On Monday, neither Edith nor Mindy made it to our secret spot for lunch. Maybe Mindy wanted to talk to Hassan. Perhaps Edith had something else.

Marge did, and we talked. Apparently, her house is a lot calmer with the new deals with Charlie. Her parents wore clothes Sunday morning, but she didn't. Her mother undressed to play a video game with her but got dressed afterward. I did ask Olivia to grab my homework and notes and informed my teachers, staying after classes.

My math teacher was particularly supportive of the testing, as was the gym teacher, but most didn't care. I didn't have science that day anyway.

I thought that I barely slept Monday night, but I woke up refreshed. Maybe it's all in my head. I didn't go to school that day, but I had to wake up a little earlier since the test wasn't in town, but rather, in the bigger city, the very same city we were becoming a suburb of.

It was in an office building, completely nondescript, with no clear indication this was where the future of kids was to be determined.

Inside, I was a little shocked. There were three other kids in the waiting room, and they were all younger than I am.

Now, here is where it hurt. I know they are younger, because they look like grade school students, but I still do!

I could see I was older than they were, but they couldn't spot I was the late patient.

Not that most of them were looking to spot the other weirdos. I think that, like them, they mostly wanted to know if the other patients were someone they knew and then returned to their own anxieties.

I wasn't called first or second, but third. My parents wanted to come but couldn't. My father had registered me while my mother stayed with me, but now I was stuck alone with Elaine, the person testing me.

I hate Elaine. I hated her then, and I still hate her now. It's not her fault that I hate her. She was even somewhat nice to me. But she told me my truths, and that hurts.

No, that's not true. I guess the thing is, Elaine isn't Robert. Both performed the same role. They helped diagnose an issue I struggled with. Robert was cool, calm, humble, and reassuring. Even funny. Elaine was clinical and formal. I needed someone to hold my hand, and that wasn't Elaine.

I opened by asking if she would tell me whether I had dyspraxia or not today.

"I will not tell you that you have dyspraxia, not today, not tomorrow, not ever," she said. "We do not test for dyspraxia as a general term."

"But isn't that what my parents are paying for?", I asked, confused.

"Dyspraxia is a common term people use, but the official diagnosis is called Developmental Coordination Disorder, or DCD. We call it DCD. But here is the problem. What people call dyspraxia often falls under DCD, but DCD includes other motor issues too, not just what you're describing. You might have a very different diagnosis."

"But I am clumsy and such."

"That's called ideomotor dyspraxia. How old are you?"

"I just turned 13"

She looks at the chart.

"I don't want to judge, but you don't look 13"

I was annoyed. "I know. I am being treated for late-onset puberty."

"Ah, there we go. So, the only time a person can be diagnosed with ideomotor dyspraxia is if no other medical causes explaining them are present. It's quite possible that any clumsiness is caused by that late-onset puberty. But we'll test that after the lunch break."

"Ok, so what can I have?"

"Many things. Let's start with the first one, the Beery VMI, or Visual-Motor Integration."

She put a pad of paper in front of me, and three pencils.

"I am going to give you flashcards with a shape on them. You will recopy them while I take notes."

"Ok, this is clearly for younger kids," I said, confident.

"Even adults sometimes fail at them. It's not to judge how advanced you are. We compensate for age and development."

"Fair enough"

The first was a square, then, a few different triangles, a circle, an oval, and a hexagon, but then, weirder shapes with irregular sections.

I think I did well enough, if I concentrated hard enough.

"Ok, we'll do it again, but I will count down from 3, 4 or 5, depending on the shape complexity"

I struggled a little more. But then, I had to do it all over again, but with a new twist.

"I will show you the shape. Hide it. We will count to 15, and you will draw it."

I did a lot worse, hesitating, and she wrote a lot in her pad.

When I was done, she showed me a complex figure with a lot of overlapping parts. I had to copy it down, but then she put both aside and moved to giving me red and white cubes.

I had to recreate patterns using the cubes, but they are weird. Some are bigger, smaller, with diagonal parts. Some are half red and half white. I really struggled, and when I was about 15 minutes in, I had barely made progress.

I was frustrated. Why is it that hard? Are kids ever supposed to figure it out?

"Don't worry about it. Remember that shape that you drew before the blocks?"

