Gay Does Not Need To Be Cured. Autism Does Not Need To Be Cured. Haters Need To Be Cured.

Rick London is the founder of Google & MSN’s #1 Ranked Offbeat Cartoons and Funny Gifts. His Webcomics site has 5000+ cartoons and 250,000+ cartoon gifts & has lured 8.7 million+ visitors.

Excerpt from my upcoming book (also being co-written by several psychologists) and some who don’t know they are writing the ending.

What Happened To Me – No Longer A Mystery

It would be the epitome of hypocrisy to be for equal rights for those with a disability, and to be against those who are gay also wanting equal rights.

Though I am straight, and married to a woman who I love, I also am autistic/w Asperger’s and was not diagnosed until age 60. My parents decided not to have me tested but hid me away in an attic bedroom instead  This was truly not a big surprise.  My wife noticed some of the “little rituals” such as “eye blinking”, “hand flapping”, etc.  Though not always as noticeable as Michael J. Fox, sometimes even more so. At first it confused my wife Lee. Now we both laugh about it, given that we know what it is.  I have scraped a large “artistic mural” with my fingernail by our bedside.  This at first bothered her.  Now she looks at it as a “work of art”. It is one of the many “little rituals” that my body does that it “simply does”.  I cannot help it. It is a part of my autism. Back to the attic bedroom……

Many will say, “Well they didn’t know much about autism then”, and they would be correct. However, my parents were no dummies and they knew by the time I was aged 6  something was very wrong, enough to keep me as hidden (and isolated from my other siblings) as possible.

If I could have been born without such a condition, I gladly would have.  Does it hurt?  Not in the least; that is, unless you want to talk about the bigots, the ignorant and the haters who run from embarrassed to evil who wish for me not to be in their presence.

In addition, I was born into a household with parents that had a condition known as NPD (Narcissist Personality Disorder).  The last thing people with that disorder should ever have is children, and mine had three.  Generally they are infallible, and they do something called “triangulation” with their children, that is, talk/gossip about the other children to one, and then go to the others and gossip and make up stories about the first one.  They create a scapegoat child, often a lost child and a golden child.

Of course the scapegoat child can “do no right”, the “golden child” can do no wrong” and the lost child is often a bit confused and often leaves never or rarely to return to his/her hometown. Sometimes the roles overlap depending on the situation, but in the long run they remain the same.

There is much more to NPD Disorder but, not being a psychologist, I can only purvey my experience as a victim of it (as the scapegoat child).  There are countless articles on google.  Perhaps one of the easiest to understand is one I found in “Psychology Today”.

Please don’t get me wrong. I made plenty of errors and was far from the “perfect child”.  But the more one studies, the more one realizes most of my behavior was simply “acting out” what narcissistic parents were programming me to do, so they could be “victims” of this terrible child. And of course the community “bought it” (perfect parents/demon child).  Who is going to believe a 6 year old child hidden away in an attic vs his already established 30 year old parents, icons of the community.  The difference between me, and the narcissists (and their minions/flying monkeys who spread the gossip and lies about Rick) is that I KNOW I was not perfect.  Until this day, they are not sure who/what they are.

Also missing from our “family history” is the fact that our home at 104 Mandalay burned nearly to the ground after the landscaper left the cap off his lawn mower and put it next to the hot water heater in the storage shed.  My parents were at a cocktail party and the maid/babysitter had locked herself out after smelling smoke and ringing the doorbell. The reason I remembered it was on a Thursday night about 7:40pm CST is that I was watching my favorite show “The Munsters”. Herman Munster was playing the piano so badly it caught on fire.  Meantime smoke was coming from my closet door in the attic. I remember thinking “How cool. 3d TV” or something similarly.

Then I realized this was a real fire. My older sister was in the bathroom taking a bath. I pounded on the door to alert her of the fire. She thought I was joking as I tended to be a practical joker (to cope) but I was not. She finally believed me after I knocked nonstop for about 10 minutes.  I made sure she exited. My younger brother sat paralyzed on the couch in the den. I grabbed him by the arm as smoke billowed throughout the house and next door to the Ward’s house (Frostop).  Fortunately Dick Ward (we called him Dick then, he is Richard Ward now) was there to make sure Andy was safe.  Fortunately Dick is still alive and can verify my fire story.  So can the Hattiesburg Fire Department as I think they keep things like that on record. I also stayed in the house and called the fire department until I was sure my siblings were safe.

It was a tragedy and we lost just about everything.

A strange thing happened though.  Keep in mind I hadn’t a clue I had autism then, nor that I was in a dysfunctional home.  All of a sudden my “role” went from “scapegoat child” to “hero child”.  For nearly a week, I could do no wrong.  It felt very strange, and frankly I didn’t like the role or all the positive attention.  I didn’t realize why, but I was only used to negative attention (even when I was doing positive things).

But this positive thing was on city and county record so my parents must have been beside themselves. No berating or criticizing Rick. We must at least in public show how great he is for saving his sibling’s lives.  That didn’t last long.  The criticism and berating came back as fast as they left.  It at least felt comfortable again, as it was familiar.

