I am David RS Greer. At the age of 23, I was arrested for injuring with the intent to injure and was facing jail time. It was then that I was diagnosed with Asperger's. This is my story. Copyright Able 2018 All my life, I've struggled to communicate. Walking across the rugby field, a group of three thugs seemed to group around me. I don't understand what people are trying to say to me. Next minute you know, I was being pulverised with a baseball bat. (JARRING MUSIC) I was so scared. I grabbed my butterfly knife. I heard the terror. And he looked at me like a long, lonely, lost little boy. There was just panic and fear in his face. I thought, well, 'What's just happened?' And there's quite a bit of blood and things like that. The police arrived. I was questioned and questioned and then put into a murderer's suit. And I had no awareness that I was the person in trouble. (TAPE REWINDS) I was born in Blenheim in 1975. I remember when David was born. He was a present, so on my birthday. (CHUCKLES, CLEARS THROAT) Born on the same day, so, yeah. You can't compare children, you know, to their brothers, because everyone's different, but Christophe had crawled at 5 months and walked at 10 months, and I thought that was normal. So when David still wasn't crawling at 10 months... He could sit up, but there was still something that wasn't quite right, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. And he didn't sleep a lot. Shh, shh, shh, shh. (BABY FUSSES) You'd put him to bed, and he'd get up, and you'd put him back to bed again. And that could happen 20, 30 times a night. And he would eventually go to sleep... round about the time you wanted to get up. (CHUCKLES) He was difficult, because it wasn't till years later I found out he was noise and light sensitive. (JARRING MUSIC) (BABY CRIES) So he would throw tantrums a lot, and he couldn't` he would just` just wouldn't settle into anything, lots of things bothered him. (VACUUM WHIRRS, BABY CRIES) You couldn't do a lot, like vacuuming, dishes. You get so much rage that you'd actually see a bit of` a bit of white in your vision. He'd suddenly start screaming, and so you spent a lot of time pacifying him without knowing why. You just assume he's just being difficult. Any sort of piercing, loud noises just` yeah, just drove him to` to madness, really. He'd just get quite violent with it. He would show his frustration by throwing things or hitting the nearest person. I remember breaking... my toy helicopter that I had up at Christmas. No, Mum! He` He was enrolled in kindergarten but was expelled. With the noise, um, echoing off the walls,... (DOOR SLAMS, CHAIR SCRAPES, CHALK SQUEAKS) ...I didn't cope very well. They couldn't handle him, and I thought, 'Well, you're trained,' you know, 'I'm not. 'If you can't handle him, how am I supposed to?' Once he started school, things really got worse. I couldn't focus on one particular thing. Even the` the,... um, clapping at assemblies ` I had to cover my ears cos it was too intense. (CHALK SQUEAKS) Just wanted out, um, from it. Make it stop! He put my hands to his head and said, 'Feel it. Feel it.' And I said, 'I can't feel anything.' 'It's in my head. Feel it. Make it go away.' And I was trying to explain to him that what happens in his head is private, and I can't feel it. So he puts his head to my forehead and holds it there and says, 'Yes, you can. You have to stop it.' Make it stop. Make it stop. He was a big worry. Yes. (STAMMERS) Just, yeah, drove you insane, sometimes, wondering what was gonna happen. Is he gonna do something to himself or do something to her or...? If I watched The Incredible Hulk when I was little, it sorta brung back memory of that absolutely sheer adrenaline that you used to get, and you're just being stronger and stronger until you don't know what you're doing at all. I remember just thinking, 'Oh, what am I gonna do?' And things are being smashed around you and, yeah, cupboard doors are going, plates are being smashed. And it's just... (SIGHS) It's like seeing a freight train coming at you, and you can't get out of the way. You're just stuck, watching this happen, and there's nothing you can do. And I just sorta wait till it's over and then... (EXHALES) So, he was, of course, referred to the school psychologists. The psychologist started off with telling me, 'There are no bad children, just ineffective parents.' And I thought, 'That's a good start (!)' So I said, 'Well, you could help me to be a more effective parent.' And she said, 'No. My concern is with the child.' One doctor put in as me having mental retardation. I had a IQ as low as 75. And, um,... I had the brain scan done. I had the tests. And it was pretty much blamed on bad ter` parenting. The school would call me a lot. I remember one time I was working as a night manager of a hotel, and I was trying to get some sleep during the day while they were` David was at school. And they rang then and said I had to come down there and then. And I said, 'Well, can it wait?' (CHUCKLES) Said, 'Nope.' And the head mistress, then she said, 'We want to do behaviour modification on David. 