Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty one, a hypnotist and mind reader named
Speaker 1: Franz Polgar performed for a night at the Forest, Mississippi
Speaker 1: High School auditorium. Polgar was sort of a famous personality
Speaker 1: back then. He went by doctor Polgar. He had appeared
Speaker 1: in Life magazine, and he claimed to have been Sigmund
Speaker 1: Freud's medical hypnotist, which turned out not to be true.
Speaker 1: He even had his own TV show on CBS in
Speaker 1: New York. During his short stay in Forest, Polgar boarded
Speaker 1: at the home of Mary and Beamon Triplet, one of
Speaker 1: Forest's wealthiest and best educated couples. A few years back,
Speaker 1: Donald Triplet's brother Oliver, we called Polgar's visit. Yes, I
Speaker 1: was Dr Franz Polgar right down, and he was a mentalist,
Speaker 1: and he was he was a real deal, he really was.
Speaker 1: We really didn't have hotels back then. Motels were almost
Speaker 1: non existent, and the ones that they did have were
Speaker 1: not a bar, you know. And so mother and father, yes,
Speaker 1: extended hospitality to him. He was a very pleasant fellow.
Speaker 1: Pulgar's act was mesmerizing audiences across America in towns large
Speaker 1: and small. He did this for years. He went to
Speaker 1: universities and to resorts, and he put on a three
Speaker 1: parts show that consisted of a hypnosis demonstration, a mind
Speaker 1: reading stunt, and various feats of memory and litis hit
Speaker 1: demon For my next demonstration, believe dividing but volunteers my
Speaker 1: page when I ed, I shall use my mind reading
Speaker 1: abilities to find the page. During the show he did
Speaker 1: in Forest, Pulgar called seven high schoolers to the stage,
Speaker 1: and Donald was one of them. He put them under
Speaker 1: his spell and for an hour he entertained the audience
Speaker 1: by having some light heart it fun at the expense
Speaker 1: of all the kids on the stage. Karen asked Donald
Speaker 1: about being part of this demonstration. He couldn't hypnotaze. He
Speaker 1: knew he was failing that and he said, go down.
Speaker 1: Huh you left to get off the stage, which I
Speaker 1: can't use you. It turned out that Polgar's technique just
Speaker 1: didn't work on Donald, and after his performance in Forest,
Speaker 1: back at the Triplet Home, Polgar got a closer look
Speaker 1: at Donald, who was then eighteen. Donald came off as
Speaker 1: a distant, uninterested in conversation, and awkward in his movements,
Speaker 1: and yet he nevertheless dazzled Polgar with an incredible routine
Speaker 1: of mental gymnastics, an ability to name musical notes as
Speaker 1: they were played on a piano, and a genius for
Speaker 1: multiplying numbers in his head. Polgar tossed out something like
Speaker 1: eighty seven times twenty three, and Donald, with his eyes
Speaker 1: closed and not a hint of hesitation, correctly answered two
Speaker 1: thou and one. Donald doing this was already something of
Speaker 1: a local legend. People in neighboring towns had heard of
Speaker 1: the team from Forest who was capable of incredible calculations.
Speaker 1: Here's Oliver Triplet again. He was a native of Poland
Speaker 1: and was involved in the war, and somehow another his
Speaker 1: psychic abilities ah improved or came into being as a
Speaker 1: result of the trauma that he underwent, and he came
Speaker 1: over here and he'd make tours, community concert tours. Came
Speaker 1: to Forest and quickly realized that Don would work out good,
Speaker 1: you know, if he could get him to go with
Speaker 1: if you could talk to my mother and to father.
Speaker 1: Actually Pulgar was Hungarian. But if you didn't catch that
Speaker 1: last part, Oliver said that Pulgar realized that Don could
Speaker 1: help his act if only he could talk Mary and
Speaker 1: Beamon Triplet into allowing him to go out on the Road.
Speaker 1: Donald's parents were totally taken aback by this request. You know,
Speaker 1: things were just starting to go well for Don. He
Speaker 1: was in high school now, with his sights set on college.
Speaker 1: And of course they put the thumb down all that dad.
Speaker 1: Dear Mary Triplet, she was not going to let anyone
Speaker 1: use her son as a sidekick for entertainment. No way,
Speaker 1: not happening. From my Heart Radio, this is Autism's first child.
Speaker 1: I'm John Don Benner and I'm Karen Zuker. This is
Speaker 1: episode three. I Wish myself luck. A decade before he
Speaker 1: amazed Franz Pulgar, Donald Triplet fascinated another doctor, Leo Connor.
Speaker 1: Connor had better bonavides than Polgar. We talked about him
Speaker 1: in our last episode. In his day, he was considered
Speaker 1: the world's leading child psychiatrist. After Donald's visit to Dr
Speaker 1: Connor in Baltimore, in Mary would outline in her letters
Speaker 1: all of the ways that Donald was steadily changing, growing
Speaker 1: and discovering how to connect. Nine. Mary Triplett used her
Speaker 1: influence in Forest to get Donald enrolled in the first grade.
