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My preschool teacher told my parents that she also was concerned about me because I was on the swing set by myself and not with the other children. My parents took me to see my pediatrician in Roanoke again, and they told him that I needed to see a specialist. He sent me to see a neurologist in Roanoke. The neurologist sent me to see a speech therapist. That speech therapist would not let my mom sit in the room with me while she was evaluating me. I did not like sitting in a room with strangers so I did not talk to her and I started seeing another speech therapist in Bedford who allowed my parents in the room. She said that she thought that I had a form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome. She had traveled to Sweden and other countries in Europe where she worked with students with similar behaviors. My mom arranged to have an elementary school speech therapist come to my preschool to work with me. My family were members of Main Street United Methodist Church in Bedford, Virginia. We started sitting in the balcony the first few years of my life when we went to church. There was a man who sat up front and he recommended that we come sit with him when I got older. The reason he did that was because he had children and when they got older he and his wife made them sit in the front because they thought that it would help them focus and he thought that if my parents took me to the front that I would focus better. I nicknamed this man, “Mr. Sillybritches” because one time in church he had on golf pants and I had read about a character named “Mr. Sillybritches” in a book. There were many good

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