If you were to read the bio about my story at www.aspieandme.com you might be asking the question, "wouldn't you be better off if you didn't have Aspie in your life? You could add things like, he is the cause of everything you don't want in your life, your fears, your anxieties, your failures, your lack of confidence, your inability to recognise consequences of your actions where you have come close to ending your mortality"?
I actually wouldn't disagree with you except for one problem I would have to over come, how can I be without all of the upsets he causes but at the same time enjoy all the thinking out of the box ideas that keep me alive. You see Aspie is also the excitement in my life. He has an extraordinary talent to surprising me with skillsets I wouldn't believe possible at my age, to be incredibly physically fit and getting fitter by the day given that he has so many deficits in abilities that I sometimes wonder if what he enables me to achieve is sometimes just not worth the effort.
However, lets now take this problem of mine and turn it into a challenge. Because Aspie see's our world out of neuro-diverse eyes, he also considers our life as one big experiment. About a decade ago I was introduced to the life coach @rasheedogunlaru, you can see him in action by visiting www.rasaru.com. At the beginning of this paragraph I have begun the sentence including the word problem. Rasheed taught me to replace any negative word like problem or obstacle with the word challenge. He said to me invariably it is easier to succeed with a challenge than a problem or obstacle because a challenge is doing something positive and the former words are doing something negative. My challenge which I do admit has not occurred yet is getting completely back in control of Aspie.
Think of Aspie like a wild card. This past summer he caused me much grief, put me in hospital. Sometimes I just wish I could have him held onto tight reigns and I hope a lesson has been learned because returning to what occurred would be akin to me seeing if there was life after death. There is plenty of stories within the Aspie and me Book where coming close to finality occurred several times. Maybe I would be better off comparing Aspie to a cat with nine lives. The trouble is I haven't been counting how many I have lost and it might be the case that I need to be a cat with much more than nine lives.
Around a month ago I definitely came as close as I would like to certain death. You read thankfully not to often about cyclists who meet their untimely death and I was a hairbreadth away from that actually happening.
One of the positives Aspie has is being able to see round the corner because he has exceptional peripheral vision. He could quite easily stumble into something directly in front of him but find it far easier to spot something he needs to see far away.
We were cycling along a side street as it met up with a three lane dual carriageway. I looked to my right to make certain it was okay to turn left and cycle fast down the hill. But this is where Aspie takes control. You remember I wrote in the last paragraph great peripheral vision, this is all and well something that has saved my life on more than one occasion, but this time it didn't.
How many penalty charges I pick up caused by Aspie's inability to read a sign or to notice it is illegal to drive in a bus lane because he fails to be aware of the lane. Hurtling down in the inside lane it wouldn't have mattered if the vehicle that was in the same lane was only doing 20 mph it was doing probably in excess of double and we had just turned into it. I literally had to close my eyes and pray. It was only after the vehicle passed, had felt the swish of air as it did that I realised how lucky I was still alive, the vehicle was one of the @NationalExpress coaches. No doubt somewhere there is a driver who told a story about how a hapless cyclist cycled directly into his path and he hoped he wasn't killed on the spot. I was wonder whether @nationalexpress train their drivers to cope with trauma's such as Aspie's almost caused.
Anyway let me take you into Aspie's world, share with you a little more of his antics so you might be able to appreciate him under a better light. You might be I'm not so sure and in my book Aspie and Me, my character Hartley certainly does not appreciate him being in his life whatsoever. You will have to appreciate too that I did not know of Aspie's existence until I was 49 years old although I did suspect some fiend was destroying my life. But I have to be careful what I say, if Aspie is listening he would be asking me why I am comparing him to the Devil and my reply would be not me but Hartley.
Aspie was very jealous of what everyone else had and he didn't. They lived in mansions and drove Rolls or Bentley's and he lived in a penthouse flat. This flat was a wonderful choice, it cost back then in 1974, £35,000 and from Hornsey Lane in Highgate in North London it offered spectacular views to the south across the entire basin on London and to the north the suburbs of North London. My only wish was he could have just afforded another ten grand and got a flat right at the top of the hill in one of the more premier blocks.
Anyway with all my antique dealer friends who were either a half or full generation older there was no way Aspie wanted to emulate them in the car he wanted me to purchase for him. This is because Aspie see's his world built for speed. Having already travelled round the world more than once and in first class, including #Concorde more than once Aspie decided to find the not the sort of car you would want as an #antiquesdealer's car, a @Ferrari and his choice was the roomiest 2+2 so that the largest of the Chinese and Japanese vases and jardinieres could fit inside. So you can image Aspie has delivered to him his prized catch, a devil for a devil. You can read the story in Aspie and Me, I am afraid I am not going to tell you the whole story here how he wanted to see what came off better. You've got it, my car or the tree he hit.
My pride and joy smashed up only 72 hours after purchase. Enough said about the accident, the car spent three months off the road while dealers who had got used to it wondered where it was?
My car cost ten grand back then, a further ten grand in interest on the loan and ten grand in repairs, great investment and it was sold at the worst time, a measly £2,500 when petrol hit crazy prices and interest was around 23%. Hopefully #Brexit will not see this repeated. Not exactly the cheapest of boy's toys and at 3-five miles to the gallon when the accelerator was to the floor not exactly the cheapest sports car to run or to be chased by six police cars along the M5. Exeter to Bristol, 87 miles in 37 minutes and then from Bristol to London it was a similar model Ferrari and the case of who could keep up with who.
Luckily back then police cameras were in their infancy and the only chances of getting caught out was a blocked road, thankfully luck was on my side. So on the one hand while Aspie may have been born by the Devil he did bring some excitement into my life.