Speaker 1: Getting Donald into the local public school was no small ask.
Speaker 1: Mary would have known that schools all over the country
Speaker 1: routinely rejected kids like Donald, and the law back them up,
Speaker 1: but she pressed on. School took some getting used to.
Speaker 1: Donald's behavior was occasionally disruptive in those early days, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't too long before Donald was actually doing okay,
Speaker 1: Better than okay, I think we can say he started
Speaker 1: to show some really remarkable progress. Mary wrote to Dr Connor,
Speaker 1: Dawn is much more independent. He wants to do many
Speaker 1: things for himself. He marches in line nicely, answers when
Speaker 1: called upon, and is more biddable and obedient. I visited
Speaker 1: his classroom this morning and was amazed to see how
Speaker 1: nicely he cooperated and responded. He was very quiet and
Speaker 1: calm and listen to what the teacher was saying about
Speaker 1: half the time. He does not squeal or run around,
Speaker 1: but takes his place like the other children. His use
Speaker 1: of language improved, He answered questions from time to time,
Speaker 1: He became immersed in his work. He even played with
Speaker 1: other children, something he'd never shown interest in before. For
Speaker 1: a child who had a phobia for change, this was
Speaker 1: real progress. So Donald survived the first grade, and then
Speaker 1: the second grade, and then the third grade. And if
Speaker 1: you think about it, that makes sense because the routine
Speaker 1: of the classroom may have suited his need for sameness.
Speaker 1: He went to the same building every day at the
Speaker 1: same hour, and he stayed for the same length of time.
Speaker 1: His seat was always where it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: A classroom Bell told him when it was time to
Speaker 1: come and when it was time to go. But a
Speaker 1: school became more demanding, it became clear that there was
Speaker 1: a gap between what the school expected and what Donald
Speaker 1: was capable of academically and socially. By the spring of
Speaker 1: while Don's original first grade classmates were cruising through the
Speaker 1: fourth grade, Donald was back at home with his mother,
Speaker 1: helping her with routine chores while she engaged him on
Speaker 1: numbers and dates, both obsessions for Donald. But she also
Speaker 1: found it a little bit overwhelming being Donald's full time
Speaker 1: teacher and playmates, perhaps more than she could handle. It
Speaker 1: was Dr Connor's idea that maybe having Donald lived somewhere
Speaker 1: else would work better for her and for Donald. So
Speaker 1: for the second time, Donald went to live somewhere else.
Speaker 1: This time, though Marian Beaman did not drop him at
Speaker 1: an institution, just the opposite. Really, they sent him to
Speaker 1: live part time on a farm twenty minutes outside of town.
Speaker 1: It was owned by a poor, childless couple named Ernest
Speaker 1: and Josephine Lewis. Ernest and Josephine didn't have much education,
Speaker 1: but they had reputations as honest, hard working people. Here's
Speaker 1: Oliver Triplet, Don's brother. Part part of the recommended therapy
Speaker 1: by Dr Connor was that he felt like Don with
Speaker 1: fair better in a more idyllic environment out in the country, uh,
Speaker 1: preferably to live with a childish couple. My father knew
Speaker 1: the chantry clerk here in Scott County and his name
Speaker 1: was Taylor Tadlock, and Taylor is the one who recommended
Speaker 1: to my father Ernest and Josephine Lewis. And so sure enough,
Speaker 1: my father, you know, uh introduced himself to the Lewis
Speaker 1: as he didn't know them, and they immediately, you know,
Speaker 1: said yo, yes, we'll we'd love to have done. The
Speaker 1: living conditions at the Lewis's house were rustic, to say
Speaker 1: the least, no electricity, no running water, the toilet was
Speaker 1: an outhouse. Years later we we got more details on
Speaker 1: all of this from Donald and from his brother Oliver,
Speaker 1: who spent the occasional night out at the Lewis house.
Speaker 1: No electricity and no no water except for well water
Speaker 1: that had to be pumped. Don't you done? Don't you
Speaker 1: remember that old pomp? I remember pumping water. You're not joking.
Speaker 1: You do wood burning, stove and all of that. I
Speaker 1: mean it was it was pretty primitive. What was it
Speaker 1: like to live without any electricity? Well, I kind of
Speaker 1: got used to it. Huh krochene lamps and all that
Speaker 1: good stuff, and put colin round the hearth and getting
Speaker 1: in front of the fire. That's that's try. I got
Speaker 1: the heat and stuff like that, and cooking. What point
Speaker 1: of George did you do there? Uh? Oh, I'd bring
Speaker 1: stove wood from the from the outside and bring it
Speaker 1: in and get out of where the chickens were and
Speaker 1: putting grange of corn out there for the chicken street
Speaker 1: were you were in the mule also in the field. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I tried plowing, plowering a move and say and gee
Speaker 1: and hall. You're like a little boy. Yah. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was only about nine years old the first time I
Speaker 1: try to plow. Yeah, it went great. I enjoyed getting
Speaker 1: out there. When Donald was eleven, Dr Connor showed up
Speaker 1: in forest to take a look at how things were going.