'We need your permission.' So I said, 'Well, are you qualified to do that?' You know, 'What do you hope to achieve?' And she just` she was a bit vague on that, so I said, 'You need behaviour modification ` waking me up to come down and talk like this.' So another black mark against me. I was an unhelpful mother. Mum did take me out of school, which was better for me. And she become, um, my reading teacher. The reason I took him out of school was that after he had had that diagnosis of subnormal intelligence, and then he wanted me to teach him the time. So I did, and I thought, 'Well, how could that be? 'If he` You know, if I can teach him that quickly, there's nothing wrong with him.' So I thought, 'Right. I'll... take him out of school.' And I wasn't allowed to, cos I wrote to get permission for it, and they said, 'No, because there's a degree of socialness that he needs.' So I pretended that I was coming` leaving town, and would be enrolling him in a new school. So, I didn't. It took quite some time before they actually realised, and by that stage, he was reading and writing much better. I moved to Nelson, and he started school at Victory. By that stage, I'd taken him out to places, and we'd gone to a whole lot of things like parks and museums and just places where there was lots of people around. And he learnt, you know, how to control himself better. And he coped moderately well at school. Um, school was... good, but I was actually bullied. Um... There was... nothing really I could do but feel trapped. So I had to, um, build the muscles to get strong enough to cope. Apparently, he was doing lots of weightlifting down in the garage, which I was wondering what had happened to all the cement bags. They seemed to be moving independently. (CHUCKLES) End up all over the place. But he got really pumped. He was strong. I was more worried for myself as he got bigger and he wasn't able to control the rages. I was tired. I was exhausted by that stage. At one point, because David didn't like to be separated from me, I said to him that, really, I needed to go away, and he was just going to have to cope. And he said he might not cope. I said, 'Well, that's your choice. You either do or you don't.' I said, 'One day, I could drop dead, and this could be, like` 'it could be, like, a test run for me dropping dead without a funeral.' And he understood that perfectly. That fitted with his logic. So he stayed with some friends of mine, and I went away, and he got severely bullied at that point. The kids at school were really wearing me down, and I just felt, 'Enough's enough.' Unfortunate, I took a tomahawk to school to protect myself. And I felt like I had no way out. I boarded the school bus, and I felt his hand around my neck, and he tried to burn out my mouth with his cigarette lighter. Why he wanted to do that, I don't know. But he said that he was going to get me, and I was being bullied. And when he went and sat back on his seat, I, um, KO'd him with the blunt end of the axe. And I said that 'I'm going to, um, use the` the sharp end next time.' KATIE: When I came home, the police were at the door and told me what had happened. (JARRING MUSIC) (SIGHS) Yes. Huge shock. I think the worst thing was the policeman sat there and read David his rights, and that was really awful listening to that. I did realise then it was a definite bad thing to do, and I did have consequences for my` for my reaction then. As it turned out later, they had done that to scare David. He was too young to be charged with anything. But they just did that so it'd give David a fright, but it gave me an awful fright as well. After the attack I was suspended from the college and, um,... parents weren't too pleased with me when they` they got back. But things, um, calmed down, and the college wanted me back. And because they wanted me back and I only had to talk to the principal for a little while, everything was good. Yeah, and I got an apology from the` from the bully. There was quite a lot of silence,... um, around me. Like, people would stop talking,... um, when I did... be somewhere or turn up. Um, but over time, that avoidance from other people settled down. And, um, that was... probably... the l` one of the last times I-I got bullied. Through the school, David did work experience for a panel beater, and that was really good. He had a sense of purpose and he was treated well by the guys