10 Obsessions and Hyper-Interests

Passion is energy.
Feel the power that comes
from focusing on what
excites you.

—Oprah Winfrey

Helpful Hint: The way Aspies’ brains are hardwired, they are going to find one or two (or maybe more) areas that really interest them and focus on those areas intensely. Some people call these obsessions; I call them hyper-interests. If the hyper-interest is a positive one, it should be harnessed and encouraged.

Growing up with Charlie in the Greenville section of Jersey City, I got to know him at an early age. Our fathers played gin together twice a week. Charlie and I would pal around, mostly at the Jewish Community Center, where we’d play basketball for hours on end.

Charlie was quiet, serious, cerebral, and kept to himself. I was a boisterous, backslapping, classic Type A personality and had the much larger social circle. But despite our different personalities, we became close friends at Snyder High School and even formed our own little Sherlock Holmes group, which we called the Diogenes Club. We discussed cases, used our powers of observation, and tried to create and figure out little mysteries for ourselves.

Looking back at those years from my current perspective, I can now see a bit of Aspieness in Charlie. Maybe it was that he was a private person who never wasted words. Maybe it was his genius IQ. Maybe it was his love of numbers. But when I say he loved numbers, I’m not talking about discrete math. The numbers Charlie loved to study were the ones in the racing forms. You see, Charlie was obsessed with the trotters—the sport of harness racing. Maybe he’d gotten the bug from his father, who worked at Yonkers Raceway but always tried to dissuade his son from going into that area. I also tried to convince Charlie that gambling was a waste of time, especially for someone as smart as he was. But the trotters were his obsession, his hyper-interest.

Charlie and I were teammates on Snyder’s varsity basketball team. Charlie’s court savvy and awareness made him one of the top guards in Hudson County. After graduation, we both went to college in Boston—me to Boston University for its six-year medical program (despite having been expelled from school twice along the way, making me wonder how I would have been labeled growing up), Charlie to Brandeis on an academic scholarship. That winter our schools’ basketball teams played each other. Charlie was captain of the Brandeis freshman team (then coached by legendary Boston Celtic K.C. Jones), while I came off the bench for BU.

After the game, Charlie and I got together and talked about our plans. I asked Charlie if he was still obsessed with going to the track and betting on the horses. “Of course, Hack,” he said. “What did you expect?”

“Charlie, when are you going to give this up? You have the highest IQ of anyone I know. There must be a thousand things a smart guy like you could do. And you’re never going to get the chance, because you’re going to flunk out of college.” I figured that all the time he was spending at the track had to be affecting his grades—though it did not. I continued, “Face it. You’re never going to make a living at the track.”

He didn’t argue; he was never one to waste words. He just smiled.

Well, as I’ve said throughout this book, I was once clueless about Asperger’s and I was just as clueless when giving Charlie career advice. Charlie Singer harnessed (no pun intended) his obsession and went on to become a top handicapper of the trotters at the Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, New Jersey. For years he set the morning lines there. His peers respected him for his handicapping skills,17 and his coworkers loved him. One of them said that Charlie was the only guy he knew who “could watch a race once with binoculars and see everything.”

17 If Charlie said something and you didn’t get it, that was your problem. He wouldn’t waste time explaining it. Once he was on vacation in Florida and took me to the track with him. He said, “Hack, I’m on vacation, I’m just out to have a good time. Don’t ask me who I like.” I agreed, but since he was Charlie Singer, handicapper par excellence, I peeked over his shoulder and saw that in the first race he’d circled the seven horse. I went to the window and put $10 on the seven to win. The horse came in last. In the second race I “noticed” he’d picked the seven horse again. I bet it again. This one finished fifth. In the next two races, Charlie picked the seven. Both lost. Finally I said, “Charlie, why are you picking the seven horse in each race?

He said, “The Mick.” Of course! That was the other thing he and I had in common: we both worshipped Mickey Mantle, the immortal number 7 of the New York Yankees.

Charlie had warned me not to ask him which horse he liked. But I didn’t listen. He wasn’t handicapping that day, he was just having fun. What does this have to do with Aspies? Maybe nothing. Or maybe we should do a little more listening to them and try to understand the way their brains work, rather than impose our will on them.

In August 1989 Charlie was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He worked on and off until he succumbed to the cancer four years later. Just four months after his premature death at age fifty-three, the first Charles Singer Memorial harness race was run at Meadowlands.

Principle: There’s a fine line between interests and obsessions. Your Aspie may become obsessed with a certain activity or an area. She’ll eat, live, and sleep it—as well as talk about it nonstop. She will want to tell everyone about it but won’t have the patience to listen to others talk about their interests. She’ll go on and on until the person she’s talking to walks away. (Using role-playing, you can help teach them not to be a conversation hog.)

Don’t be too quick to dig in your heels and forbid that activity. First, decide if the interest is a positive or negative one. If you can harness the obsession and convert it into a positive interest that can spur the Aspie’s productivity and enable her to earn a living, it’s a win-win situation. Many Aspies go on to become professionals in the area they obsess on. Silicon Valley companies such as Apple, Google, and SAP have hired and nurtured Aspies, placing great value on their analytical skills and their ability to focus.

Jason had Asperger’s syndrome. The educational system in the area where he lived and attended public school was not doing a good job of teaching him. So his mother founded a school that specialized in education for kids with Asperger’s syndrome. Jason became one of the first students.

Jason had always been fascinated by cars, particularly General Motors cars. When he was thirteen, he won a Special Olympics event and was given a Toyota baseball cap as a prize. He said he would keep the cap out of respect, but he wanted to go on record to say, “Toyota should come out and recognize once and for all that GM is the real king of the road.”

When fifteen-year-old Jason was failing math, Rebecca began tutoring him. She harnessed his obsession with automobiles by teaching his math lessons in terms of cars and car design.

Under Rebecca’s tutelage, Jason started doing better at school. But his obsession with cars didn’t wane one bit. Most people viewed Jason’s car obsession as a problem and tried to shift him to other interests. But a local car dealer who was also a benefactor of Jason’s school saw the opportunity to harness Jason’s obsession as a win-win situation by giving him a job at his Chevy dealership.

The young Aspie learned to modify his behavior, toned down his rhetoric, and took sales training courses. He read everything he could about selling cars and in particular Chevrolets. In addition, he simply would not let a potential buyer walk off the lot without buying a vehicle; therefore, you’ll understand how, in just his third month on the job, fifteen-year-old Jason broke the dealership’s sales record by selling thirty-eight vehicles!

Everyone (and particularly Aspies) should be encouraged to discover their passion and then pursue it. If you can make a living at it, and if you can help others while you do it, so much the better. A great woman once said to her son, who she thought was coasting instead of applying himself, “You have a moral obligation to work to your full potential with the gifts that God has given you, to help yourself, your family, your friends, and those less fortunate. And to have a good time doing it.” That woman was my mother, Evelyn. The son she didn’t think was living up to his potential was me. And I’ve never forgotten the lesson she imparted.

ACTION PLAN: When you’re helping your Aspie choose activities, no matter what her age, don’t dig in your heels and make her exclude the area she’s obsessed with. Try to harness that hyper-interest, turn it into a positive, and give her a chance to live her dreams.