Speaker 1: He wanted to see how is most intriguing patient was
Speaker 1: holding up, so Marian beaman. They brought Connor out to
Speaker 1: the farm and Ernest and Josephine showed the psychiatrists around
Speaker 1: the place. They walked him through Donald's chores. Donald ran
Speaker 1: into a cornfield, took up the reins of a heavy
Speaker 1: plow horse, and put the animal to work, blowing one
Speaker 1: long row, then turning around to begin another. Mr. Lewis
Speaker 1: explained this all began when Donald started walking the cornfields
Speaker 1: obsessively counting the rose. Ernest showed Donald how to control
Speaker 1: the horse and maneuver the plowshare. Donald was able to
Speaker 1: count the rose while working them. After Connor watched Donald
Speaker 1: happily plow, Ernest explained to Dr Connor that Donald obsessed
Speaker 1: over the process of measurement and took a yardstick to
Speaker 1: whatever he could find. The farm needed a new well,
Speaker 1: and so Ernest recruited Donald to help dig it, presenting
Speaker 1: the task as a measuring project. They actually, by accident,
Speaker 1: kind of devised a therapeutic solution to do different kinds
Speaker 1: of deficits. On the one hand, there was this rigid
Speaker 1: structure to life on the farm, the same pattern every morning,
Speaker 1: every night, every season. Donald had no choice but to
Speaker 1: abide by the schedule, and by the way, this was
Speaker 1: not full time life out on the farm. Every other
Speaker 1: weekend his parents came out and picked him up and
Speaker 1: took him home for a night or two. The family
Speaker 1: was staying together. Don made huge strides. After a while,
Speaker 1: the lewis Has brought him to a nearby school, a
Speaker 1: one room schoolhouse attended with kids of all grade levels.
Speaker 1: This setting allowed Donald to progress at his own pace.
Speaker 1: He began writing letters home, using complete sentences and concrete
Speaker 1: details about his days on the farm, and at the
Speaker 1: same time he was becoming more verbal, more creative, more
Speaker 1: accomplished in completing complex tasks. He had the structure he needed,
Speaker 1: but he also had the freedom to explore. Donald stayed
Speaker 1: with the Lewis's for four years. In Dr Connor's estimation,
Speaker 1: living on the farm was the best thing that ever
Speaker 1: happened to Donald. His growth there was a leap across
Speaker 1: an abyss and proof then and now that many kids
Speaker 1: with autism grow past the most difficult challenges they faced
Speaker 1: in early childhood. After the break the Fight of Donald
Speaker 1: Triplett's life and high school glory in the winter of
Speaker 1: when Don was fourteen, he got really sick. He had
Speaker 1: fevers as high as a hundred four degrees. He had chills,
Speaker 1: he was delirious, he had searing pain in his joints.
Speaker 1: He was bedridden, and he regretted becoming a little bit
Speaker 1: more like his toddler self, exceedingly nervous, which was the
Speaker 1: word his brother Oliver used. And that would have been
Speaker 1: in the winter of four to seven one at Don
Speaker 1: when you were still living at the Lewis place, and
Speaker 1: they brought down in because he had a high fever
Speaker 1: and read it. They weren't able to diagnose what its
Speaker 1: proper problem was, and I know they took him to
Speaker 1: the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, could not come up
Speaker 1: with a diagnosis. And Don was in really rough shape.
Speaker 1: And my father happened to be down in Rawley, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: which is about thirty five twenty five miles south of
Speaker 1: where we are here, you know, Smith County, and this doctor,
Speaker 1: doctor Corsey, down there, without even having seemed one, said
Speaker 1: beam and that's what they referred to. My thought, as
Speaker 1: it seems to me that what your son is suffering
Speaker 1: from maybe a rare case of juva juvenile rheumatori arthritis.
Speaker 1: Today it's known as juvenile ideopathic arthritis for reasons we
Speaker 1: still don't understand. The body's immune system turns on itself
Speaker 1: and attacks the tissues and the joints. Children who survived
Speaker 1: the fevers often suffer lasting damage as the joints confused
Speaker 1: together permanently. Still trying to address Donald's medical emergency, his
Speaker 1: dad brought him to a clinic in Memphis that was
Speaker 1: having some success with an experimental treatment that combined gold
Speaker 1: salts and a steroid known as a c t H.
Speaker 1: It's not clear if that's what did the trick, but
Speaker 1: finally Donald started to get better there and he came
Speaker 1: back from the brink. Joseph Hamilton at the Campbell's Clinic
Speaker 1: in Memphis, who is dealing with with these disorders, that
Speaker 1: if you want me to, I'll I'll book a room
Speaker 1: for him. So they immediately took him up there and
Speaker 1: after and Don had a very favorable response to the treatment.