in the workshop. MAN: He was a unique sort of a kid. He was very keen some days and not so keen other days. And he sort of amazed me what he could do some days, and other days he was like, 'Dave, are you gonna wake up or what?' I got the, um, position of doing the smaller stuff, um, the others didn't wanna do, like` like the dump runs and things and preparing cars for prep for` for painting,... um, car grooming and things like that. It was really good. I worried for him out in the world because he was such an innocent. I was pretty firm on him. Um, I didn't really give him too much leeway. I thought he responded to that pretty well. He knew that someone was setting some boundaries and that he wasn't gonna go past those boundaries. I could see with Dave, though, like, when he got frustrated or he had a bit of a temperament ` maybe a change might be the word ` he'd` like, I would treat him a bit differently. You'd be a bit more careful with how you` you know, what you said and how you dealt with him. But generally you'd just work the way his moods were and went from there. I was waiting for something to happen, of course, and to get a phone call from his work experience, but it never did. And I think, over time, the phone calls and the events lessened as he learnt more skills ` how to deal with issues. At about age 23, I was still trying to get some independence for David ` or from David, depending on your perspective ` and I'd gone down to Karamea for New Year, and I was having a lovely time down there. I was earning good money back then, and I was going to shout my friends to the hydroslide. And, um, I had taken my in-line skates off and walking across the rugby field. And a group of three guys ` or three thugs, I'd call them today ` um, seemed to group around me. I recall saying, 'How's it going, fellas?' And next minute you know, I was being pulverised with a baseball bat. The steel, hard bat, which I created a dent in. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) They hit me at least 20 times down one side of my body, and in my face, my upper face, I had nerve damage. I ended up putting two of them on the ground. One got back up, and I was quite surprised for someone to actually get` get back up. It hadn't happened before. I was so scared I'd` that` that focus now channelled in. This was the only way I was going to do it. So what I did is grabbed my butterfly knife. I had my pack back on, got the butterfly knife back out, and just going, 'Get away. Get away. Get away.' And this silly prick run into me with a knife. I didn't really` I heard the terror, and I slashed... the knife slashed. I had the knife in my hand, but the knife slashed across his stomach. His stomach came out and fell on his knees, and he crouched down, and he looked at me like a long, lonely, lost little boy. There was just panic and fear in his face. I thought, 'Well, what's just happened?' And there's, you know, quite a bit of blood and things like that. With that distraction, I had a area where I could focus on bolting it, and I just bolt out of there. I was running. I could just hear my heart pounding and my feet pounding. I was running as fast as I can, and I got to a back of a cafe. And, um, the people... said, 'Are you right?' I said, 'Yeah. I've been attacked.' And, um, I put the knife on` on the table, and... um, this guy run around the corner and he said, 'That's the crazy man... 'that cut the other guy.' The police arrived and said, 'Look, come back with us. We'll get you cleaned up.' And I had no awareness that I was the person in trouble. They drove me back to the station and I was questioned and questioned, and then put into a murderer's suit, and then put into that,... oh, lonesome cell. And... I stayed there for about four days, and I had no contact. I just felt absolutely terrible. I could feel the coldness from the concrete walls. Hardly any bedding. Hardly any food. And just the sound of the doors shuttering against the steel, and the rattle of keys as other people come in. No sleep. Um, and... one of the volunteer ladies come in and give us food, and she said that she was very, very scared of me. 