Autistic Students

    By David Rubin & Kenny Velez

     High functioning autistic people may be developmentally disabled, but we have normal intelligence and can even go to college, like Kenny and myself. What we lack are basic interpersonal skills. For example, neither one of us have any idea of how to get romantic. I, David, am 59 and have yet to have my first date. Kenny hopes not to go that long.
      Because we are not very social, Kenny tends to be very quiet. He doesn't get involved in conversations with more than two people. That could be a problem, or maybe your just too loud. I go to the opposite extreme and try to be the center of attention, and I am very loud. We also stop paying attention to conversations that bore us, like relationships and dating.
     There are also people like me, David, that "stim". that means, when I get very upset, I tend to make growling noises, scratch my head hard and chew on my fingers, My boss used to call me "scratchy" and my index fingers are extremely calloused. Kenny says, when he really gets angry, he'd like to punch someone or the wall, but he doesn't and I think this is normal.
      We both have problems keeping up with notes. It's an attention problem. We have problems splitting it between the teacher and our note books.
       Because of attention problems, Kenny has trouble taking tests in noisy class rooms. Fortunately, the college has set aside special class rooms for just such a reason.
        We also worry about being late. We spend too much time on something that has our attention and completely forget about time.
        I have trouble with my art classes. I tend to concentrate on one part of a body and it goes completely out of proportion with other parts of the body.
       We have organization problems. We both tend to procrastinate. Kenny didn't get his financial aid work done until the last minute and doesn't get his class work done till the last minute. Me too.
       I'm also very impatient and impulsive. My impulsiveness takes the form of an insatiable appetite. I'm morbidly obese and diabetic. Even my art teacher tells me I try to get pieces done too fast and encourages me to take my time.
   

Amateur Artist

The Amateur Artist

I am now an artist

abstract

outsider

disabled

autistic

You name the adjective!

I paint like

Rothko

Matisse

Klee

Whom ever I can.

I commit my art with

paper cut outs

scissors and paper

construction paper

school glue

acrylics paints

magenta 

scarlet red

brilliant blue

iridescent violet

 primary blue 

Kosher Chinese

I was looking for something I liked on a Chinese menu that was kosher. I finally gave up and ordered some tref. It reminded me of the old joke about New York. If your paranoid schizophrenic, come here. You won't get a cure, but your fears will be completely justified. I sometimes feel that way about Judaism and OCD.

Spill

I remember my mother used to complain about the haphazard way I used to throw things into the refrigerator. She used to complain that one day, it would all come falling out, and one day it did. Mom opened the refrigerator and a bottle of milk fell out, spilling all over the floor. Mom was furious, till I pointed at the spilled milk and said, "Mom, no use crying over that." She cracked up and all was forgiven.

Autism Work History

At age thirty, I finally got my four year degree, after ten years of trying, from the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. I then started a checkered work history, ranging from phone solicitor to substitute teacher. By age forty, I was so frustrated and depressed at my work history that I had a nervious break down and went to South Beach Psychiatric Hospital, were I got a job with their second hand shop.

It was there that Tom Siniscalchi offered jobs in a business he was starting, just for the mentally disabled. It was a custom screen printing shop and if they hired you, you weren't there for treatment or training. You were there to work. I had to get that job, so I went to the interview, impressed Tom with my degree and bag of butterscotch candy, and became one of the founding members of Special Tees.

I wish I could say I was still there, but after occupying several positions there, I ended up as a tool and screen cleaner, along side a man with an intellectual disability, my friend and coworker, Micheal Beally. At one point, he said he wished he were intelligent like me, to which I replied, I am as bright as me, and I'm sitting here, doing the same job as you. I hoped it made him feel better, because  it made me feel humiliated. By 2008, I left for medical reasons and never went back.

By Spring 2009, I went to Tom's next business. He too had left Special Tees and started a new custom screen printing shop PossibiliTees. I became the man who found potential customers on the net and gave that information to Tom, for him to solicit. I was quite happy at this job and held it till the business closed down at the end of 2012. After this, I had a short term intenship at a photography shop, finding potential businesses, as I had at PossibiliTees, but here I did some of the soliciting myself. I was quite proud of the fact that I had gotten a job without any consideration for my mental disability. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a short term job. Their internet connection was unreliable. I spent as much time doing nothing as work, so, as an act of conscience, I had to leave, and have done nothing since. 

Do you have a job for me?

Letter to newspapers about Ferguson

Congratulations Ferguson. You have lived down to the worst racial stereotypes. So many people have lost their jobs and businesses because you had to act like the N word. And do you think these businesses will be back? I wouldn't. I expect the owners of the burned out businesses will take their insurance money and reestablish their businesses in a place where there aren't so many N-words. Ferguson will remain a poor, burned out husk for decades!

 

David Rubin
15 Leverett Court
Staten Island, NY 10308

(718) 984-0207
(347) 782-6666

Christmas Dream

I had a dream last night. I dreamt that a local church held a contest for best Christmas display on a house. The pastor said it is how most Christians honor Jesus for Christmas. The usual winner is the house with the most lights and music playing, so one radical Christian got the idea to not add lights to his house, but to make the house itself light up and sing. He got every brick and shingle to glow, and make Christmas music as loud as a subway train. The kids cried, the wife yelled, the neighbors called the cops, but the house owner insisted he had a right to the radical house display based on his First Amendment right to show Jesus how much he loved him.