The Plowmen

When reading this story, please consider these popular traits of people with Asperger's Syndrome. Sources include WebMD and a few sites dedicated to awareness of Asperger's Syndrome.

-Obsessions / focused on one subject

-Sensitivity to noise / touch / feel of clothing

-Craves routine

-Communication problems or motor skills problems

-Not able to pick up on social cues and may lack inborn social skills, such as being able to read others' body language, start or maintain a conversation, and take turns talking.

-Internal thoughts are verbalized

-Obsessed with certain parts of a whole but not others

-Inability to understand or relate to others



When I was a freshman in college, I worked part-time for the Department of Public Works in a small town. On paper, it was my job to assist the crew with the maintenance of township-owned property. In reality, I was a place holder in the DPW budget, ie if they didn't hire part-time help every season, they would lose the funding for future use. I was reminded of this whenever someone was about to have me do their work for them. It was supposed to make me feel expendable and replaceable, but all it did was elucidate the real situation: if they fired me, it would draw attention to the DPW payroll, which would be to nobody's benefit (except maybe tax payers). I still did their work for them, mostly because I felt bad for them. At least that's what I tell myself while I'm doing the task, but any other time I know I'm just avoiding dissonance and confrontation. Right now it is late January and there is nothing for me to do except ride shotgun on the snow plow and make noise if any children or dogs cross the street in front of us. John the driver and I participate in long bouts of seemingly competitive silence, which gives me time to devote to my hobby: composing seductive dialog. My recent binge of John Cusack movies has lead me to believe that young women crave playfully neurotic intellectual banter and find occasional instances of awkward silence to be cute or dangerous or something. My "Abnormal Psychology" course should be a goldmine, but alas two weeks into the semester and I don't have any pasty dark haired dames pouting in my dorm room wearing my spare boxers as they thumb through the last few chapters of Siddhartha or whatever liberal arts majors read. I even keep an over-sized kashmir sweater and a box of Cheez-its sitting in my dorm, just to be prepared. My insides caress themselves as I imagine that kiss that didn't happen this morning... the one where I run off to work and she rummages through her messy backpack for her textbooks so she can study in the residual warmth of my bed before going to class, and maybe we'll meet later on... I'm holding onto this thought because I can feel the silence getting to John the Driver. He pulls at the front of his shirt, which has settled sickeningly into the crevices of his fat rolls. Sure enough, he breaks it with, "Fuckin' deer are taking over the whole fucking area." I look outside and I am pulled in all directions by the folds of nature exaggerated by layers of snow, pine trees resembling crashing waves because the snow storm was preceded by freezing rain that humbled any tree daring to hold onto its foliage. Oblivious to all of this beauty, John notices three deer and has to go off on a tangent. My coworkers joke about his obsession, about how when he invites them over his house to watch the game or whatever he shows them charts and articles describing how the overpopulation of deer is slowly affecting the local ecosystem... not to mention the room full of his mounted conquests. He launches right into a put on earnest tone with me; I guess he's assuming that I am young and idealistic and don't approve of slaughtering deer for no reason so he wants me to know that he really is helping the environment and I should learn the value of such activities. I'm ignoring him and thinking of my Abnormal Psychology course and what it would be like to discuss it with imaginary girl who for several reasons I have decided to stop trying to come up with a name for. Yesterday we learned about Asperger's Syndrome, which I couldn't help but be reminded of John the Driver. My mind checks in on the conversation. Yep, still talking about white-tailed deer and the before and after photos he has of foliage ruined by their voracious appetite.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any more annoying, the radio coughs out some static that sounds like the wind outside with a few James Brown-esque staccato notes. John's ability to decipher what comes out of that thing is a talent I hope to never acquire. He tells me Dave is nearby and his truck is stalled, so we are going to pick him up and return to the shop since we're approaching blizzard conditions. Dave and John seem to make a game out of excluding me from every conversation they have, but as soon as I've officially tuned them out, they ask me a question and when I don't respond immediately John does his best to patronize me with his "Fucking kid smokin' too much pot" or "You're just in your own fuckin' little world, aren't you?", sometimes followed by "I'm just fuckin' with you, kid. You got a girlfriend yet? Somebody's gotta get this kid some strange pussy!" I'm well past that phase where I would think "How dare he refer to women using such derogatory nomenclature", but I can't help but wonder what type of haggard train wreck John the Driver would find for me. It feels festive in the truck for a moment as Dave swings open the door and peers in like "Woah, imagine seeing you here!". I tried to slide my way to the window seat so as to not be stuck between them, but Dave illustrates the difference between a shudder and a wince as he does both in reaction. He scoots as far from me and close to the door as possible. Given the tapered edge of the bucket seat (an abnormal feature for a pick-up truck), his upper half is leaning towards me so I have to smell his breath which reeked unambiguously of USA Gold 100's and stale cream from convenience store coffee. John recaps what he and I were discussing about the white-tailed deer. Then he starts rattling off familiar details about the specific ways he kills them and the advantages of using a bow vs a gun. After one sentence that would wind a pearl diver (let alone John, who always keeps an extra pack of smokes on him in case he gets stuck in traffic or something), he does one of my pet peeves and asks if he's boring us. Only two types of people answer that question honestly: my dad, and people like Dave, who says, "Yeah you're rambling a little. I don't go hunting much, but you know I'm all about bass fishing. A little bass fishing and Metallica, don't get any better than that." John says, "Well it's hard to hunt with music playing, but can't go wrong with Eric Clapton at night. Keeps the fuckin' bears away..." So it begins... Dave continues his side of the story, "Yeah, I meant that I play 'tallica when the boat's moving and it don't matter as much. Of course if I'm shore fishin' that's a different story..." His voice becomes deeper and more gravely as the details become more technical. I just keep watching the scenery as I indulge in thoughts of imaginary girl. Would she play in the snow? She probably didn't during her teen angst years, but since she's over that phase I lend her a few layers and we trudge away from campus through the strip mall parking lot whose innocence is restored by the accumulation of frozen precipitation. During such a storm, the snow is undeterred even by all the leaked surfactants and motor oils and their lower freezing points. Beyond the parking lot is a wooded pathway that leads to a shelter of coniferous trees that the wind can't penetrate and your eyes can follow the individual snow flakes on their journey to the ground. I would pull a small bag of Bugles from my coat pocket and we would talk about how silly and harmless everything looks when covered in snow. We'd probably talk about how snow seems like a prank played by God and about God's other pranks while we unabashedly rub the Bugle salt off our lips so we can make out. In these conditions we could probably fool around and nobody would be see, but I am careful to avoid those thoughts when shoehorned between two likely homophobes.