'I'm sorry if I don't want to come up to the cell door.' And I was trying to explain to her that I'm` I'm all right. I'm` I'm non-violent. But I couldn't when I had a black eye and put into a murderer's suit. I have a few convictions to my name, some more serious than others. I've never been to jail. But this looked like it was going to be the first time. KATIE: I'd come back from Karamea, and I rang David to let him know I was back and couldn't get an answer. I was arrested and charged with injuring with intent to injure. They took my fingerprints, my photos, and then I was locked in the cell. The next morning I got a phone call from his employer to say he hadn't turned up to work. The cells were a very dark, concrete, cold place. Um, a lack of food. Uh, just the sound of the doors squeaking and the cell door being locked up. His eyes were swollen. His` He was just` He was a pulp. And, um,... he showed me this piece of paper the courts had given him, saying he's been charged with grievous bodily harm. I don't think he understood the seriousness of what was happening. He obviously understood how badly beaten he was, but (STAMMERS) I think he thought that would be the end of it. It was very hard for me. I felt absolutely helpless. There was nothing` nothing I could do. Just be there. That's... That was all I could do. Try and say, 'Well, look, no, things will work out. They have to. There's no other choice. 'They just have to work out. If it doesn't, then... 'we'll make it work.' During that time, for the first time, I wasn't able to cope. I really couldn't cope, so I went to see a psychologist as well. And I was explaining to him how I was dealing` what I was dealing with. And he said, 'Have you thought that your son might have Asperger's? And I said, 'I don't know what Asperger's is.' And he said, 'He sounds like a classic Asperger's. 'I think you should get him to see this person, who's also an expert in the field. 'You need to talk to David's lawyer and get a really good diagnosis from that.' It's really important in a court case to know if the defendant has got autism, because autism can affect any stage of the court proceedings ` in fact, any stage of the criminal justice proceedings. WOMAN: OK, so can you tell me what happens when you get overwhelmed? From there things started to unfold quite well. He ended up having a psychological assessment, which turned out to be the best possible thing ever. I was pretty much diagnosed with having Asperger's syndrome. It was an incredible relief to both David and I when he was diagnosed. It was` There was a reason for things. It was just like, 'Wow,' um, because it had been blamed on bad parenting or... something or schooling or I was just a problem child. But finally we had some answers. When I read up about Asperger's, it was classic. How they didn't pick it, I don't know. Getting a diagnosis and finding out that you are autistic and that there's reason for the way you are can be really, um,... it can be really life-changing. MAN: Officially, we don't actually talk about Asperger's any more; we just talk about people on the autistic spectrum. Really, we now think of all humans as having autistic behaviour, and all human beings fit on that autistic spectrum. It's just that you have to be up here to get diagnosed. But, yeah, Asperger's was basically someone who was very up the high-functioning end of autism. Well, finally, I understood ` or the family could understand, and` um` what was` what was happening, why I was thinking this way. (TAPE REWINDS) (GENTLE MUSIC) There are two things that are common to all people who are on the autism spectrum. The first is that they have to have significant difficulties with social and emotional communication and behaviour. All my life I've struggled to communicate. He'd always been very, very brutally honest. I remember one teacher came up to him and he said, 'You have to go away. Your chin hair annoys me.' (LAUGHS) You know? 'I can hear it moving.' She, naturally, hated him after that. (LAUGHS) And the second is that they have problems with restricted and repetitive behaviours or interests. I fixate on things. David's always been a hoarder, right from the time he could put his hand on something and put it somewhere. Yeah, I had my own microlight aircraft and my own land for a while, which my visitors thought that was quite amusing. When we talk about a child with autism and how their brain might be different from the neurotypical person, we're talking about very subtle differences. But a subtle change in the brain can make for quite a huge difference in the function. (FLY BUZZES) There goes that fly. Right there. An easy way to understand that and the way I explain it to parents is to say, 'If I threw one ball at you, you'd probably catch it. 