Let's Get Personal with Dave and Lindsey

Dave Hammrick and Lindsey Nebeker Author

04/11/2022 Added

17 Plays

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Conference 2022 Keynote

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[00:00:01.337]Hey. One minute.
[00:00:02.620]We're just gonna Thank you.
[00:00:03.453]switch our PowerPoints.
[00:00:04.286]Yeah. Let's get started.
[00:00:05.410]Sound check, everything?
[00:00:07.370]Sound check, sound check, yup.
[00:00:09.150]Awesome, awesome. Yeah, sounds good.
[00:00:11.350]Well, we can't thank you enough
[00:00:12.540]for your attendance here this morning,
[00:00:14.170]it means the world to us,
[00:00:15.450]and it's awesome to get back
[00:00:16.950]to a sense of normalcy once again.
[00:00:19.640]Yeah, just out of curiosity
[00:00:21.130]of just show of hands,
[00:00:22.130]how many of you is this the first in person conference
[00:00:25.790]you've been to since the pandemic?
[00:00:28.160]Nice, nice. A lot of you.
[00:00:30.473]Well, we're thrilled that it can be with us.
[00:00:32.390]Yeah, we're so excited.
[00:00:36.530]I don't know if she was trying to do some...
[00:00:39.640]Yeah, we're just trying to finish up
[00:00:42.340]some computer things here.
[00:00:45.257]So, I think we're all set.
[00:00:46.740]We're just double checking
[00:00:47.630]a couple things We're all set?
[00:00:48.520]Okay.
[00:00:49.538]All right, cool.
[00:00:50.460]Well, right on.
[00:00:53.620]So, you see we're kind of just sitting here,
[00:00:58.150]and basically what we are doing today
[00:01:01.260]is that we're just gonna have just a casual, fireside chat
[00:01:06.340]without the fireside.
[00:01:09.060]And we're gonna show various clips of documentaries
[00:01:14.320]and some interviews that we did,
[00:01:16.030]and then go back and forth
[00:01:17.790]with just some conversation and discussion,
[00:01:21.700]just making it, kind of taking it easy.
[00:01:26.030]But before we go to that,
[00:01:30.690]Dave is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service,
[00:01:35.770]and he is going to kindly provide you
[00:01:40.160]the weather forecast for this area.
[00:01:43.120]So let's see, if I can advance the slide.
[00:01:47.000]Since we had the time to do it,
[00:01:48.358]I figured I'd add a couple of slides just to that.
[00:01:51.740]Okay.
[00:01:53.631]It works. There we go.
[00:01:54.464]Okay, all right. All Right.
[00:01:55.387]You start.
[00:01:57.325]So maybe, you probably came in yesterday
[00:01:58.960]or this morning, and you don't need me to tell you
[00:02:00.990]that there's no shortage of wind out there.
[00:02:05.690]And we came in through Omaha and then rented a car
[00:02:09.130]and had to deal with those feisty winds all the way here,
[00:02:12.020]and today that trend will continue as well.
[00:02:15.110]We have a high wind warning up
[00:02:16.350]for pretty much all of Central and Western Nebraska,
[00:02:18.960]and if you're farther east toward Omaha, Lincoln,
[00:02:21.430]there's a wind advisory in effect,
[00:02:22.700]so high wind warning is more serious than a wind advisory,
[00:02:26.037]and that mainly encompasses the daylight hours of the day,
[00:02:29.320]and the fear is we may have some gust
[00:02:31.850]exceeding 50 miles per hour at times,
[00:02:34.530]especially from the Northwest.
[00:02:35.920]So if you guys have flexible travel plans,
[00:02:38.810]tomorrow is definitely the better day to travel
[00:02:41.020]than it is today.
[00:02:42.290]So, the winds are gonna peak later on today,
[00:02:45.670]wind's 30, gusting 50, will be pretty common place
[00:02:49.030]and it will be a crosswind for many areas.
[00:02:51.044]Do you want me to show the other slide
[00:02:52.030]that you had?
[00:02:52.930]Yes please.
[00:02:54.060]And so this is our three day outlook going forward,
[00:02:58.410]but we will see some abatements in those feisty winds
[00:03:01.370]coming up or tomorrow as the pressure gradient
[00:03:04.520]between the strong and low pressure system
[00:03:06.470]over Minnesota and the large surface high of the Rockies
[00:03:09.860]begins to abate somewhat.
[00:03:11.540]But right now, we have a bit of a blocking pattern
[00:03:13.430]in the steering flow, so that low pressure
[00:03:17.090]over the upper mid-west is slow to budge
[00:03:18.970]and we have a big difference of pressure over the plains
[00:03:21.920]and that's what's generating those winds
[00:03:23.550]you see out there today.
