Flights of Fancy, Football & Introversion

I’d told the story before, though without much detail. It was simply a flight of fancy…, a love of football…, &, as I’m beginning to understand, being on a spectrum I knew nothing about.

I’m pretty sure it was fifth grade at Grant Elementary School in Watertown, South Dakota, Mrs. Hansen’s class, the fall of 1969. The story had been percolating inside of me for a while & I had finally decided to give some substance to it.

The Adventures of Timothy Robin & Jimmy Meadowlark is how I’ve always remembered the title. Turns out it was actually The Adventure of Timmy Robin: + Blackstar & Tawlser. Jimmy hadn’t been a part of the original story but I decided I needed to add him. Two little birds who loved to play football in the open field behind our house right next to Mr. Sherrill’s horse corral just inside of town. They’d been told it was time to head south, but they wanted to keep playing…, which they did.

They’d been warned.

By the time they were ready to put the ball away & join the others, everyone else had already gone. They’d been left behind.

———Я———

All the kids in our class wanted to know what I was doing. When I told them, they wanted to hear all about these two wayward birds. I told them they would have to wait until it was finished. Then I would let them read the entire thing if they wanted. Even Mrs. Hansen seemed intrigued (& more than a little pleased).

I wrote for days on the story. Drew illustrations for it as well. (What kind of book would it have been for fifth graders if it didn’t have pictures?) I’d fallen in love with colored pencils by that time. No more crayons. I was getting too old for that sort of thing. The artwork had to be better than that.

Everyone was surprisingly patient, giving me all the time & space I needed to finish my work. After a couple of weeks, I squared the pages with construction paper front & back to fashion a cover & stapled them together. As it made the rounds, my classmates became increasingly excited. They wanted to write stories too!

Before long we had a veritable library we were sharing with one another. We couldn’t wait for each new contribution & devoured them greedily. We told each other what we liked & didn’t like. If there was something we didn’t understand, we asked questions. And we had a blast.

At one point I began writing a play which Mrs. Hansen decided we needed to perform for the rest of the class. To be completely honest, I never finished writing it, but that didn’t keep me from advertising, assembling a cast & starting rehearsals. After several weeks of this, Mrs. Hansen decided it was time. No more fooling around. The show must go on. We performed what I had ready & then, since I had the basic idea of what was supposed to happen in my head, we improvised the rest with me “whispering” instructions from behind the classroom door to those on stage.

It was the only time Mrs. Hansen ever got testy with us. (We loved her dearly. She was an awesome teacher.) At one point, one of the actors was supposed to be a baby crying in a crib while mom & dad were arguing. The crying baby got to be a bit much (she was doing a great job, full voice, projecting to the very back of the room—the back of the room of the next grade school over, that is), & Mrs. Hansen requested/demanded—nay, instructed—that the crying stop.

I believe our class may have gone further than any other in the history of SRS Readers inasmuch as our writing was contingent upon our continued reading. It was a stellar year all the way around, I do believe, for all of us.

I did feel a little sorry for the other class of fifth graders across the hall. While we were having fun, they were missing out.

———Я———

Being left behind was something I don’t remember happening with anyone in that class (we were all enthusiastic cheerleaders for one another). But recently, as I have begun to recall more keenly, it was a big part of my life growing up.

Mom had a rule. She was in charge. And if she told us we were supposed to be somewhere at a certain time, we’d better be there. If we were late for supper, we might not get to eat, or we might get extra chores, or we might have to write sentences (e.g., “I will not be late for supper,” usually something like one hundred times—though I did get hit with ten thousand on one occasion!). If we were past curfew coming in from playing outside, even if only by a couple of minutes, we could expect the same. If the family was heading somewhere & you were late….

…you got left behind.

The threat of it was enough to reduce a child to tears. But if it happened, there was another rule.

Stay put. Eventually they’d come back for you.

Don’t believe me? Think there were probably limitations as to where that could happen?

Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I was in junior high at the time. We were ninety-eight miles from home as defined by Interstate 29, in the largest city in the state. My older brother Steve was playing viola in the symphony on a Sunday afternoon. We went to the larger of the two malls to shop before it was time for the rest of us to head to the auditorium.

Mom had to be to any concert or show we were in at least half an hour early. She wanted a good parking spot as well as good seats where a burgeoning family of ten could sit together. She told us where & when to meet. Don’t be late.

I was the first one there, a good fifteen minutes ahead of time. The store outside of which we were to gather had a television department straight back from the entrance. The Dallas Cowboys were playing & the game was showing on those tv sets.

I kept running to the rear of the store to check the score, then back out to the front to see if mom & dad were there yet. One by one & two by two my sisters & brothers showed up. But no mom & dad.

I ran in one last time to check the score, & when I rushed back out….

…they were gone.

I didn’t know whether mom would send dad straight back to get me once they were at the venue or not (she didn’t). I knew the rule. And I knew if I wasn’t right there sitting on that bench when they did return I would be in more trouble than I could ever imagine.

Ninety-eight miles from home. In the larger of the two malls in the largest city in the state. Preteen. Nearly three hours of sitting by myself, watching a whole host of strangers walking by.

Not until just a few days ago did it dawn on me, that’s exactly what I did with Timmy & Jimmy.

———Я———

They’d been left behind. What were they to do? Stay put & make the best of their situation. (Okay, I let them seek shelter in a nearby forest. Close enough.)

Meadowlarks & robins tend to leave South Dakota sometime in September—at least by October—& they don’t usually return until late March or April. South Dakota winters reach forty degrees below zero & even lower on a regular basis, with highs of minus ten (that's Fahrenheit). January can be brutal & the very reason every motor vehicle you see on the road up there has a runny nose (i.e., a cord for a block heater sticking out its grill).

Timmy & Jimmy knew they’d need help & so they made a friend. A little girl named Susan who brought them food & helped provide shelter for them through those long dark cold months. And if along the way they might foil some murderous kidnappers hiding in a cabin deep in the woods, so much the better.

Three friends. This story—my story—centered around three friends. That was something else which only recently began to make sense to me.

———Я———

Most people I knew outside of my family found it hard to believe that I was an introvert. It seemed to them that I talked all the time. That’s the thing about those of us who are extremely introverted. Either you can’t get us to say a thing or you can’t get us to shut up.

But I wasn’t simply introverted. I was autistic, something I knew nothing about at the time. High functioning, but definitely on the spectrum, routinely scoring thirty-eight out of fifty where thirty means you’re there. Growing up I learned to compensate according to what others told me to do. Mom said that if I didn’t look people in the eyes they’d think I was lying. So I faked it by looking near the eyes (bridge of the nose, cheek, or that space in between). Steve told me I needed to stand & join the singing during opening exercises at Sunday School. So focusing on the front & without paying attention to anyone else, I did. I was supposed to spend time with others. So I either held court or hid in the background in order to manage it.

But if I was going to handle being around others for very long, one or two always worked best. (One was more comfortable except for the fact that it meant I was responsible for the other side of any conversation we might have. Two meant that I could simply listen or even zone out, tossing in my two cents whenever it seemed appropriate.)

Two or three friends hanging out together. Two or three against the world. That’s what I had written long before I was even close to figuring out that was who I was, who I am.

Timothy Robin & Jimmy Meadowlark with a little girl named Susan as a friend. An unwitting expression of my world in something like seventeen handwritten pages—all while in the fifth grade.

———Я———

Below are the sixteen pages of The Adventure of Timmy Robin: + Blackstar & Tawlsar from 1969. The cover is featured at the top of this story. Whether or not you can read my handwriting, at least you can get an idea of what this guy's penmanship, artistry & errata looked like back in the fifth grade.