'If I threw five balls at you at once, there's every chance you wouldn't catch any of them.' I think that's a good metaphor for the child with autism. It looks as if there's five times as much information coming to the child. Yeah, information will come to me randomly, and I'll just explore. Yeah, I mean, even the` the light switch ` what` why it's, um, on a hor` horizontal angle and it's, um, cutting into the other one. I mean, all that's just... it's there, but I need to focus on this. WOMAN: How's school going? In the late '70s not many people knew about autism, so autism wasn't commonly diagnosed. So somebody born in the mid-1970s probably wouldn't have been diagnosed with autism until perhaps in the 1990s. So they're going to be young adults by the time they're diagnosed. But nowadays we're diagnosing autism in people as young as 2. When he was little things just weren't quite right, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. No! I understand that as a young child David used to have meltdowns. Anything that wasn't tied down or nailed down, he'd pick up and throw. So he'd just` he'd just lose` lose any control, really, and just, yeah, start attackin'` start attackin' ya. It was` He was quite, um, yeah,... quite intense. No! No! KATIE: You know, when he's in his rages, I used to have to hold him tight. Thrash himself round, break things. Mm. That's quite common in some people with autism. There are people with autism who go straight from feeling normal to feeling hugely anxious or hugely angry. When human beings are overwhelmed, you know, it's just a biological reality that you're stress response takes over. That's a typical thing for humans. You get overwhelmed and you melt down. Most of us did it when we were 2 years old, for instance. But we grow` The typically developing brain grows a frontal cortex, and as you get older and older, you're able to regulate your behaviour better and better, and your meltdowns become less and less and less. Anyone that's dealing with more stress, and in this example it's autism, it just means that they've got a huge chunk on the stress side that the rest of us don't have, so they're much closer to meltdown all the time. So it takes what to you and I might seem like a little amount to just tip them over the edge. You were walking on eggshells the whole time. And you didn't have a life, really. You just... tiptoed around, not really able to do anything. And the parents of children with autism who aren't diagnosed ` those parents can start to wonder what it is about them that they're doing wrong. Why can't they`? Or why haven't they brought their child up the right way? Why`? That they can be mystified as to what's going on. And they too can get very angry with their child. You question yourself all of the time, because you're being told that you're not being an effective mother, you're not doing it right ` you're being too firm, you're being too soft, you're` Yeah. There was just no advice for you how to actually improve it. They had a lot of reasons why (INHALES DEEPLY) your son was like he is, but` and it was generally the mother's fault, but no help in order to change that. I was put down in the holding cells, and the concrete felt really, really, really cold. I feel the intensity of the place, the smells. And, um, I just` just sat there, and I'm thinking, 'I don't know what's happening. 'Don't know what's happening.' * After the attack, I was 14 days away from going to jail. Uh, the... police were really good, though, on this one,... um, because then I got diagnosed with having Asperger syndrome, but it took nine months... of my life in amongst the court. Yeah. TANYA: There's something that we haven't talked about. Something else that happens in a lot of people with autism is what's called an impairment in theory of mind. People who have good theory of mind know that everybody has their own unique thoughts and feelings. Quite a lot of people with autism have difficulty with that, so they might not be able to look at someone and think, 'Hmm. I think she's looking like she's mad at me.' A really practical example ` if the teacher's standing at the front of the class, and she's got her hands folded, and she's got a grumpy look on her face, lots of students would go, 'Ooh,' you know, 'Mrs Smith is grumpy at the moment. 'I'd better be good and look like I'm doing my work.' An autistic child might not pick up that the teacher's grumpy and might just continue doing the off-task stuff that everybody else was doing and just miss that cue. And if you think about it, a lot of our social encounters rely on us having an idea about what the other person might be thinking. And if you're autistic and you have some problems with that, then you can get into some really tricky social situations. I didn't always read, um, what the social dynamics were, uh, where the danger zones were. (TAPE REWINDS) Autistic people often don't pick up the signs of danger. I recall saying, 'How's it going, fellas?' A lot of us have been in situations where we're walking along the road and we see a group of people in front of us, and there's something about them that makes us feel uncomfortable, and so we either slow down or we cross the road. Next minute you know, I was being pulverised with a baseball bat. A lot of autistic people wouldn't pick up on