[00:03:25.410]So tomorrow morning,
[00:03:26.790]there'll probably be some breezy conditions
[00:03:28.300]and then that will improve by evening and overnight
[00:03:30.670]as the high pressure settles in overhead,
[00:03:34.130]and it's gonna get colder today and tonight, especially.
[00:03:36.860]So, we'll probably have widespread freeze
[00:03:38.880]across much of the region tonight and tomorrow night,
[00:03:41.220]and then warmer weather returns in time for the weekend.
[00:03:43.550]So if you're tired of the cold weather, just hang on
[00:03:46.140]because it will moderate quite a bit by Saturday
[00:03:49.550]and especially in the Sunday.
[00:03:50.520]So warmer weather and calmer winds are ahead.
[00:03:54.480]All right.
[00:03:55.340]Thank you for the report.
[00:03:57.065](Lindsey laughs) (crowd clapping)
[00:04:04.347]Slides?
[00:04:07.843]I'll go back to the slides?
[00:04:11.920]Slides?
[00:04:13.170]Yeah, if we could go to the slide.
[00:04:15.260]That would be helpful.
[00:04:20.580]So weird to see ourselves blown up on a screen.
[00:04:23.230]Okay, yeah, we skipped several.
[00:04:25.270]Okay, we have to, okay.
[00:04:27.100]Okay.
[00:04:29.176]All right, oh, sorry. (laughs)
[00:04:30.650]All right. We're on the
[00:04:31.483]correct slide actually.
[00:04:32.316]Yes, we're good, we're all good.
[00:04:33.357]Thank you for your patience.
[00:04:34.190]Yes, thank you for your patience.
[00:04:35.520]So as I had mentioned earlier,
[00:04:37.570]we are actually going to be showing you
[00:04:39.750]several short video clips today.
[00:04:42.620]Some of it from the documentary,
[00:04:44.177]"Autism in Love" which we were in
[00:04:46.840]and then also from interview from NPR News
[00:04:50.300]and then a couple of bonus clips of some video
[00:04:57.260]that we filmed kind of for consideration
[00:04:59.670]of "Autism in Love",
[00:05:00.503]but it never made the final cut.
[00:05:02.360]So you all get to have sneak peek.
[00:05:06.171]And we're not gonna show all of the segments of the film.
[00:05:10.620]And the last thing I just wanna share today
[00:05:14.180]before we play the first clip is that,
[00:05:17.890]even though this is going to be
[00:05:21.288]a conversation filled with hope
[00:05:23.280]and filled with just the journey
[00:05:28.020]of our relationship and our ventures together,
[00:05:33.280]it's just not gonna be a candy coated thing.
[00:05:35.600]And I think is, all of you know
[00:05:37.550]if you've been experienced
[00:05:38.790]a dating, relationship or marriage
[00:05:41.240]that it takes work,
[00:05:42.980]and it's not always flowers and rainbows, right?
[00:05:50.543]And,
[00:05:53.450]I think it does an injustice
[00:05:56.020]if we only shared about what we accomplished in our lives
[00:06:00.430]and ignore the issues and the challenges we struggled with,
[00:06:05.600]that are also very prominent within the autism community.
[00:06:10.140]So, with that in mind, let's go to the first clip.
[00:06:14.130]This is from "Autism in Love",
[00:06:15.580]and then we're gonna have a little bit
[00:06:16.830]of a response discussion.
[00:06:25.010]Awesome.
[00:06:29.424](indistinct chatter)
[00:06:37.510]Can y'all see the screens okay?
[00:06:39.279](indistinct TV conversation)
[00:06:40.939]I met Lindsey on a National Autism Conference
[00:06:43.820]from the Autism Society America in Nashville, Tennessee
[00:06:46.500]in July of 2005.
[00:06:48.290]We started calling it a relationship
[00:06:50.640]in the fall of that year,
[00:06:51.670]maybe three or four months later
[00:06:53.160]when we met up at another conference and I asked her,
[00:06:57.140]how would you feel about being in relationship with me?
[00:07:00.464]She said, "Well, I'm confused,
[00:07:01.740]but I could see this may work."
[00:07:04.570]She was confused at first, but she could see this working.
[00:07:07.640]We'll give it a try.
[00:07:11.397](indistinct chatter)
[00:07:14.048]Hi.
[00:07:15.029]Hey.
[00:07:16.581]How are you?
[00:07:17.442](indistinct TV chatter)
[00:07:18.464](Lindsey speaks indistinctly)
[00:07:20.830]Welcome home.
[00:07:23.832]Thank you.
[00:07:24.977]I think that autism definitely presents unique challenges
[00:07:28.820]to our relationship.
