take much in order to hurt feelings and scar personal outlooks. The reoccurring fear of being single your whole life is depressing in its own way.

Some people are chick magnets and get all the girls, friends, and jobs. I’m actually not one of those people. My brother may have girlfriends from time to time but I on the other hand…Well, girls get weirded out by me, people misunderstand me and feel sorry for me and question my mental sanity, and my lack of appeal makes it difficult for me to get a job! Also, my overly-sheltered lifestyle growing up has made the transition from College to the Work Force a shock to my system and now I am finding it very difficult to find a job! Reason being that I haven’t the slightest clue about what it actually means to really work. Ask your father about this personal flaw of mine.

Many times throughout college I walked by dorm rooms and heard people talking about how sorry they felt for me and I received all kinds of pity behind my back. It made me hold the magnifying glass up to how pathetic and hopeless I sometimes feel like I am. And if one feels this way about his or her self, how could you expect anyone else to hold a higher opinion? A sob story this may be but this story just goes to show you the unpolished, untamed atmosphere of real life. Behind all those obsessions on backwoods music, radio stations off in the wilderness without websites, and being the one who hogs all the attention is actually lots of insecurity, uncertainty, and fear about whether or not I am adequate to be accepted in society outside of my parents’ protection. Deep down I am actually begging to lead a normal life and not be that spoiled kid who has it all but has no friends. Backwoods music is one of the things I hide behind to shelter myself from that dark, scary world that you seem to have a better knowledge of than I. This person has definitely beaten me there.

So what could be tragic in my life? Well, I tend to cling to my father too much rather than go out and make friends outside my immediate family. It always feels so much easier to retreat and revert back to my weirdest as opposed to confronting those challenges I am faced with. This is exactly what some other people with Asperger’s Syndrome have always done and it is the sole contributor to how weird most of them have ended up now.

Mark Smith…for Fair Compensation for All Forms of Disabilities

I am a very obsessive person who is also a perfectionist. If I had some sort of mental or physical ailment I would always make a very conscious effort to have the things I needed and when I needed them and to find a way to best compensate for deficiencies caused by the ailments I would be suffering from. Whatever