"Sort of"

"Draw it again, from memory"

Shit.

When it was done, she put everything aside.

"Julie, are you the kind of girl who wants to get results as we go along, or would you prefer to wait until the end, in case it stresses you out?"

"I don't know. On one hand, I feel like I completely failed that segment, so if you were to tell me that I did fine for my age, I would just prefer to hear that. But if you were to tell me something like, This only shows that you have a vision problem and not that you are stupid, I think I would also want to hear it"

"Well, first, the IQ test is just before lunch. So this doesn't show if you are intellectually challenged. It could explain it, but I suspect it's not why you failed"

"So I did fail"

She didn't say I failed, but I knew what she meant. I failed. She danced around the subject.

"The Rey-Osterrieth test, that's the one you have to recopy after 15 minutes, you had about half the components, you jumbled the proportions, you couldn't figure out the blocks, your shapes in the Beery VMI are misaligned, the lines are shaky, and you often erased to compensate. Sure, you are only 13, but I think you have a visual-motor impairment of some sort."

"I see. It's what I suspected. Could be why I suck at trigonometry on complex figures?"

"First, you shouldn't be doing that at your age, it's not developmentally appropriate, and second, yes, if you need to parse a diagram. I would keep the questions until the end, when I know more about you. Shall we tackle the next section, Verbal and Language Skills?"

"Ah, my favorite"

"Good. I will give you a series of pairs of words. You have to tell me how they are alike. Now, what is important, is your answer speed and how you can defend your position, more than if you are right or wrong. I'll give you an example. Try to answer it, and I will tell you if you did well and what is a bad answer."

"Sure," I say.

"Bird and Butterfly"

"Easy, both can fly, both go through a transformation, from chick to bird, from a caterpillar to a butterfly, and some migrate for the winter."

"Ok, you can stop. That is an excellent answer. A bad one would be something like both are words that start with B. Or that you like them both. Or that both are animals"

I laugh. "A Butterfly is an insect, not an animal."

"Exactly. So, ready to go?"

"Sure"

"Pear and apple"

"Both are juicy somewhat round fruits we can grow in the USA"

"Bicycle and shoes"

"Both are used to help transportation of our own movement"

"Cat and dog"

"Both are animals often kept as pets. They are mammals, and I think they are apex predators"

"Pencil and pen"

"Both are tools we use to write"

"Book and magazine"

"Both are written material used for reading, supported by paper"

"Tree and a bush"

"Both are plants, with branches and leaves, just as different sizes of trunks, I guess."

She asked me quite a lot more, and I know it didn't start with those ones, but it's just those I remember.

"Good. You are not giving me good answers. You are giving excellent answers, Julie. I will ask you for definitions."

Most were simple, like happy, library, friendship, persistent, enormous, resilient.

She notably stopped to congratulate me on the definition of resilient. In which I explained that it meant being able to recover efficiently from problems.

She also asked me to define efficiently, since it was later in the test. She liked my definition too.

I had to give some stupid information next, like what is the capital of the USA, how many days in a week, and days in each month, but also about planets, seasons, my parents, and my friends. She didn't know my friends, so I didn't know the point of those questions, but I think I got all of them right. Even remembering that Jupiter was the biggest planet and Earth was the 3rd one.

"Ok, I will tell you a story and ask you questions about it. Then, you will read one, and I will ask you questions about it."

The story was stupid. About a boy going in the forest to pick berries and talking to animals. The questions were equally stupid and obvious. The one written was about a girl going shopping for her grandmother, and it was just stupid pointless, and the questions were equally ridiculous.

None of them were complex.

"Well, that completes the language skills part"

I laughed. "Nothing was hard in this"

"It appears. Julie, you have excellent verbal skills. You have no issues with expressive or receptive language"

"Talking and listening?"

"Indeed. You never hesitated, not even in the story recall"

"They were pretty simple"

"No, they were not. It's just one of your strengths, Julie. Even as an adult. I wouldn't do as well on the story recall tasks. I would with these, but not new ones."

"Huh. Maybe my problems are more localized than I thought"

"We'll see. The next block is Working Memory and Arithmetic.

I had other easy tasks, like "If you buy 3 notebooks for $2 each and pay with a ten, how much change do you get?"

