The Present Road / Short Story

# The Road I Didn't Know I Was On

I don't remember anyone ever telling me I was different.

That's strange when I think about it now, because apparently I was pretty damn different.

I couldn't go to kindergarten because I wasn't talking. My parents were foreigners, so people were told I only spoke German.

That explained it.

Or at least it explained it enough that everyone could move on.

I went to Catholic school. I failed first grade. Later I failed third grade. I became one of the nuns' favorite paddle boys.

There were times when I would get so worked up that something happened inside my body that I couldn't control. I would hyperventilate. I couldn't breathe.

People rolled their eyes.

Nobody said, "Maybe we should figure out why this keeps happening."

Nobody told me my brain might work differently.

I was stupid.

I was annoying.

I was a pest.

My dad called me *genervt sein*. Annoying.

I followed him around constantly.

Of course I did.

He was my dad.

But somewhere along the way, I learned that wanting to be close to somebody could make you a pest.

So you start learning rules.

Don't do that.

Don't say that.

Don't get too excited.

Don't talk too much about the thing you're interested in.

Pay attention to what everybody else is doing.

Try to do that.

And whatever happens, don't let anybody know you have absolutely no idea why everybody else seems to understand this stuff.

Nobody gave me those instructions.

I figured them out.

---

There were other strange things about my childhood.

Things that still sit in my memory like photographs from somebody else's life.

I remember a fireball in the sky.

I remember the Northeast UFO still and silent.

There are memories from those years that sound almost fictional when I say them out loud.

Maybe that's one reason I've always been fascinated by things that don't fit neatly inside the box they're supposed to fit inside.

Because I didn't either.

As I got older, the world didn't suddenly make more sense.

High school came.

I was strange.

Eventually I found psychedelics.

And strangely enough, I found people.

Around the other weird kids, the druggies, the people living somewhere outside the normal orbit, I didn't feel quite as unusual.

Maybe because none of us were normal.

There was freedom in that.

I never took prescription medication for any of this as a kid. My parents didn't really understand that world.

So there was no diagnosis.

No explanation.

No little folder somebody handed my parents that said, "Here's how his brain might work."

I just grew up.

---

And growing up is funny.

You can spend your entire childhood believing you're bad at life and then discover there are certain parts of adulthood you're exceptionally good at.

I found work.

Then I found problems.

Problems I could see differently.

Telecommunications. Fiber optics. Engineering. Maps. Routes. Networks.

Give me a giant mess of information and somehow my brain wants to organize it.

A fiber network stretching hundreds of miles across the desert doesn't intimidate me.

It fascinates me.

There are connections.

Rules.

Exceptions.

Patterns.

One thing leads somewhere else.

If something doesn't make sense, you keep pulling the thread until it does.

I eventually became an engineering manager.

The kid who failed first grade and third grade was suddenly responsible for other people.

I helped engineer enormous fiber projects.

I built things.

Solved things.

Raised a family.

Made mistakes.

A lot of them.

Had victories.

Had disasters.

Sometimes I probably created my own disasters.

That's part of the story too.

Life wasn't a straight climb from misunderstood child to successful adult.

It looked more like somebody dropped a plate of spaghetti onto a map and told me to follow the route.

So I followed it.

---

Years ago, an old friend told me I should watch a television show called *Atypical*.

She was always very kind to me.

"You'd like it," she said.

I asked why.

She didn't really answer.

At the time, I didn't think much about it.

Years later, I would.

Because eventually I started realizing something.

There might actually be a reason I've spent my entire life feeling slightly out of phase with everyone around me.

Not worse.

Not better.

Just tuned to another frequency.

And once that possibility entered my head, memories started changing.

Not the memories themselves.

Their meaning.

The kid who followed his father everywhere wasn't necessarily a pest.

The kid having trouble breathing wasn't necessarily being dramatic.

The kid failing school wasn't necessarily stupid.

The teenager who finally felt comfortable around society's other weirdos might have been looking for somewhere he didn't have to perform being normal.

That's a very different childhood when you look at it from this end.

---

Then life knocked the table over again.

I lost my job.

A career I had poured years of myself into suddenly changed.

There were moments when I had absolutely no idea what came next.

So I did what I've apparently been doing since childhood.

I started building.

Ideas began multiplying.

Apps.

Games.

Businesses.

Designs.

Things that probably sounded ridiculous when I first said them out loud.

Some went nowhere.

Some turned into something.

Some changed names six times before breakfast.

That's how my brain works.

For most of my life I thought I was supposed to stop it.

Now I'm beginning to wonder whether I should have been listening to it.

---

But something else happened during all of this.

I became a father six times.

Three neuros and three weirdos.

That's what I affectionately call my little collection of humans.

And then there's my youngest daughter.

She's nonverbal.

She's also one of my best friends.

We don't need many words.

I watch her.

I learn her.

I know her sounds.

Her expressions.

Her patterns.

The things that make her happy.

The things that overwhelm her.

The little signals another person might miss.

And sometimes looking at her hurts.

Not because of who she is.

Because of who I was.

I think about that little boy who wasn't talking.

I think about adults deciding he spoke German and moving along.

I think about the hyperventilating.

The paddles.

The eye rolling.

Being called annoying.

Being called stupid.

Being called a pest.

And then I imagine doing that to her.

Imagine deciding that because she can't tell me what she's thinking, there must not be much happening inside.

Imagine putting her in a room and leaving her there until dinner.

Imagine never trying to enter her world because asking her to enter mine would be easier.

I can't imagine it.

And that realization can tear me apart.

Last year I went through clinical ketamine therapy.

Memories I'd apparently buried very efficiently decided they were finished being buried.

I cried.

Really cried.

For things I hadn't cried about when they actually happened.

And somewhere inside all of that was a strange realization.

I've spent enormous portions of my life trying to understand things.

Networks.

People.

Systems.

Projects.

Technology.

My children.

Myself.

Maybe I've been looking for the same thing the entire time.

The connection.

---

I'm 51 now.

I still don't have everything figured out.

Not remotely.

There are still days when my brain produces twelve ideas before I've finished the first one.

There are still things about people I don't understand.

There are things about myself I don't understand.

There are things I've done that I wish I could change.

There are roads behind me I wouldn't willingly walk again.

But they're behind me.

The road in front of me is much more interesting.

And one of the things sitting on that road right now is called **Nogical**.

The name started as a little joke about being neurodivergent and logical and not always particularly logical at all.

But the idea underneath it became more serious.

I want to build the kind of place I think I would have liked to find.

Not somewhere that immediately tries to fix you.

Not somewhere that requires you to introduce yourself with a list of diagnoses.

Not somewhere everybody competes to prove who has suffered the most.

Just somewhere you can arrive.

Maybe you're happy today.

Maybe you're lonely.

Maybe your brain is running 900 miles an hour.

Maybe you haven't gotten out of bed.

Maybe you've spent six hours researching something nobody else on Earth seems remotely interested in and you're desperate to tell somebody about it.

Tell us.

Maybe somebody else thinks it's fascinating too.

That's Nogical.

And maybe that's why I'm building it now.

Because I know what it feels like to spend a long time wondering where your people are.

I know what it's like to think you're the only person operating on your frequency.

And I know something today that nobody managed to tell that little boy all those years ago.

There was never nothing happening inside his head.

There was too much happening.

He just didn't have the words for it yet.

It took him about half a century to find some of them.

And apparently he has a few things he'd like to say.