PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

Sounds like the owner / opposing counsel tried to make it right as much as he could. Not saying it was the ideal ending, but probably the best you could have gotten.

 

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I do not think that old fart realizes how close he came to never eating solid food again...

 

I would have been happy with getting five minutes alone with the old man in a room with the door locked, or going to town on his Mercedes with my Louisville Slugger!

 

A lawyer friend of mine gave me some good advice:
Rule 1. If you keep a bat in your car, keep a glove, and ball in it as well. Appearances matter.
Rule 2. Shut the fuck up. Defending you is way easier if you don't run you mouth before they can get there.

 

@El Duderino
@Taco critter

I spent half of 2007 and all of 2008 lamenting about the fact that I had no social life and, more importantly, no driver’s license...

Before the Coffeehouse, I was in another group for autistic young adults. Unlike the Coffeehouse, which only allowed people with Aspergers and PDD-NOS (and other high-functioning ASDs), this group allowed lower-functioning individuals and people with intellectual disabilities like mental retardation. A good number of members also seemed to suffer from severe emotional and mental problems more than any type of autism spectrum disorder. I was there less than a year.

I first started going shortly after my 19th birthday in spring 2008. I will never forget this one member; I will not be sharing his name.

This guy was 33 years old at the time, and this has nothing to do with who he is as a person, but he looked like a creeper. Seriously, he looked like the type of guy who’d drive around a neighborhood attempting to lure kids into his vehicle with a puppy or some candy. If you saw this guy talking to your kids and you didn’t know him, you’d probably either call the cops or kick his ass.

He was quite plump, really short, and despite only being 33 he was balding and had his hair done up in such a way that it would look more at home on a man 10-15 years older. He also dressed like a dull middle-aged man, wearing a sweater and stereotypical old guy glasses (one also might consider them to be “pedophile glasses”).

His looks were comical and kinda creepy at the same time, but that’s not the issue. Steve Buscemi looks ugly and creepy, but he’s still a damn good actor who’s made millions of dollars over the last few decades. On top of that, he was also an FDNY firefighter back in the 1980s; Doesn’t get much more badass than that!

What got to me about this guy from the group is that he was 33, had no driver’s license, and lived with his parents. I don’t remember if he had a job or not, but if he did it was probably at a grocery store or something. I also highly doubt he went to college. The moment I met that guy, I swore to myself that I would not end up like him!

 

I do own a bat, but I don’t keep it in my truck. The only self defense item I keep in my truck is pepper spray.

Also, Sir Drinks-A-Lot actually pulled his Benz to the side of the road and more or less parked it legally. The police did not tow the car and I believe they released that old pantload later that night. There was a brief period of time where the Benz was sitting unattended and I saw the car still sitting where they’d left it while driving home later that night. I was tempted to stop and key the Benz, but I thought better of it...

 

So what did I do about this? Well...

• Probably 8 or 9 months later (January 2009) I was in college, and around the same time I was accepted into the Coffeehouse.
• By the end of August 2009, I’d finally gotten a new learner’s permit.
• By the time October rolled around, I had my own vehicle (a gift from my dad, but still)
• Before the summer of 2011 rolled around, I had my driver’s license.

So in just over three years, I was in college, licensed to drive a motor vehicle, and actually had a vehicle I could drive whenever and wherever I wanted! Quite a turnaround!

 

As stated above, the biggest problem with first Aspergers group I was in was that they did not thoroughly vet members enough.

It was also intended to be a group for young adults, but one member was an intellectually disabled (pretty sure it was mental retardation) and wheelchair-bound woman who was well into her forties. She was very friendly, but did not belong there. I only saw her once or twice.

The first time I met her, I tried to make conversation with her and introduced her to my parents. She completely misread what I was saying, mistook me for being mentally retarded, and told my parents they should sign me up for some sort of registry for people like her.

I am empathetic to people like her, but people with autism and people with intellectual disabilities belong in two different categories and thus should not be in the same support group!

She was in a motorized wheelchair and could not walk at all (I do not know if this was related to her intellectual disability). Very few able-bodied people with intellectual disabilities seem to get licenses, so driving was out of the question for this woman. In 2009-2010, I knew a girl with a less severe form of MR who had a driver’s license and her own car. She was dating a guy who also had MR, had a license, and also had his car. I never met the boyfriend, but they are the only two people with MR I know of who drive.

The forty-something woman from the group I was in was obviously not able to drive. She relied on paratransit services, paid for by her social security disability, to get around. She had her own apartment and also had a cat if I remember correctly. I believe she lived in Philly.

A female Aspie member (still friends with her) who was a few months younger than me gave the disabled cat lady her phone number as a gesture of friendship and kindness, and it ended up being the biggest mistake she ever made. Nevermind that this woman was in her forties and my friend was just 18 at the time...

Cat lady called and texted my friend constantly, asking her to hang out and even come to her apartment in the city. My friend was understandably weirded out, but we came to the conclusion that cat lady was just lonely and we ended up feeling sorry for her.

My friend has not heard from the cat lady since at least 2009.