those subtle cues, and not only would they maybe catch up to that group, but they might even interact with them. I was running as fast as I can, and I got to a back of a cafe. I was worried about the guys coming at me again. The police arrived and said, 'Look, come back with us. We'll get you cleaned up.' And I had no awareness that I was the person in trouble. In a police interview, it's really important to know if the suspect has autism. They might look like they don't care. They might not understand that other people would be showing concern or empathy in a certain situation. I felt confused. MAN: ...with your answers, David. This was not a normal... experience for me. It wasn't... Yeah. I felt very lost and I couldn't really think straight. MAN: Look, this ain't funny, mate. Did you know these people that you stabbed? If that police officer doesn't observe things like empathy and concern, they might interpret that person as being deliberately naughty, deliberately mean, callous. I think I was giving too much information, um, out. My lawyers` My lawyer had actually said that, you know, 'There's no need for you to tell them everything that they actually wanted to hear.' Because that's how I-I talk. That's how I-I function ` giving detail. David didn't understand the implications and the seriousness of it. He` (SIGHS) He just didn't have the ability to understand how bad it was because I'd always fixed things for him before, and he wanted me to fix this. And he kept saying to me, 'You fix it,' and I said, 'I can't. It's gone beyond anything I can help with.' And he, yeah` he never, ever got the seriousness of it. Pulled my knife out of my bag. A court situation is not gonna be set up very well for the person who has autism, because` and especially if you've got a jury. If that jury are not understanding about people that aren't neurotypical, then they're going to expect certain responses. They're gonna expect you to look remorseful when it talks about, you know, someone being stabbed. I know of autistic people who have gone along to funerals of family members and laughed during the funeral. And they're not laughing because they're happy, and they're not laughing because they're mean; they're laughing because they're anxious. And they're also not recognising` They don't have that inner kind of monitor that tells them not to laugh. So, in a court room, people can watch an autistic person talking about things in a matter-of-fact way and go, 'Well, he's being so matter-of-fact, he obviously doesn't care. 'He obviously has no compassion.' Knowing that David could end up being imprisoned was awful, because, at that stage, he would never have survived prison. He didn't have the mental ability. She was just beside herself. She didn't know what to do. There was nothing in her power that could... You tried and tried, but it was... all came down to David's testimony and how he portrayed himself. And it didn't look good. It, yeah, put Mum` put Mum in quite a bad, um` a bad space there, really, for a while. NATHAN: Any court proceeding is really about someone taking accountability, so they look at mitigating circumstances, they look at that person's intent. So once there's a diagnosis like this, yes, I think we need to then re-examine everything in light of knowing about this diagnosis. The person doesn't really have free choice because their brain's structured in a way that makes them more likely to act in this way. It's not a licence to do what you like, but it is definitely a mitigating factor, so it has a legal standing. And we do have to then look back on everything and look at it from that perspective. I was convicted and sentenced,... and I had two years' supervision. SIGHS: Oh. Gosh. That was an amazing relief just to know that he wasn't going to jail. That was just... Because he wouldn't have survived jail. * (DOOR CREAKS) Hooray. We're on the road again. For the last 12 to 13 years, I've had support. (HAPPY MUSIC) I have three support people a week. And I have... three to four phone calls a week just to get in tune with, um, time and schedule. TANYA: For an adult with autism, being diagnosed with autism can be an amazing experience. When a person's behaviour is understood and when their strengths are noticed and their problems are identified, then the people around them can compensate for that and can make` can make life easier for everybody. Often that's all the treatment that's needed. Once he learnt more about Asperger's, he did learn more social cues and what not to do and what wasn't acceptable and to look people in the eye was important and that you had to do that. I've taught myself, um,... about how to express my voice and not talk into a monotone but actually heighten the ends of the words