We are barely moving, mostly because of the blizzard but also because John the Driver is heavily invested in talking at Dave. If you try to consider their individual contributions as forming a conversation, it would seem like a constant non sequitur, basically the exact opposite of the synergy that a conversation is supposed to exhibit. John talks about how the 1994-95 Eric Clapton tour was the last time he could afford to go, and Dave responds with, "Some headbangers stopped listening when they cut their hair short and changed their sound a little for Load in 1995, but I still supported them... though I do prefer their earlier stuff." John responded to that with, "Sometimes other fuckin' legendary guitarists will make... show up onstage without sayin' shit. I'm not really into any other blues guitarists so I don't know who it is until I hear the people say fuckin' 'Hey that's Buddy Guy on the white fuckin' Stratocaster'." Dave continues, "People want to say Metallica is just a brutal heavy metal band, but in 1999 they put out a live album with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, which shows their... it's got some slower stuff... it's good for... it's good chill music. He definitely wants to say that he and his girlfriend Linda listen to that album when they have sex. I take a moment to think about how horrible that image is. Dave has a bulbous propane tank belly and a goatee like a tornado carrying too much debris, and he always smells of Cheetos. His girlfriend drops him off sometimes, she is obese and her chin is flat and wider than the top of her head, which is shingled with brittle straight hair dyed red with a perpetual inch of mouse brown roots at the part near the middle, and it probably doesn't move at all when they are fucking. Without much transition I give in to my snowy meadow fantasy. After a few seconds spent thinking of where I would warm my hands on imaginary girl, something occurs to me. I can learn a lot by comparing myself with my coworkers at this job. The eagerness and inappropriateness of this transition reminds me that going to college isn't the only way I should try to differentiate myself from these people. From that point forward I listened attentively to what John and Dave were talking about.