Speaker 1: But after after his release from the hospital, I don't
Speaker 1: know whether this is the high fever that he that
Speaker 1: he had for several months really wanted Don Donald stayed
Speaker 1: in Memphis for two months before being charged and permanently
Speaker 1: going home to his parents house. Being released from the
Speaker 1: clinic didn't mean he was yet fully recovered. It took
Speaker 1: Donald a year and a half to be up and
Speaker 1: walking again. But as time passed in the pain also passed,
Speaker 1: Donald began again to show the personality that had been
Speaker 1: developing during his time on the farm. His improvement in
Speaker 1: language resumed, and his ability to learn came back, and
Speaker 1: if anything, had picked up pace. By the time he
Speaker 1: fully recovered, Donald was sixteen years old, a young man,
Speaker 1: and instead of sending Donald back to the lowest farm,
Speaker 1: Mary Triplet decided to send Donald to high school. Now,
Speaker 1: it's important to keep in mind that by nine fifty,
Speaker 1: when Donald enrolled in Forest High, the Triplet and mc
Speaker 1: cravey families carried more clout than ever. Beaman was the
Speaker 1: town's best lawyer and served as a town dignitary. He
Speaker 1: was chairman of the Boy Scouts and the Lions Club.
Speaker 1: He also knew the Forest Chief of Police and the
Speaker 1: editor of the Scott County Times, the town prosecutor, judges,
Speaker 1: and even the governor of the state of Mississippi. And
Speaker 1: Mary Triplet was no wallflower either. She was a mainstay
Speaker 1: on the luncheon and garden party circuit. She made their
Speaker 1: home a social hub for the whole community. She hosted
Speaker 1: arts club meetings and choir practices for the Presbyterian Church.
Speaker 1: A few visitors to the Triplet home had ever laid
Speaker 1: eyes on Donald before this, who had been living out
Speaker 1: on the farm for all those years. But suddenly Donald
Speaker 1: was there all the time. The Triplets were done wavering.
Speaker 1: They weren't going to hide Donald. They refused to be
Speaker 1: ashamed of him. Their message was clear. If he interrupted
Speaker 1: a choir practice at the house, or a poetry reading there,
Speaker 1: or he talked too long about the calendar or Time
Speaker 1: magazine or his comic book collection, people were just going
Speaker 1: to have to live with it. That's who Donald was,
Speaker 1: and his family expected him to be treated as an equal.
Speaker 1: In Forest was a really small town, not even three
Speaker 1: thousand citizens. Eman in Mary's message, the rest of the
Speaker 1: community traveled quickly. It's not hard to imagine townspeople telling
Speaker 1: their kids to leave the Triplet boy alone, to just
Speaker 1: be nice to him. And Donald would have been an
Speaker 1: easy target, both easy to mock and unaware of the mocking.
Speaker 1: He was awkward, He could hardly hold a conversation, and
Speaker 1: he walked stiffly with his arms apart at his side,
Speaker 1: like a big letter a. He was small and somewhat defenseless,
Speaker 1: but most everybody in Forest High School showed Donald kindness,
Speaker 1: or at the very least they kept the wide birth
Speaker 1: you're not a cruel can be particularly young, right, that's
Speaker 1: John Rushing. He grew up just down the road from Donald.
Speaker 1: Years earlier. John had often played on the swing set
Speaker 1: in the Triplet's backyard under the new occasions were and
Speaker 1: you know not to harm him, Lady, if you're not
Speaker 1: a kid, draw or you're difference and so um. There
Speaker 1: was a period of time where people, some of them
Speaker 1: were really mean and insulting at times. In his days
Speaker 1: at Forest High School, Donald found protectors. There were the
Speaker 1: Rio Sisters, three tough girls who moved to Forest from
Speaker 1: Louisiana's Cajun Country. The sisters had their own hard story
Speaker 1: and John Rushing. He was too, grays ahead of Donald's
Speaker 1: and a star on the Forest Bearcats football team. He
Speaker 1: was a big, strong kid. I would want a big
Speaker 1: board on a man three pounder. Was a big football player. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've played tackle and and you to play defense Shavillion.
Speaker 1: John just couldn't have other kids picking on Donald. So
Speaker 1: with the Rio sisters and John Rushing covering Donald's flank,
Speaker 1: the other kids at Forest High School learned Donald's ways.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the ways in which Donald
Speaker 1: Triplett was an extremely lucky young man. Because during our
Speaker 1: years of reporting on autism, we have heard so many
Speaker 1: stories about people on the spectrum being bullied in school
Speaker 1: and the trauma that can come from that. My name
Speaker 1: is Amy Gravino. I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at
Speaker 1: the age of eleven. My diagnosis now would be autism
Speaker 1: spectrum disorder under the guidelines of the new ds M five.
Speaker 1: Amy is the first person who comes to mind when
Speaker 1: we talk about bullying in the spectrum. She's a speaker, writer, activist,
Speaker 1: and mentor for people on the spectrum. Amy is known
Speaker 1: for going really deep on some of the most difficult
Speaker 1: issues facing people on the spectrum and their families, issues
Speaker 1: like bullying and sexuality. We want you to hear about
Speaker 1: Amy's experiences in her own words. I remember the boy
Speaker 1: who himself had some bullying going on because his sister
Speaker 1: died from HIV at a time when that was not
Speaker 1: something that was really talking about all blood transfusion, and
Speaker 1: he stood up for me when I was being bullied
Speaker 1: in sixth grade, and unfortunately he moved away right after.