[00:07:30.550]Our particular routines and rigidities
[00:07:34.790]and our particular comfort zones,
[00:07:39.190]and,
[00:07:41.020]we're so fixated on that,
[00:07:45.150]that it's sometimes difficult to communicate to each other.
[00:07:50.820]Love your necklace.
[00:07:53.121]Oh, thanks.
[00:07:56.070]Did I ever tell you
[00:07:59.240]one reason I love jewelry so much,
[00:08:02.130]just because it gives me a sort of a shield
[00:08:08.570]to sort of protect myself from sort of vulnerable elements.
[00:08:15.040]It makes me.. That's news to me actually.
[00:08:16.350]I didn't even know that. Oh, really?
[00:08:18.150]Vulnerable elements.
[00:08:19.080]Yeah.
[00:08:19.913]I kind of discovered that after wearing necklaces
[00:08:22.910]for the past several,
[00:08:24.820]especially the last 10 years
[00:08:26.460]I've really been into wearing heavy jewelry,
[00:08:28.490]and I discovered a reason why it was
[00:08:31.270]that it kind of makes me,
[00:08:32.870]because I feel so vulnerable and feel so shy and introverted
[00:08:39.160]that wearing the jewelry kind of makes me feel
[00:08:42.780]that sort of false sense of confidence,
[00:08:44.930]and it kind of makes me feel less vulnerable.
[00:08:47.200]It makes me feel like it's sort of a shield,
[00:08:49.070]sort of protect myself from feeling more vulnerable.
[00:08:55.010]Well, it looks like the weather just came on.
[00:08:56.350]I was gonna catch a glimpse here and see
[00:08:59.321]what he says about here. Oh, of course,
[00:09:00.590]I can't ever interrupt you with the weather.
[00:09:02.456]Well, you can always be near me,
[00:09:04.530]and I'm just gonna not talk to you as much.
[00:09:06.636]Yeah, but.
[00:09:08.453](indistinct TV chatter)
[00:09:11.950]Social skills violation for me right there.
[00:09:14.115](indistinct TV chatter)
[00:09:17.093]Okay.
[00:09:18.376](indistinct TV chatter)
[00:09:29.576](toy music ringing)
[00:09:37.410]We tried to treat her as normally as we possibly could.
[00:09:43.280]All the time making allowances in our own mind
[00:09:46.790]for the fact that she might not be able
[00:09:48.520]to do everything quite as fast or quite as well
[00:09:52.190]or something like that,
[00:09:53.023]but just trying to raise her as normally
[00:09:56.810]as we possibly could.
[00:09:58.402]Here we go, here we go.
[00:10:00.709]Here we go.
[00:10:01.790]Here we go.
[00:10:02.753]Here we go.
[00:10:04.668]Here we go.
[00:10:05.501]Come on, Lindsey.
[00:10:06.930]We all evidently come equipped with social antenna
[00:10:13.090]that we don't even realize we have.
[00:10:14.870]We know instinctively when we are getting too close
[00:10:18.470]to someone physically,
[00:10:20.530]when we seem to be pushing them a little further
[00:10:22.480]than they wanna be pushed,
[00:10:24.300]when maybe we should back off
[00:10:26.410]and not be quite so bossy or controlling.
[00:10:30.700]Lindsey didn't have the antenna.
[00:10:34.818]Lindsey, can you wave?
[00:10:36.533](baby crying) (indistinct chatter)
[00:10:37.840]Lindsey.
[00:10:39.299]Lindsey.
[00:10:40.255](indistinct chatter)
[00:10:44.459]Lindsey.
[00:10:46.804](baby crying) (indistinct chatter)
[00:10:48.566]Can you wave?
[00:10:50.294]Can you wave?
[00:10:51.240]Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:55.710]It's sort of mystifying that the absence of that antenna,
[00:11:02.180]very hard, that was very challenging for her.
[00:11:05.720]She wanted to fit in.
[00:11:10.452]Where's Lindsey?
[00:11:13.243](people laughing)
[00:11:15.759]There she is!
[00:11:16.755]There she is! (people cheering)
[00:11:18.912](soft emotional music)
[00:11:25.185]So, yeah, I think that's a really good point
[00:11:29.160]about this whole idea of the antenna,
[00:11:31.440]and I think it kind of connects to that first scene
[00:11:33.550]that we just saw in the conversation that,
[00:11:35.880]even as adults that we're still struggling to pick up
[00:11:42.800]when, say for example,
[00:11:45.220]and I'm knowing like when you are wanting more
[00:11:47.640]to be focused on the weather
[00:11:48.810]and here I am kind of opening myself up about just being,
[00:11:52.500]vulnerable and using jewelry to sort of protect myself
[00:11:58.109]and not quite picking up
[00:11:59.800]that he was wanting to watch the weather,
[00:12:01.480]and at the same time, you're not really picking up exactly
[00:12:04.730]the extent of how deep I was trying
[00:12:08.380]to speak with you at the moment.