 

@Taco critter

There was this one emo kid in that group who was roughly my age (maybe a couple years older than me) and he claimed to be on the spectrum but I think having Aspergers was the least of his problems. I remember him telling the group he had bipolar disorder (he’s one of two Aspies I met who claimed to be bipolar). He also randomly told me at a social event that he was bisexual; Everyone who knows me knows that I am probably the most non-judgmental person they’ll ever meet when it comes to sexual orientation, but this guy holds the distinction of being the only bisexual male I’ve met in person (that I know of).

I have several gay friends, I have at least one bipolar friend and a bipolar relative, and a good number of friends who are Aspie.

What bothered me about this guy was that he was just flat out unfriendly most of the time. All he did, it seemed, was smoke weed and sit around feeling sorry for himself. He did not drive and I’m pretty sure he did not have a job.

The way he dressed was particularly outlandish; The best way I can describe it is Goth meets Steampunk. His hair was super long; He always wore a black trench coat and regularly wore a black top hat as well. He even walked around with a black and chrome walking stick!

I last saw him at a Christmas party in 2008.

 

The Coffeehouse was the result of many years of planning by my best friend’s mom. It finally came to be in about June of 2008. Somehow I did not get the memo and thus did not interview to join the Coffeehouse until December 2008. This was despite the fact that there were at least two members from New Horizons who had been at Coffeehouse since it first opened. There were even some guys and gals from the special ed class I was in! How the hell had I not found out about this place until about six months after it opened?!?!

When I went in for the interview in December ‘08, the two women I talked to (one of whom was the founder) told me there were a lot of people in the Coffeehouse I probably knew from other places. They weren’t kidding! There were probably half a dozen people I knew!

 

What?

 

The biggest thing about the Coffeehouse was that it was funded by the county. One unfortunate part of this fact was that you had to reside in Bucks County in order to be a member. Luckily, I was in Bucks County and only about 15 minutes away. This is classic bureaucratic bullshit though; One of our members lived in Tullytown and his grandpa would drive him 40 minutes one way to bring him there. If you lived just outside of Bucks County, even if you were closer than the guy from Tullytown, you were out of luck. If you lived just across the Delaware River, in New Jersey, you were also screwed. I seem to remember my friend’s mom who founded the Coffeehouse telling me she had parents from Pittsburgh and even outside of Pennsylvania (I believe someone from Oklahoma called) wanting to sign their kids up or get a similar program started in their area!

 

Wheelchair bound cat lady, or bisexual steampunk? Or both?

 

One of the hallmarks of the Coffeehouse was that it was very welcoming, but not just anybody was allowed in. The vetting process was second to none; it ensured that only the higher-functioning young adults who wanted to better themselves got in, and kept out lower-functioning individuals, and/or those whose parents just wanted them out of the house, and just planned on using the Coffeehouse as a daycare/babysitting service.

 

@El Duderino
@Taco critter

In the early days, a few members did fall into the category of being borderline antisocial and having parents who only wanted an excuse to get them out of the house a few hours a week.

A perfect example would be this one guy who I will not be naming. He rarely spoke and spent almost all of his time on one of the Coffeehouse’s courtesy laptops.

Most members were lucky enough to have their own laptops, but the Coffeehouse had some older laptops that had been donated.

It eventually got to the point where the aforementioned member was spending all of his time in the downstairs lounge area, lying on the couch like he owned the place and surfing the net. He would occasionally come out for dinner and to use the bathroom, but he would stay in there for hours.

Turns out he was looking at lesbian porn on the computer...

I don’t think he got in trouble because they could not officially prove it was him using the laptop where another member found the downloaded porn, but like I said most of the members had their own laptops (myself included) and this guy
was one of the few who used the house laptops. Combine that with the fact that he would sequester himself in the downstairs lounge for hours, and it was not hard to do the math...

However, like I said he never faced any consequences that I can remember because it could not be proven that he was the one who downloaded the porn.

 

I remember this guy being universally disliked by a good number of other members, but I didn’t really have a problem with him...

In August 2009, I threw a party at my house for most of the Coffeehouse members and at least one member from the other group. The guy who allegedly downloaded the lesbian porn was on my guest list, and when another female Coffeehouse member found this out she threw a fit and threatened to not show up if he was there. Luckily, he ended up not being able to come and the girl who didn’t like him did show up.

 

I am also 99% sure I threw this party before the porno fiasco came to light, so that should tell you how universally disliked the guy was.

 

@El Duderino
@Taco critter

I would like to take this opportunity to discuss these two female Coffeehouse members who still bring back bad memories. In their defense, both girls had less-than-ideal childhoods and were continuing to have family issues when I knew them. This was none of my business and not my place to
discuss. I will also not be sharing their names out of respect for their privacy. However, if you do something particularly unkind to me or otherwise cross a line, it’s tough shit if you don’t want me publicly discussing whatever you have done to piss me off.

 

We still start with the older fat one, who was 26 when I started going to the Coffeehouse (Good God! She’d be 36 now!). At the same time, January 2009, I was still about two months away from my 20th birthday. Most the members were between the ages of 19 and 22. The minimum age to join the Coffeehouse was 18 I believe, and maximum age was 26 or 27. The age limit was rarely enforced, as well there were a few members well into their thirties.

 

That’s at least cool you guys had a dedicated coffee shop though