Now I must turn to what I don't like about Aspie and a more major incident that could have become more nasty than it actually was. Aspie likes to think he is the jack of all trades when it comes to fitness. Only a couple of years ago he had me indulging in #Brazillianjuijitsu cycling, swimming, working out in the gym and by the time he included #bouldering and #calisthenics, something had to go. Anyway during the course of the spring he found out another #sport he wanted me to take on. Something you would have thought a twenty year old would be better doing and not someone who was more than half a century. It was a sport where there were more chances of accidents occurring and every chance of bones being broken. But Aspie sadly does have his faults that can impact me detrimentally the hard way.
About seven years ago was in a relationship with a lady who had a cabin in the mountain resort of #Idyllwild. In my story aspie has this terrible fear a Tyrannosaurus is out to get him. Now you might be wondering why I am mentioning a T-Rex, what relevance could this be in this part of my story. A few winters before I was doing some skiing in Whistler and the following summer was going to do some mountain biking there. That was until someone tells Aspie the story about a cyclist who was beheaded by a Grizzly as he cycled down the mountain and the bear came out of nowhere. You see one of the qualms I have with Aspie is that he believes everything anyone tells him. it is up to me to compare whether the story is fact or fiction but when he is in his addictive mood it makes my life very tenuous and scares me.
Why I liked Idyllwild was because of Hummer Park https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/sbnf/recarea/?recid=26483 to which Aspie has had me hike to the summit a couple of times once without any water on board is the way he likes to precariously travel sometimes, just like he had us run out of fuel in the lion reserve in South Africa. All of this can be read in the Aspie and Me story; https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aspie-Me-Laurence-Mitchell/dp/1912256274
Anyway one day while having dinner at Cafe Aroma a favourite haunt of Herb Jeffries until a few years ago the eldest surviving member of Duke Ellington's Band whom I had fond memories of at his numerous poetry evenings. There is a room in the restaurant dedicated to him. Take a look should you visit. What make's www.cafearoma.org so special is jazz groups play their everyday and the have a wonderful art gallery supporting many artists.
Anyway I meet these two guys who ask me if I want to watch them do some rock climbing on Tahquitz rock the following morning and then offered me to give rock climbing a go. Although I was concerned about the risk of injury Aspie had me climb up a vertical rock face 150 feet off the ground at around 8,000 feet above sea level. Although I really enjoyed I never found the time to get heavily involved.
Anyway what I liked about San Jancinto Peak was there were no wild animals like bears or ,mountain lions and if there were they were never seen so that made Aspie feel safe and allowed me to wander around the mountain area.
https://socalhiker.net/hiking-mt-san-jacinto-via-marion-mountain-trail/
Anyway I just wish someone could have warned me, watch out Aspie's about. Words I needed to listen to, but words Aspie rarely allowed me to acknowledge. Coming down about 2,000 feet from the summit Aspie decides there could be a shortcut, a way down although a lot steeper it could cut a couple of hours of our descent. However in between this narrow ravine that was the way down was this tree trunk. Now until a mistletoe had become embedded into my right leg I never knew something as small as that could cause damage. Worse Aspie forgot to inform me that it was important I have a tetanus injection because the last thing I needed infection to set in and by then from the calf downwards the was quite a bit of blood fortunately more on the surface than anything else.
It was only after a good nights sleep and someone saying have you been to the hospital that I decided I had better. Hence something Aspie is blind to as I more recently had to learn the hard way this summer when Aspie decided to try out his own version of @parkouruk on a wall by a local park. He got me to jump multiple times onto the top of the wall 32" off the ground. A passer by says to Aspie, what you are doing is amazing although you must be a bit crazy. Sensible words Aspie wasn't prepared to listen to. A couple of minutes pass and the inevitable occurs and Aspie slips and I have to face the consequences of his actions.
The following photograph I warn you is not at all appealing. Believe it or not Aspie decided there was no point worrying my GP because of the media the talk was if you think you have something that is not life threatening it is best to speak to your pharmacist and they will tell you whether or not you should go to accident and emergency, so thats what we did. I was asked the question, "Is your wound hot"? It was Aspie who answered, what do you mean hot, my leg feels warm, can't really tell whether the area around the wound is any hotter, so guess what, my Mother, sisters said if I were you best get it checked out the last thing you need is an infection.
"Exactly", I thought. Unfortunately sometimes winning against good advice is something Aspie doesn't adhere to and my left shin was looking in quite a mess, the reason for the leaf might be self explanatory using nature hoping it is comforting.
I know you can guess what happens next Aspie believes my injury is non emergency and it takes me over a week before I get myself into emergency, the wound should have been stitched and it was too late for that, I now had a hole in my shin and all in all I spent the next three months wonder if I would lose my leg as the antibiotics were having little joy with the onslaught of bacteria. Worse was I missed one of the best summers in Britain for a long time, missed going for a swim in the sea and what did Aspie have to say? At least there couldn't be a chance of getting eaten by a Great White Shark. So this is Aspie at his worst and how he invites into my life massive anxieties that I call Tyrannosaurus of anxieties and why I have included a T-Rex as one of the characters that can be seen on www.aspieandme.com
My Mother God Bless her is 89 years old, she prefers to be incognito as far as social media is concerned and I have to respect her wishes and another reason I have to be in control over Aspie because if he had his way every member of my family would probably have pictures of them included on this blog post. Fortunately I am in control and they don't have to worry.
What I am going to do is end this blog on a positive note that puts Aspie under brilliantly good light and one of the main reasons why I wouldn't want to be without him in my life. Another of his joys that I have really got into that I believe is possibly amongst the healthiest of all fitness regimes is @calisthenics. The following are just some of the activities he has me involved with that I really enjoy and so should you be doing for a very good reason. The exercises I do might look tough to do and they are, but the bottom line, do them and the you will strengthen your core and be less prone to a bad back or other muscular injury.
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