Speaker 1: That very person who, by the way, ever apologized to
Speaker 1: me or for me, moved away right after I should say,
Speaker 1: just coincidentally, I'm sure, but uh, it wasn't the greatest
Speaker 1: thing in the world. You know. Amy's expertise on this
Speaker 1: topic came to her the hard way. As a kid,
Speaker 1: she had a really, really tough time at school. Even
Speaker 1: though I was diagnosed at the age of eleven, word
Speaker 1: autism didn't really mean anything at that point. Um, I
Speaker 1: only knew that I was different and the different was bad. Right,
Speaker 1: So when when I talk about this time in my life,
Speaker 1: I do become emotional because that's what I remember is
Speaker 1: how it felt. It's it's essentially a form of trauma
Speaker 1: that I experienced at that young age, in those formative years.
Speaker 1: When and when you experience this kind of trauma as
Speaker 1: a child, I think, especially for children the autism spectrum,
Speaker 1: we carry this with us for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: We may be able to put it in a compartment somewhere,
Speaker 1: we may be able to obviously move on and be happy,
Speaker 1: have good lives. But that kind of trauma, when it
Speaker 1: happens at that age, it never goes away, and it
Speaker 1: informs how you view the world, how you interap act
Speaker 1: with the world. The trouble started when Amy was young,
Speaker 1: before I was diagnosed with autism. I remember looking around
Speaker 1: at my peers and thinking, why don't they see things
Speaker 1: the way that I do? What's wrong with them? And
Speaker 1: following the diagnosis, which I think we also have coincided
Speaker 1: with the onset of puberty and that very difficult time
Speaker 1: in life when you're starting to become an adolescent and
Speaker 1: discover your identity. Why can't I see things the way
Speaker 1: that other kids do? What's wrong with me? You know,
Speaker 1: in elementary school it's more overt and obvious how kids
Speaker 1: treat other kids. In middle school becomes very subtle, which
Speaker 1: is much harder um the way that kids bully, the
Speaker 1: way that kids treat other kids. The clicks form, and
Speaker 1: you're excluded for reasons that you don't even understand, or
Speaker 1: they're they're pretending to be your friend one day and
Speaker 1: they treat you like dirt the next day. And I
Speaker 1: just kept throwing myself on the proverbial fire because I
Speaker 1: didn't understand what they were doing. The girls were worse,
Speaker 1: I would say, than the boys. The boys were more overt. Again,
Speaker 1: there was one instance where a boy followed me literally
Speaker 1: onto the school bus, calling me ugly amy over and
Speaker 1: over again. You know, boys, to their credit, at least
Speaker 1: are clearer about what they're doing. When I walked through
Speaker 1: the halls at school, it was a combination of either
Speaker 1: being made fun of her being ignored, And it was
Speaker 1: hard to know some days which one was worse. Um
Speaker 1: because if I was being made fun of and bullied,
Speaker 1: they were at least taking the time to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: I existed. You're here. We don't like you, you're weird
Speaker 1: and you're not cool in any sense of the word,
Speaker 1: but you're here. But if you're being ignored, it's as
Speaker 1: though you just simply don't exist. Became very difficult for
Speaker 1: me to distinguish between positive and negative attention. I was
Speaker 1: so desperate I craved any kind of attention so badly
Speaker 1: that I just didn't distinguish. So for example, once in
Speaker 1: in home met class, we had to sew and this
Speaker 1: may be why I don't sew it to this day.
Speaker 1: But I had much longer hair than and my hair
Speaker 1: got caught in the sewing machine and I was screaming,
Speaker 1: and the kids just stood there and they either said
Speaker 1: nothing or they were laughing at me. And you know,
Speaker 1: what does that mean when someone can just regard someone
Speaker 1: else's pain that readily? You know, when when when you're
Speaker 1: someone who's different, it's as though your painting exists on
Speaker 1: a different scale. And we've seen this all through history,
Speaker 1: the way that people have been experimented on in different ways,
Speaker 1: the way people believe that things about the pain threshold
Speaker 1: of people who are not like them. But also most
Speaker 1: days the hazing wasn't subtle at all. You're weird, you're
Speaker 1: a freak, you're a retard, you're a loser, you're ugly.
