This finally changed, by accident, in 1989. I joined a writer's club for staff and faculty, while working in the Bookstore at Santa Monica College. We were all encouraged to read our writing, at monthly meetings. After a half year of polite feedback, I began to enjoy these opportunities.

Eventually, the club upped the ante, and on Staff Development day, they asked me and three others to read at a program for the rest of the college. I have no idea why, but I accepted the offer and had a great time. I wondered why it had taken so many years to just "get up there and do (read) it".

I remembered a poor psychology graduate student, back in 1966, who had told me, a freshman, that according to the University of Michigan's four hundred question profile, I had more future as a poet than a mathematician. I thought he was crazy. He probably was, but I had always "known better" than to test his theory.

I better wrap this up, as the introduction is becoming longer than my poems, but my point is this: Many of us have a lot of good to share and are afraid to do so, because we are so used to ridicule. I don't think that will happen to anyone who shares a poem here, and if you care about something enough to write a poem about it, you will do the entire autism/asperger's community a service if you share that piece of your heart with the rest of us.