The United States Army

[Small Penis]

How long has the US army or the military in general been accepting people with autism or asperger's to join? I honestly didn't think someone with autism or asperger's was stupid enough to join the US military, but I guess I was way off on  that one.

[jman]

my grandfather fought during the Korean war, He is  suspected to be on the autism spectrum and is probably where I got my autism from.

[Adam]

I got my autism from the autism fairy 

[RageBeoulve]

How long has the US army or the military in general been accepting people with autism or asperger's to join? I honestly didn't think someone with autism or asperger's was stupid enough to join the US military, but I guess I was way off on  that one.

Now you're getting a little closer to good trolling. Subtle. Much better.

Also: Cool story, bro. 

[Peter]

      Uncle Sam Doesn't Need You!

     After the war the army was scraping the bottom of the barrel to get the
guys for the  occupation forces in Germany. Up until then  the army deferred
people for some reason other than  physical first (I was deferred because  I
was working on the bomb), but now they reversed  that and gave  everybody  a
physical first.
     That  summer I  was working  for  Hans  Bethe  at General  Electric  in
Schenectady,  New  York, and I remember that I had to go some distance --  I
think it was to Albany -- to take the physical.
     I get to  the draft place, and I'm handed  a lot  of forms to fill out,
and then I start going around to all these different booths. They check your
vision at  one, your  hearing  at another, they take  your blood  sample  at
another, and so forth.
     Anyway, finally you  come to booth number thirteen: psychiatrist. There
you wait,  sitting on one of the  benches,  and while I'm waiting I  can see
what is happening.  There are three  desks, with  a psychiatrist behind each
one, and  the "culprit" sits across  from the psychiatrist in  his  BVDs and
answers various questions.
     At that  time there  were  a  lot of movies  about  psychiatrists.  For
example, there was Spellbound, in which a woman who used to be a great piano
player has her hands stuck in some awkward position and she can't move them,
and  her  family  calls  in  a psychiatrist  to  try to  help her,  and  the
psychiatrist goes upstairs into a room  with her, and you see the door close
behind them, and downstairs the family is discussing what's going to happen,
and then  she  comes  out  of  the room, hands still stuck  in  the horrible
position,  walks dramatically down the stairs  over  to  the piano  and sits
down, lifts  her hands  over the keyboard,  and suddenly --  dum  diddle dum
diddle dum, dum, dum -- she can play again. Well, I can't stand this kind of
baloney,  and I had decided  that psychiatrists are  fakers, and  I'll  have
nothing to  do with them. So that was the mood I was in  when it was my turn
to talk to the psychiatrist.
     I sit down at the desk, and the psychiatrist starts  looking through my
papers. "Hello, Dick!" he says in a cheerful voice. "Where do you work?"
     I'm thinking,  "Who does he think he is, calling me  by my first name?"
and I say coldly, "Schenectady."
     "Who do you work for, Dick?" says the psychiatrist, smiling again.
     "General Electric."
     "Do you like your work, Dick?" he says, with that same big smile on his
face.
     "So-so." I just wasn't going to have anything to do with him.
     Three  nice questions, and then the fourth one is completely different.
"Do you think people talk about you?" he asks, in a low, serious tone.
     I light up and say, "Sure! When I go home, my mother often tells me how
she  was  telling  her  friends  about   me."  He  isn't  listening  to  the
explanation; instead, he's writing something down on my paper.
     Then again, in a low, serious tone, he says, "Do you think people stare
at you?"
     I'm all ready to say no, when he says, ''For instance, do you think any
of the boys waiting on the benches are staring at you now?"
     While  I had been waiting  to talk  to the psychiatrist, I had  noticed
there  were  about  twelve  guys  on  the  benches  waiting  for  the  three
psychiatrists, and they've got nothing  else to  look at, so I divide twelve
by three -- that makes four each --  but I'm conservative, so I say,  "Yeah,
maybe two of them are looking at us."
     He  says,  "Well just  turn around  and  look"  --  and  he's not  even
bothering to look himself!
     So I turn around, and sure enough, two guys are looking. So I  point to
them and I say, "Yeah --  there's that guy, and that guy  over there looking
at us." Of course, when I'm turned around and pointing like that, other guys
start to look at us, so I say, "Now him, and those two over there -- and now
the  whole bunch." He still doesn't look up to check. He's busy writing more
things on my paper.
     Then he says, "Do you ever hear voices in your head?"
     "Very rarely," and I'm about  to describe the two occasions on which it
happened when he says, "Do you talk to yourself?"
     "Yeah, sometimes when I'm  shaving, or thinking; once in a while." He's
writing down more stuff.
     "I see you have a deceased wife -- do you talk to her?"
     This  question  really  annoyed  me, but I  contained myself and  said,
"Sometimes, when I go up on a mountain and I'm thinking about her."
     More  writing.  Then he asks,  "Is  anyone  in  your family in a mental
institution?"
     "Yeah, I have an aunt in an insane asylum."