Or she would tell me 5 numbers, and I would need to repeat them. Then 6, 7, 8 and I failed at 9. And then, I needed to repeat them, but in the opposite order. I failed at 7. I even had to mix in letters, but say them separately. Like 2, G, 4, E, 3, L, and I would say numbers 2, 4, 3, and letters G, E, L. I did well enough.

I had a ton of verbal additions and subtractions to do verbally, even chains of them. Like 2+4+2+6-8.

I did have a few hesitations, and made some mistakes, but at the end, she told me I was strong in working memory and arithmetic.

The next block was all about logic puzzles with figure weights. Like, if a triangle is the same weight as two circles, how many circles equal two triangles.

It seemed to go on forever, and she basically ran into such difficult questions that she was losing me.

But then, she stopped.

"I have to go until you miss 3 of them in a row, and you made it far enough to enter the very good territory. You have a great mathematical mind."

"Nice, I just don't see the shapes well"

"It appears so. The next one is the processing speed index. I will give you symbols and a question and time how long it takes for you to answer each question."

"Like what?"

"Like, fill in the missing symbols, or which symbol doesn't belong, or which is the most like. Read each question, and answer by pointing your finger or fingers at the solution. I will give you another card if you are right, and say no, if you are not. so you can try again."

I'll be honest, I remember doing this one and even liking it. Reacting quickly and finding the pattern easily enough. Like, which of these two elements is the most like "a snowflake symbol," and I would touch the star and the sun with the rays, not the umbrella or the cloud.

I did super well on that one too.

But then, it was 11:00 AM already, and she took out a booklet, which was my IQ test.

I would know whether I am an idiot or not..

Well, I didn't know when I paused for lunch, but I didn't seem to do that badly.

We went to the nearest fast food place, a McDonald's, and I realized that two of the other kids were there too with their parents. We didn't speak to them, and they didn't speak to me.

I think my parents were skeptical about the whole thing, but it's difficult to tell. It's not that they didn't trust me, but the way I explained it, made it seem like the tests were really for young children. Today, researching back on this, I see that some are complex, but still not that much.

Perhaps other people find the tests I failed just as easy as I find those I succeeded?

When I came with Elaine, she had good news. I have a high IQ for my age, so that seemed to point even more to just visuomotor issues.

After lunch, however, she asked me plenty of personal questions about my friends. How I interacted with them, how I got along with them. I didn't open up about the naturism, but I spoke a lot about Edith, about Marge's issues, and about Mindy and her heartbreak. About Lucy, and I remember talking about the rules of cool, which she laughed at in a kind way but didn't elaborate on. I had to elaborate on my career idea, why, and what appealed to me about it. About my favorite hobbies, books, and TV shows.

It seemed like a complete waste of time, as if she was just trying to get to know me more.

"Julie, did you ever suspect you were on the autism spectrum?"

"I wondered, I don't fully understand everyone"

"No one does"

"So the next step is the autism one?"

"No, you just did it"

"Huh? Marge told me that she struggled a lot with it"

"Sure, if she is autistic. I have directives to tell you while you answer"

"You gave me none"

"I know. This shows that naturally, you wait for me to finish talking, you make full sentences, you look at me when talking. Your stories show that you are sociable, empathetic and reveal some shyness that is totally age appropriate. You showed incredible amounts of humor. I wasn't laughing at you with your rules of cool. You were genuinely funny in a charming way. You said you might want to write one day. To that I say, try it. "

So, I wasn't autistic. At all. Good.

I had to next do the BOT-2 test for gross and fine motor skills.

I had to do balance exercises, do fine finger taps, raise weights and place them on shelves, and stuff like that. I even had to try to balance myself on a sort of ball with a ring around it, but I could hold her arm.

I did very poorly, and she wrote plenty of things in her pad.

"I failed?"

"Well, your muscle tone seems lower than average for your age. Wrists and knees seem lanky, and, well, I'll say it, prepubescent."

"Which I am"

"Which you are. So not worrisome from my point of view. I feel like your coordination lag is probably linked to your physical maturity, because you have the level of, say, a 10-year-old?"

"Which tracks, as I only began seeing myself as clumsy recently."