Speaker 1: These were the things that I heard on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: And what ended up happening was that the voices of
Speaker 1: my peers became the voice in my own head because
Speaker 1: those voices stayed with me and affected my perception of myself,
Speaker 1: affected how I felt about myself, how I interacted with
Speaker 1: the world. It's very hard to interact with the world
Speaker 1: when you are shrinking and when you are constantly feeling
Speaker 1: like you are recoiling in on yourself and you don't
Speaker 1: want to be seen, yet you feel like everyone is
Speaker 1: looking at you for absolutely the wrong reasons. Um it's painful.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't look even at TV and see someone
Speaker 1: like me on television. The only show I remember seeing
Speaker 1: people like me was Third Rock from the Sun, and
Speaker 1: they aliens, but they were the first people on TV
Speaker 1: I ever related to. High school offered no reprieve whatsoever
Speaker 1: for amy. When we had an assignment for English class
Speaker 1: and I chose to write about a threesome involving one
Speaker 1: of my online friends and a member of the Backstreet
Speaker 1: Boys and a MEMBERY and Sync. Now I had never
Speaker 1: even kissed a boy at this point, so what business
Speaker 1: I had writing about a threesome, I'll never know. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: I got in trouble in class. But the boys in
Speaker 1: my class were like, well, we heard you wrote about
Speaker 1: a threesome for you. Can you read to us? Read
Speaker 1: it to us. So I stood there in the hallway
Speaker 1: reading my story to these classmates, thinking that they were
Speaker 1: my friends, that they like, we're accepting me, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is so great, And I was just a sideshow
Speaker 1: act to them. I was a form of entertainment for
Speaker 1: that afternoon, so I didn't recognize what was happening, that
Speaker 1: I was being set up as an object of ridicule.
Speaker 1: Amy says that kids on the spectrum are especially vulnerable
Speaker 1: to a less overt form of bullying manipulation. They want friends,
Speaker 1: they want attention, they want to be accepted. So we
Speaker 1: hear all these stories all the time, with the story
Speaker 1: of a young man who was talked to jumping off
Speaker 1: a bridge and freezing cold water because these boys said
Speaker 1: they would be his friends. So it it's so much work.
Speaker 1: I mean that I don't want to certainly diminish bullying
Speaker 1: other kids experience, and certainly it's terrible no matter who
Speaker 1: is experiencing it. But I think for for individuals on
Speaker 1: the spectrum, it's it's even more crushing, And especially for me,
Speaker 1: the bullying that I had the most difficult time with
Speaker 1: was from people who I thought liked me. I spent
Speaker 1: the first twenty odd years of my life being absolutely
Speaker 1: concerned and consumed what people thought of me, being very
Speaker 1: self conscious, having no self esteem. It's not a good
Speaker 1: way to live. What helped me to stop being defined
Speaker 1: by other people was I stopped looking for that validation
Speaker 1: from outside sources because I always had saught it. I
Speaker 1: had sought it from peers when I was younger. I
Speaker 1: saw it from boyfriends and guys when I got into college,
Speaker 1: and then finally, what you know, later in my twenties,
Speaker 1: I would say, into my early thirties, finally it started
Speaker 1: to come from me, and it was the most powerful
Speaker 1: place it could have come from. You know, when when
Speaker 1: you decide that you're a person of worth, it makes
Speaker 1: such a huge difference and how you react to the world,
Speaker 1: how you perceived the world around you, and you see
Speaker 1: people start to respond to you differently. And I never
Speaker 1: I never realized it until it started happening. When I
Speaker 1: thought about the possibility of going to my ten year reunion,
Speaker 1: I thought that there was no way I could do that.
Speaker 1: I thought, after everything I've been through, how could I
Speaker 1: face these people? And when the ten year reunion came,
Speaker 1: I realized that I wasn't angry, and I knew I
Speaker 1: could be. I knew it. I had every conceivable right
Speaker 1: to be angry with them. They may have had a
Speaker 1: lot to do in my life then, but who I
Speaker 1: am now has nothing to do with them. And so
Speaker 1: I did confront the girl who had been my worst enemy.
Speaker 1: She was there at the reunion, and until that point
Speaker 1: I had kind of help this believe that people who
Speaker 1: are bullies do it because they have so many issues
Speaker 1: themselves and they've been hurt and bullied. And when I
Speaker 1: sort of I said something to her about all, I
Speaker 1: hope you know you've been able to make peace with
Speaker 1: everything that was going on with you, she was like, oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm fine. I wasn't, you know. And and then it
Speaker 1: occurred to me, said, you know, some people believe you
Speaker 1: because their statistic little shits, but and I never occurred
Speaker 1: to me at that point. And when I realized that,
Speaker 1: I thought, Wow, okay, so you know what, I maybe
Speaker 1: not everybody gets a redemption arc and that's okay, that's
Speaker 1: and and I was able to move forward from there,
Speaker 1: and I felt so much later after that. It was
Speaker 1: really satisfying sense of closure to kind of understand that
Speaker 1: the only hard moment at the reunion was when everybody
Speaker 1: kind of went into their little clicks from high school
Speaker 1: and it was me and weather kids just standing there
Speaker 1: when they wanted to talk to um. But he was
Speaker 1: But the difference was that he was a super sweet
Speaker 1: kid that everybody liked. I was a weirdo that nobody liked,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't really being left out. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: he was like one of those floaters who could hang
Speaker 1: out with anybody. That's how it is for Amy Gravino.