     "Why do you call it an insane asylum?" he says, resentfully. "Why don't
you call it a mental institution?"
     "I thought it was the same thing."
     "Just what do you think insanity is?" he says, angrily.
     "It's a strange and peculiar disease in human beings," I say honestly.
     "There's  nothing  any  more  strange   or  peculiar   about  it   than
appendicitis!" he retorts.
     "I don't think so. In appendicitis we understand the causes better, and
something about the mechanism of it, whereas with  insanity it's  much  more
complicated and mysterious."  I won't go through the whole debate; the point
is that I meant insanity is physiologically peculiar, and he thought I meant
it was socially peculiar.
     Up until this time, although I had been unfriendly to the psychiatrist,
I had nevertheless been honest in everything I said. But when he asked me to
put  out  my  hands,  I  couldn't  resist pulling  a  trick  a  guy  in  the
"bloodsucking  line" had told  me about. I figured nobody was ever going  to
get a chance to do this,  and as long as I was halfway  under water, I would
do it. So I put out my hands with one palm up and the other one down.
     The psychiatrist doesn't notice. He says, "Turn them over."
     I turn them  over.  The one that was up goes down, and the one that was
down goes up, and he still doesn't notice, because  he's always looking very
closely at one hand to see if it is shaking. So the trick had no effect.
     Finally, at the end  of all these questions, he becomes friendly again.
He lights up and says, "I see you have a Ph.D., Dick. Where did you study?"
     "MIT and Princeton. And where did you study?"
     "Yale and London. And what did you study, Dick?"
     "Physics. And what did you study?"
     "Medicine."
     "And this is medicine?"
     "Well, yes. What do you think it is? You go and sit down over there and
wait a few minutes!"
     So I sit on  the bench again, and  one of the other guys waiting sidles
up to me and says, "Gee! You  were in there twenty-five minutes!  The  other
guys were in there only five minutes!"
     "Yeah."
     "Hey," he  says. "You wanna know how  to fool the psychiatrist? All you
have to do is pick your nails, like this."
     "Then why don't you pick your nails like that?"
     "Oh," he says, "I wanna get in the army!"
     "You wanna fool the psychiatrist?" I say. "You just tell him that!"
     After a  while I was called over  to  a  different desk to see  another
psychiatrist.  While  the  first psychiatrist  had  been  rather  young  and
innocent-looking,  this  one  was  gray-haired and distinguished-looking  --
obviously the superior psychiatrist. I  figure  all of this is now  going to
get straightened  out, but no matter  what happens, I'm not going  to become
friendly.
     The new psychiatrist looks at  my papers, puts a big smile on his face,
and says, "Hello, Dick. I see you worked at Los Alamos during the war."
     "Yeah."
     "There used to be a boys' school there, didn't there?"
     "That's right."
     "Were there a lot of buildings in the school?"
     "Only a few."
     Three  questions  --  same  technique  --  and  the  next  question  is
completely different. "You said you hear voices in your head. Describe that,
please."
     "It  happens very rarely, when I've been  paying attention to  a person
with  a  foreign accent.  As I'm falling  asleep  I can hear his voice  very
clearly. The first time it happened was  while I  was  a student  at MIT.  I
could hear  old Professor  Vallarta say, 'Dee-a dee-a electric field-a.' And
the other time  was  in Chicago  during the  war, when Professor  Teller was
explaining to me how the bomb worked.  Since I'm  interested in all kinds of
phenomena,  I  wondered  how  I  could hear  these  voices  with accents  so
precisely, when I couldn't imitate them that well... Doesn't  everybody have
something like that happen once in a while?"
     The psychiatrist put  his hand  over his face, and I could  see through
his fingers a little smile (he wouldn't answer the question).
     Then  the psychiatrist checked into something  else. "You said that you
talk to your deceased wife. What do you say to her?"
     I got angry.  I figure it's none of  his  damn business,  and I say, "I
tell her I love her, if it's all right with you!"
     After  some  more bitter  exchanges  he says,  "Do  you  believe in the
supernormal?"
     I say, "I don't know what the 'supernormal' is."
     "What? You, a Ph.D. in physics, don't know what the supernormal is?"
     "That's right."
     "It's what Sir Oliver Lodge and his school believe in."
     That's not much of a clue, but I knew it. "You mean the supernatural."
     "You can call it that if you want."
     "All right, I will."
     "Do you believe in mental telepathy?"
     "No. Do you?"
     "Well, I'm keeping an open mind."
     "What? You, a psychiatrist, keeping an open mind? Ha!" It  went on like
this for quite a while.
     Then at some point near the end he says, "How much do you value life?"
     "Sixty-four."
     "Why did you say 'sixty-four'?"
     "How are you supposed to measure the value of life?"
     "No! I mean, why did you say 'sixty-four,' and not 'seventy-three,' for
instance?"
     "If  I  had said  'seventy-three,'  you  would have asked  me the  same
question!"
     The  psychiatrist finished  with three friendly questions, just  as the
other psychiatrist had done, handed me my papers, and I went off to the next
booth.