when I'm interested. And he also learnt to say` Instead of bombarding people with information about aircraft, he would say, 'Are you interested in aircraft?' And if they said no, he would shut up. If they said yes, all bets were off, and they heard about it for several hours. CHRISTOPHE: David's just grown, and he's experienced a bit more life. I think he's definitely mellowed a lot from how he` He seems to stop and take a breath now... before he reacts to anything. I'm so pleased and so lucky that... I don't have those, um, moments where I get that angry any more. Um, something up here's just gone 'click'. And I've got all my... wires firing in sync now. All the neurons,... um, are all connected, and I think that may have happened when I was at least 23. Something went 'click'. 'Click, click, click, click.' So, yes! (CHUCKLES SOFTLY) He's much better now. (LAUGHS) He doesn't fly off the handle, which is just fantastic. Means he can come out working with me occasionally. Lots of the symptoms of autism are actually strengths as well. So if you take someone like David, who's got some very special interests that he knows a lot about. Just loved aeroplanes and motorbikes ` obsessed with them. When an aircraft goes overhead, I'll be trying to work out how many degrees of flap, um, they have or if it's a left-hand normal approach on their finals. You'd be walking down the road and he'd be pointing at an aeroplane or he'd hear a sound of a bike or a plane, and he'd just be off. That can be seen as an obsessive interest, but it could also be seen as having expertise. And in the right context, that could be a really, really useful area of expertise. MAN: So, that's a long one, is it? So... Yeah. So it most likely to go down something like that. So we need to make` What about the brackets for the front of the fairing there? Is it gonna...? Yeah, I met David probably about 10 years ago, I'd say, yeah. And, um, you know, he'd sort of come and got a few bits and pieces made up my me, and then we started chatting and told me all his bloody, uh, problems. And we just sorta hit it off from there and I sorta took him under my wing, yeah. He's a very generous guy. And he shares the same compassion as me with motorbikes. He's... takes time to help you. And because it's forever learning,... um, thing, trying to get the` the horsepower out of the bikes. We all have our little quirks and stuff like that, and we could probably all be classed as having a slight case of Asperger's, so it's just how it comes across. Life's great now. I don't have to negotiate getting an ironing board out or turning the jug on or warning someone that I'm going to be putting these shoes on and walking around. And I don't` I'm not constantly watching to make sure I'm not irritating him with the noise and the light. And I'm a bit noisy and chaotic now ` (LAUGHS) just because I can be, you know? (LAUGHS) The older I get, you know ` make sure that I go for a walk, um, at least three times a week or do` do the in-line skating, which a lot of people feel like is quite unusual for a 42-year-old to be on the skate wheel thing with their shoes. I'd average about... 23 K an hour, at least. Cruising ` 30. Up to 60 when I'm... going like crazy. My bus is my retreat. I can just shut off all the doors and just be at harmony in a peaceful surrounding,... um, cos I normally get overloaded. NATHAN: At the end of the day, none of us are really typical. This idea of neurotypical just means in comparison to autism than you and I are neurotypical on the autistic spectrum. For any human being, if we analyse you enough, we'll find something that is not typical. So there is really no person that is 100% neurotypical. We've all got our own individuals and our quirks. It's just that when someone has lots of quirks and becomes quite quirky, we start to put a label on it. But not really that different from us. I've gotta be really careful of how much I actually say, because people will just think, 'Oh, it's a crazy mind.' I'm crazy. But my mind will actually explore in depth more so than a neurotypical, and that's what the psychiatrist would actually tell you. It's a great place to be. That's why I've never taken drugs. I don't need them. (CHUCKLES) He's a character ` absolute character, David. And I am absolutely proud of him. He's just... just done amazing things. He's a great guy. I'm really proud of what David's achieved and how he's managed to have a good life. I would like him to meet someone and have a family and just be happy. So, just` just to be happy is really what I ask for him ` happy and safe. I love my life. I wouldn't wanna have it any other way. I'm David RS Greer, and I'm living with Asperger's. Captions by Julie Taylor. Edited by Catherine de Chalain.