Since perfection/ambiance is so important in an NPD family, it was decided that I did not have autism (or whatever they thought it was.  They decided not to have it tested and instead, build a bedroom in the attic. We lived in two homes from the time I was 5 to age 17, one was at 109 Mandalay Dr. (1960-1963) and the other at 104 Mandalay Dr.  (1963-1971). At age 17, my parents divorced and instead of living with either of them, my father purchased a trailer and rented it to me while still a senior in high school. In other words I was abandoned/orphaned at age 17.

Above is our 2nd home, but our first home in Hillendale.  The address was 109 Mandalay Dr was our home from 1960-1963. If you look in the center of the home on the roof, you will see a gable. That gable has no windows and it is the back side of my attic bedroom. My windows only opened via “slits” and a turn nob. Nobody could see me.  It faced high hedges.  My friends thought it was a “cool room”.  Even though I cried for most of that period, I was finally convinced it was “a cool room that any child my age would want” and of course I believed it.  It turned out to be a very common method of “scapegoat child isolation” to keep that child apart from the other siblings. Though the house does not look massive, it is. There is an “L” on the right side and the master and other childrens bedrooms are far away from the attic bedroom. I was unable to hear them, even when their voices were loud. I was petrified during those years.  But did not know I had rights (such as calling social services etc). Today if that happened, the parents would be incarcerated and the child to a safe orphanage or other adoptable home free of NPD parents).  The house still stands and one can drive by and see the “isolated attic in the back”…or the gable of the back of my old bedroom from the front. 

Above you are seeing an aerial view of our next home 109 Mandalay Dr. I remember hearing my father alert us he was building it and we were moving.  By then my younger brother was born. I was so relieved, feeling they had come to their senses and I would be living with the rest of the family. Not the case.  The home was much larger…and so was my new attic bedroom. The red “balloon shows the roof”. Slightly to the right of that you see an white bedroom built into the roof with blue shingles on top, and white wood siding.  It also faces the back, not the front, directly facing high hedges in back of our home.  Another home and those high hedges blocked it from S. 28th Ave. Again I cried and acted out, but still did not know I had any rights.  So I stayed as the scapegoat who absorbed all the family’s issues, and lived there until age 17 when I was put into a trailer with other wayward kids only to get into trouble as I hadn’t a clue what I was supposed to do, which is perfect for a scapegoat child to do (it means he/she’s been properly programmed by his NPD parents).  As scared as I was in the trailer with no skills or worldly knowledge, it was better than my “torturous hidden attic bedrooms”.  I could see people and the street from my trailer window.

After that, I was “taken back in” to have a roof in my 20s and even 30s at times, but I had no workable skills of which to speak.  I had been too busy simply learning to survive.  Anyone who understands autism, knows this is a child living in a country who doesn’t speak the language. Another good analogy is a southpaw with his left hand tied behind his back forced to be right-handed.  In other words it was torture that never ended.  In between the pain, I spent countless hours in the library, and later on the Internet to learn as many skills as possible.

Waterboarding is horrendous but abandoning an autistic child who is also the scapegoat of NPD parents is nonstop torture for many years.  Thank God some insightful lawmakers have now made it impossible to hurt me anymore. That does not mean they do not still try. Word does get back to me. No not my parents but numerous relatives and friends tell me.

This is not the type of story I like to write.  The story does not define me, in fact today it is only a historical part of me.

Today I have a loving wife, I live in paradise and hike the Ouchita Mountains app. 3 times a week with my talented nature/wildlife photography wife, we’re vegans and we live a healthy lifestyle, nothing like what I was taught in my youth. It doesn’t even resemble it a little.  We are inclusive to others who were born with disabilities, etc.

I returned to a very good private college at age 49, just one year after my first major heart attack, and finished about 3 years (before having more surgeries and yet more heart issues).  I still plan to finish, and will.

Which brings me back to accepting gay rights.  Gays are born gay. No matter what ones philosophical or religious feelings might be of gays, we can all agree that gays are born gay. It is not a choice.  Children with autism are born with autism.

There is no fixing either.  Hiding an autistic child away in an attic did not make him (me) less autistic. Had they been healthy parents, I would have most likely gotten treatment and “autistic education” which is quite a bit different than regular education which I found quite boring.  I am what they consider “high functioning” hence I most likely would have been put in a gifted class throughout school.

But it was not to be.  I have no regrets and I don’t feel sorry for myself in the least.  Look at the life I’ve gotten to live due to my autism/and Asperger’s and am living now. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I do feel bad for the “friends”, “relatives” etc. who continue their “let’s hate Rick” diatribe.  Now though, I have the ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act – A Part Of The Dept. Of Justice) on my side. I am well plugged in with them.

So now the leftover “minions” or “flying monkeys” as they are often called cast aspersions at their own risk. Even given the risk-taker I have been in my life, I wouldn’t take a risk like that for anything in the world.  And the smart ones are finding new hobbies (other than “lies about Rick”, I’m told).

Meanwhile Lee and I will always be supportive of all people, however they are born.  We will never “try to fix them” or support anyone “trying to fix them” whether they be gay, straight, male, female, autistic, or you name it.

The God to which we pray doesn’t make mistakes. We believe everyone is perfect just as they are.

Londons Times Cartoons
Google & MSN’s #1 Ranked Offbeat Cartoons SInce 2005
Verified Twitter Account: @RickLondon