Speaker 1: So what about Donald Triplett? How did he fare in
Speaker 1: high school? With a handful of friends looking out for him,
Speaker 1: and word around the high school that Donald triplet was
Speaker 1: not to be messed with, it didn't take very long
Speaker 1: for the bullies at Forest Hide to lose interest in
Speaker 1: hassling Donald, so high school life moved ahead for him.
Speaker 1: In some ways, Donald kept happily to himself. He moved
Speaker 1: through the hallways, seemingly oblivious to the hormonal chaos swirling
Speaker 1: around him. He usually sat along during lunch, and on
Speaker 1: the playground he tended to wander off toward the edge
Speaker 1: and stood out there on his own. The other students
Speaker 1: got to know Donald's ways. For instance, they watched as
Speaker 1: he stood by himself in the schoolyard, looking up at
Speaker 1: the sky, drawing something invisible in the air with his
Speaker 1: outstretched index finger. Donald's classmates paid close attention and determined
Speaker 1: that he was writing invisible numbers. Performing arithmetic numbers soon
Speaker 1: became the thing about Donald that everybody at the school
Speaker 1: knew about. His classmates thought that he was some kind
Speaker 1: of mathematical genius. And when they saw Donald scribbling in
Speaker 1: a notebook, they would look over his shoulder and they
Speaker 1: would see sheets filled with numerals, column after column and
Speaker 1: page after page. Not understanding that Donald was creating some
Speaker 1: sort of numberless decipherable only to Donald himself, they imagined
Speaker 1: that he was performing some kind of higher level math.
Speaker 1: It's at the center of a bunch of local legends,
Speaker 1: and some were true, like the one about Donald meandering
Speaker 1: around forest memorizing the license plate number of all the
Speaker 1: park cars. But the most famous story that took place
Speaker 1: outside the gymnasium. So, Karen, you're talking about the brick story,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. So the story goes that one day Donald
Speaker 1: was at school and he stepped out of the front
Speaker 1: door of the school building, which was this big red
Speaker 1: brick building, and he was surrounded by a group of
Speaker 1: boys and they said to him, Hey, Donald, you're so
Speaker 1: good with numbers, why don't you tell us how many
Speaker 1: bricks are in the high school building there? And the
Speaker 1: story goes that Donald looked over his shoulder for like
Speaker 1: two seconds. Then he turns back to the boys and
Speaker 1: he throws out the number at them, and they are
Speaker 1: just stunned. Their jaws drop and they run off and
Speaker 1: they tell all their friends that Donald just counted all
Speaker 1: the bricks in high school. And then one guy tells another,
Speaker 1: and another tells another, and it becomes legend. You know.
Speaker 1: We're close to Donald, and and one day I just
Speaker 1: asked him, you know, how did you do it? How
Speaker 1: did you figure out how many bricks were in the wall.
Speaker 1: And he looked at me and he said I didn't.
Speaker 1: I made it up. And I said, well, why would
Speaker 1: you do that? And he looked at me and he said,
Speaker 1: I wanted the boys to like me, you know. And
Speaker 1: and that just shows that Donald just like all of us,
Speaker 1: you know, we all just want to be loved and
Speaker 1: liked and have relationships with other people. We met a
Speaker 1: woman who went to school with Donald named Janelle Brown,
Speaker 1: and she told us a story about how one day
Speaker 1: in high school, Donald walked up to her and she said,
Speaker 1: Janelle Brown, from now on, your number is one thousand,
Speaker 1: forty nine. And he would do that. He would walk
Speaker 1: around school in around life around town giving numbers to people.
Speaker 1: We asked a bunch of people who knew Donald if
Speaker 1: they had numbers. Oh yeah, yeah, he gave me a
Speaker 1: number sixty one or six to two years ago, five
Speaker 1: hundred sixty nine, um, yes, thirteen fifteen one three one five.
Speaker 1: He loves to give numbers to people, and he's been
Speaker 1: doing that since he was in high school. I think
Speaker 1: I know my dad had a number. A lot of
Speaker 1: the times, it seemed Donald was handing these numbers out
Speaker 1: kind of randomly and sometimes not like John Rushing, the
Speaker 1: football star who protected him in high school. One night
Speaker 1: at three one ninety three, as in John Rushing's number
Speaker 1: that we're on the program, that's where you've got one
Speaker 1: old don Do you a lot of people we talked
Speaker 1: to this week, I don't remember their numbers? Yeah. If
Speaker 1: we go over some of if we go over um,
Speaker 1: some people, can you see if you remember them for us? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so. Do you remember Ingred's number one and
Speaker 1: fifty two? Can I ask you if I ask you
Speaker 1: somebody's UM number, if you could say their name please? Um?
Speaker 1: Do you remember Joe Bidness? Yeah, five hundred and six
Speaker 1: to two. Remember Marthy's number? Yeah, fourteen. She told us
Speaker 1: something about her number, because something about her and Margaret.