     While  I'm  waiting  in  the line, I look at the  paper which  has  the
summary of  all  the tests I've taken  so far. And just for the hell of it I
show  my  paper  to  the  guy  next  to  me,  and  I  ask  him in  a  rather
stupid-sounding voice, "Hey! What did you get in  'Psychiatric'? Oh! You got
an 'N.'  I got an 'N' in everything else, but I got a 'D'  in 'Psychiatric.'
What does that mean?" I knew what it meant: "N" is normal, "D" is deficient.
     The guy pats  me on the shoulder and says, "Buddy, it's  perfectly  all
right.  It doesn't  mean anything. Don't worry about it!" Then he  walks way
over to the other corner of the room, frightened: It's a lunatic!
     I started  looking at the papers the psychiatrists had  written, and it
looked pretty serious! The first guy wrote: Thinks people talk about him.
     Thinks people stare at him.
     Auditory hypnogogic hallucinations.
     Talks to self.
     Talks to deceased wife.
     Maternal aunt in mental institution.
     Very peculiar stare. (I knew what that  was -- that  was when  I  said,
"And this is medicine?")
     The  second  psychiatrist  was obviously  more important,  because  his
scribble was harder to read. His notes said things like "auditory hypnogogic
hallucinations confirmed."  ("Hypnogogic"  means you get  them  while you're
falling asleep.)
     He wrote  a lot of other technical-sounding  notes,  and I looked  them
over, and they looked  pretty  bad. I figured I'd have to  get  all of  this
straightened out with the army somehow.
     At the end of the whole  physical  examination  there's an army officer
who decides  whether you're  in or  you're  out.  For  instance,  if there's
something the  matter with  your  hearing, he has  to decide if it's serious
enough to keep you  out of the army. And because the  army was scraping  the
bottom of the barrel for  new recruits,  this officer  wasn't  going to take
anything from anybody. He was tough as nails. For instance, the fellow ahead
of me had two  bones sticking out  from the back of his neck -- some kind of
displaced vertebra, or something -- and this army officer had to get up from
his desk and feel them -- he had to make sure they were real!
     I  figure  this  is  the  place  I'll get  this  whole misunderstanding
straightened out. When it's my  turn, I hand  my  papers to the officer, and
I'm  ready to explain everything, but the officer doesn't look  up. He  sees
the "D" next to "Psychiatric,"  immediately reaches for the rejection stamp,
doesn't ask me any questions, doesn't say anything; he just stamps my papers
"REJECTED," and hands me my 4-F paper, still looking at his desk.
     So I went  out and got on  the  bus  for Schenectady,  and  while I was
riding on the bus I thought  about the crazy thing that had happened,  and I
started to laugh -- out loud --  and I said to myself,  "My God! If they saw
me now, they would be sure!"
     When I finally got back to Schenectady I went in to see Harts Bethe. He
was sitting  behind his desk, and he  said to me in  a  joking voice, "Well,
Dick, did you pass?"
     I made a long face and shook my head slowly. "No."
     Then he suddenly felt terrible, thinking that they had  discovered some
serious  medical  problem with me, so he said in  a concerned voice, "What's
the matter, Dick?"
     I touched my finger to my forehead.
     He said, "No!"
     "Yes!"
     He cried, "No-o-o-o-o-o-o!!!" and he laughed  so hard that  the roof of
the General Electric Company nearly came off.
     I  told the story to  many other people,  and everybody laughed, with a
few exceptions.
     When I got back to New  York, my father, mother,  and sister called for
me at the airport, and on the way home in the car I told them all the story.
At the end of it my mother said, "Well, what should we do, Mel?"
     My father said, "Don't be ridiculous, Lucille. It's absurd!"
     So that was that, but my sister told me later that when we got home and
they  were alone,  my father said, "Now,  Lucille, you  shouldn't have  said
anything in front of him. Now what should we do?"
     By  that  time  my  mother  had  sobered up,  and she said,  "Don't  be
ridiculous, Mel!"
     One  other  person  was bothered by the  story.  It  was at a  Physical
Society meeting dinner, and Professor Slater, my old professor at MIT, said,
"Hey, Feynman! Tell us that story about the draft I heard."
     I told the whole story  to all these physicists -- I didn't know any of
them except Slater -- and  they were all laughing throughout, but at the end
one guy said, "Well, maybe the psychiatrist had something in mind."
     I said resolutely, "And what profession are you, sir?"  Of course, that
was  a  dumb question,  because  we were  all physicists  at a  professional
meeting. But I was surprised that a physicist would say something like that.
     He said, "Well, uh, I'm really not supposed to be here,  but I  came as
the guest  of  my brother, who's a physicist. I'm a psychiatrist."  I smoked
him right out!
     After a while I  began to  worry. Here's a guy who's been deferred  all
during the war because  he's working on  the  bomb, and the draft board gets
letters saying he's important,  and now he gets a "D" in "Psychiatric" -- it
turns out he's a nut! Obviously he isn't a nut; he's  just trying to make us
believe he's a nut -- we'll get him!
     The situation didn't look good to me, so I had to find a way out. After
a few days, I  figured  out a solution. I wrote a letter to the draft  board
that went something like this:

     Dear Sirs:
     I  do not  think  I should  be  drafted  because I am  teaching science
students, and it is partly in the strength of our future scientists that the
national  welfare lies.  Nevertheless,  you  may  decide  that  I  should be
deferred  because of the result of  my medical report,  namely,  that  I  am
psychiatrically  unfit. I feel that no weight whatsoever should be  attached
to this report because I consider it to be a gross error.
     I am  calling this error to  your attention because I am  insane enough
not to wish to take advantage of it.
     Sincerely,
     R. P. Feynman

     Result: "Deferred. 4F. Medical Reasons."

[Blasted]

Feynman is awesome.

[Christopher McCandless]

How long has the US army or the military in general been accepting people with autism or asperger's to join? I honestly didn't think someone with autism or asperger's was stupid enough to join the US military, but I guess I was way off on  that one.

You mean they should fight for the third world armies in Africa?

[P7PSP]

How long has the US army or the military in general been accepting people with autism or asperger's to join? I honestly didn't think someone with autism or asperger's was stupid enough to join the US military, but I guess I was way off on  that one.

I served 4 years USN as an Airdale. I'm sure those who haven't served know all about it. 

[odeon]

"Airdale"?

[P7PSP]

That's the term used to describe Ratings that are involved with troubleshooting, repair and preventative maintenance of US Naval aircraft. I was an Aviation Electricians Mate Third Class until I fucked up and the CO knocked me back down to Airman.

[odeon]

Where did you serve?

[P7PSP]

My first 13 months or so were in training. RTC (boot camp)  Sep 77 -  November 77 San Diego CA, AE Class A(1) Scool and prerequisites  November77 to  June 78 Memphis Tenn, FRAMP School  June 78 to October 78 Norfolk Va and then Permanent Duty @ Rota Spain Oct. 78 to  Sep 81. That was great, I loved being in Spain.

[TheoK]

The Spaniards are BRAVE!

[odeon]

My first 13 months or so were in training. RTC (boot camp) 19 Sep 77 - 17 November 77 San Diego CA, AE Class A(1) Scool and prerequisites 28 November77 to 29 June 78 Memphis Tenn, FRAMP School 30 June 78 to 5 October 78 Norfolk Va and then Permanent Duty @ Rota Spain in VQ2 28 Oct. 78 to 9 Sep 81. That was great, I loved being in Spain.

I like Spain, too. I've only been there once but I've been spending time learning Spanish cos it got to be one of my obsessions for some strange reason.

Sorry but I had to laugh cos only an Aspie would include exact dates.

[P7PSP]

They are pretty good people to live among THeoK.