She laughs. "Because kids who are 9 or 10 are clumsy. All of them. But then, when kids mature, they become more agile. There are variations, but if you didn't get through puberty, it might be normal. So, did you fail? For a 13-year-old, yes, but for a child at your development level?"

"No?"

"Well, also yes. I'll be honest, but it's more nuanced."

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't fail all the way. I'll be honest, those involving your vision were much harder for you than those without it. You seem to have good proprioception for your age. That's the ability to perceive how your body is positioned, but not so much with your eyes."

"So that's my problem?"

"It appears so. Do you want to bring your parents in?"

"Wait, we are done?"

"No, and yes. I see no point in further tests. If you were on the autism spectrum, I would have more tests. If you struggled with speech too, but no. I don't have anything else for you. I think I have a clear diagnosis, well, clear enough"

"The visuospatial thing"

"I'll bring them in, and we'll talk, all of us."

I was left alone for a minute, and my parents joined us. The table had four chairs, not that I noticed, so we each sat on a side, with my mom on my right and my dad on my left. They each held one of my hands.

"So, Julie did very well. She was a great subject, was always positive, showed no real frustration, and is kind, funny, and very intelligent."

"Good, so that's the good. What's the bad?" says my dad.

"Oh, no, that's not even all the good! So, let's review. Julie fails spatial and visual motor tests. That's consistent with visuospatial dyspraxia, which is my diagnosis for Julie. She also failed some of the non-visual motor skills, but I suspect this is caused by her delayed puberty and not a cause for concern, except when both intersect."

"Like learning to ride a bike?" asks my dad.

"Yes. That can explain issues. Did she learn?"

"I did. I have no problems today," I said.

"Good. This isn't a handicap, Julie. It's an impairment. I see no problems overcoming your issues with some help",

"Like what?" I asked.

"Ok, I will give examples, but I need to return to the results afterwards"

"Sure"

"You could do geometry exams on a computer. You could be allowed more time to complete them on paper, and pieces of paper to block elements from overloading your vision. You could copy part of the shapes on a sheet of paper, so that you don't have the whole context to see all at once. You could use highlighters of different colors to highlight things. You could use a ruler to help you focus, sliding it on the paper as you get information. For a table of data? That will be crucial. You will also discover tricks on your own."

"I like that ruler thing. I already use the paper to mark things off"

"Good. I will give your parents some guides to help. You will have exercises, but they are mostly so you can learn to use the tools to help you out. I will give them a note for the school. Many school districts will give you more time for those exams, and sometimes, a quieter room. It can help for focus"

"Oh, I do better at my tutor's house than at school. It could be that"

"Yes, your eyes need more energy to focus, so if you are overwhelmed by other stimuli, it might impair a lot. That will be in the note"

"Thank you"

"Ok, so, she shows absolutely no signs of autism spectrum disorder, has excellent verbal skills, and has great working memory. I suspect better than any of the three of us. She scored high in IQ metrics. This shows no sign of any cognitive delays. I think all the signs point to two distinct issues. A physical immaturity in terms of motor skills due to her delayed puberty and a clearly present visuospatial dyspraxia."

"And that's chronic?" asked my mom.

"Yes, but it's not tragic. There are real techniques to help her overcome it, and she outperforms many kids her age in verbal skills and cognitive speed. Her condition will be a problem for school, and I have a recommendation to help her out, but as an adult, she shouldn't struggle too much."

"Which recommendation?", asked my dad.

"Methylphenidate. Her doctor can prescribe a low dose which should help her focus more when performing visual tasks"

"What is that?", I ask.

"Ritalin," said Elaine.

I'll stop this right now. Full stop.

She convinced us to try it, and I found it useful. Enough that in the next few chapters, I am on Ritalin.

I don't blame Elaine. It's not her fault. Elaine wasn't warm. But she didn't lie to me. And maybe that's what I needed more than kindness.

But Ritalin ruined quite a few years of my life and robbed me of important experiences.

And yet, I am not against Ritalin. It helps countless kids. It even helped me, in a sick twisted way. But in my case, the long-term effects outweigh the benefits.

This is a warning about future chapters. Still, it's only short-term. I have stopped taking it for years, and now, at age 22, I consider that I don't have any lasting effects and that any experiences that Ritalin stole from me, I more than made up for them.

Characters

Episodes