Speaker 1: Do you remember, Uh, yeah, Margaret's number was one four,
Speaker 1: one four and Martha's number was just one four. And
Speaker 1: why were their numbers so similar? Well, I just to
Speaker 1: make them begin with the letter MS. So funny because
Speaker 1: they telled us they thought Martha thought it was because
Speaker 1: they were best. Yeah, yeah, maybe it was. I asked
Speaker 1: Sid Salter, who's a local journalist and a good friend
Speaker 1: of Donald's, if Done had ever given him a number. No. Uh,
Speaker 1: he never did, And I found myself strangely disappointed about that.
Speaker 1: I actually was more concerned about the number for my
Speaker 1: chance to go into heaven than I was about my looks.
Speaker 1: I pretty well had accepted the looks part of it.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, asking for the number would have been
Speaker 1: a faux pa. Once you've been around him, and once
Speaker 1: you've seen that and you realize that you know this
Speaker 1: is really who he is. Uh, it's just difficult to
Speaker 1: uh not, as I say, want to uh pull far
Speaker 1: him and root far him and it in a community
Speaker 1: like forest, Uh. I think one one reaction that Don
Speaker 1: evoked from the townspeople, uh wasn't Yeah, Don's he's our guy,
Speaker 1: and uh, we don't want to see anyone take advantage
Speaker 1: of him or manipulate him or harm him in any what.
Speaker 1: Donald himself, he's never really explained the rules to us,
Speaker 1: the who and the y of it all, but it's
Speaker 1: clear to John and I that this was Donald's way
Speaker 1: of creating social interactions. Yeah, finding a way on his
Speaker 1: own terms to connect with his schoolmates, and also, I'm
Speaker 1: happy to say, to connect with us. Yeah, we got
Speaker 1: Donald to give us numbers. I'm five nine and I'm
Speaker 1: five fifty, so that's great to have Donald numbers. Were
Speaker 1: very proud of that. I always say that mine's lower
Speaker 1: because I'm younger. Isn't that hilarious. Well, meanwhile, Donald slowly
Speaker 1: pushed his way towards getting his high school diploma. Donald's
Speaker 1: senior year was by far his best year of school,
Speaker 1: and math remained his strongest subject. He still struggled a
Speaker 1: bit in economics, English, and history. Donald's senior year ninety
Speaker 1: three was the year he really came into himself socially.
Speaker 1: He joined a few clubs like the Future Farmers of America,
Speaker 1: and he was also part of the choir, and he
Speaker 1: landed a role in the theater department's production of a
Speaker 1: play called The Monkey's Uncle. It's a popular force about
Speaker 1: a young woman, a pretty young woman pretending to be
Speaker 1: a boy, a skunk, and some romantic mismatches. Donald ironically
Speaker 1: played the part of a teenaged bully. And it's also
Speaker 1: interesting that there is no more socially collaborative school activity
Speaker 1: than a school play. Putting on a theatrical presentation as
Speaker 1: a group because you're memorizing lines and you have stage cues,
Speaker 1: which plays to one of Donald's real strengths, and that
Speaker 1: is memory. When the opening night came, Donald didn't seize
Speaker 1: up with stage fright. He enjoyed the attention and executed
Speaker 1: his lines perfectly. In June of nine three, it was
Speaker 1: graduation and Mary and Beamon Triplet invited the entire senior
Speaker 1: class over to the family home for a parents sponsored
Speaker 1: good luck buffet supper. The senior boys and girls signed
Speaker 1: each other's yearbooks. To one of the sweetest boys I knew,
Speaker 1: d G. You're one of the best friends that even
Speaker 1: if you did call me a thousand folds good luck. Don.
Speaker 1: With that brain of yours, I'm sure you'll go far.
Speaker 1: Tommy Huff, the student body president, wrote to one of
Speaker 1: my best friends and one of the most brilliant students
Speaker 1: I've ever known. Like all of his classmates, Donald was
Speaker 1: staring down the barrel of some major life changes. He'd
Speaker 1: been accepted to East Central Community College in Decatur, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: which was twenty five miles from Forest. He was going
Speaker 1: to live there, which means it would be his first
Speaker 1: time away from home since living on the Lewis Farm.
Speaker 1: There's some evidence he was excited for the adventure. In
Speaker 1: his high school yearbook, under his own senior photo, he
Speaker 1: scribbled a note to himself. Here's what he wrote. I
Speaker 1: wish myself luck. I'm John don Vent as you know,
Speaker 1: I am number five fifty, I'm Karen Zucker and I'm five.
Speaker 1: Autism's First Child is a production of School of Humans
Speaker 1: and I Heeart podcasts and based on our book and
Speaker 1: documentary film in a different key. Production scoring, mixing, mastering,
Speaker 1: and sound design by Alexander Ritchie. Our story editors are
Speaker 1: Matt Riddle and Alex French, senior staff writer at I
Speaker 1: Heeart Originals. Original score composed and mixed by Alice McCoy.
Speaker 1: Voiceovers by Louis Carloso, Julia christ Gal Jed Drummond, Chris
Speaker 1: Paul Smith and Missy Ritchie. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Speaker 1: Brandon barr, El C. Crowley and Jason English. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Ray Conley, Ernie, Indra Doot and Will Pearson School
Speaker 1: of Humans