[00:12:13.494]What was going through your mind when I was talking
[00:12:16.340]in that clip?
[00:12:17.570]When the weather scene came on, I was thinking,
[00:12:20.230]well, maybe Lindsey could just hold the conversation
[00:12:23.470]for a few minutes while the local weather report came on
[00:12:25.430]and maybe resume exactly where we left off
[00:12:28.010]three minutes later.
[00:12:30.090]I did not mean to cut her off completely,
[00:12:32.010]but I just wanted a short break to, just to pause,
[00:12:34.320]because there was some inclement weather on the way,
[00:12:37.120]and I was wanting to get a briefing of what was going on.
[00:12:39.500]But when I look at that clip, I'm thinking,
[00:12:42.300]wow, this is not socially appropriate.
[00:12:44.565](Lindsey and crowd laughing)
[00:12:45.860]So that can come across as a bit uncool if you will,
[00:12:50.410]when I just look back at it,
[00:12:52.810]but my thinking at the time was,
[00:12:54.310]well, I don't wanna dismiss what you're saying.
[00:12:56.690]We'll just get back to it in a few minutes.
[00:12:59.020]I don't know if we ever really got back on track after that.
[00:13:02.014]No, we didn't, but you know what,
[00:13:03.440]I get it because we're both autistic,
[00:13:07.080]and I don't know how to explain it other than that.
[00:13:11.230]I just get it and I don't take it too harsh
[00:13:15.900]or too personally, I guess I should say.
[00:13:18.170]I mean, I'm really glad they put that scene in the film
[00:13:20.610]because it actually is quite accurate
[00:13:23.900]to a number of different scenarios
[00:13:26.890]that are oftentimes this kind of thing will happen,
[00:13:30.760]and in both ways.
[00:13:34.290]But at the same time,
[00:13:36.650]I know that you're not trying to dismiss me,
[00:13:40.790]but it's more like we're so fixated
[00:13:42.950]on our special interests.
[00:13:45.560]But,
[00:13:48.240]we also worked very hard,
[00:13:50.600]each of us at the beginning to learn
[00:13:54.490]how to, interpersonal connections with people,
[00:14:00.640]because it was very hard for both of us
[00:14:02.700]to navigate social situations and to make friends
[00:14:07.720]when we were younger.
[00:14:09.040]And we're actually gonna go more in depth into that tonight.
[00:14:12.140]We're doing a Q&A this evening,
[00:14:14.220]where we're gonna talk more about our childhood
[00:14:16.840]and our school years,
[00:14:19.512]and our diagnosis stories.
[00:14:21.230]But for now, let's show a couple of childhood pics.
[00:14:27.530]Whoops, skipped that.
[00:14:30.830]Go back.
[00:14:31.690]All right.
[00:14:33.042]So Dave, can you just share like how old were you
[00:14:35.640]when you were diagnosed?
[00:14:37.870]When did you mainstream in school
[00:14:43.720]and what did you end up doing
[00:14:47.220]as far as high school and college?
[00:14:48.610]Those are excellent questions.
[00:14:49.730]I was officially diagnosed when I was about three years old
[00:14:52.400]in North Carolina from the teach program
[00:14:55.050]and that's where early intervention services commenced,
[00:14:58.290]and those continued up through the first few years
[00:15:00.960]of toddler hood and into early childhood,
[00:15:03.170]and I started speaking around the age of four
[00:15:06.810]and started mainstreaming in regular classes
[00:15:09.550]by third and fourth grade.
[00:15:10.890]I was mainly in special ed for the second
[00:15:13.370]and in beginning of third grade.
[00:15:14.970]But again, this evening, I'll talk more about that
[00:15:17.930]if you have questions about it.
[00:15:19.996]And so that process of gradual mainstreaming
[00:15:22.770]went better than doing it all at once.
[00:15:25.040]How about you, Lindsey?
[00:15:26.030]Do you have any information you'd like to share,
[00:15:28.410]your diagnosis? Yeah, just very briefly,
[00:15:30.030]and these are some photos of me.
[00:15:33.698]So, I had kind of a similar story with him.
[00:15:36.790]So I was diagnosed when I was around two,
[00:15:40.270]two and a half years old, UCLA and Los Angeles,
[00:15:45.260]and actually I was born
[00:15:47.170]and spent my early childhood in Japan.
[00:15:49.800]So ,
[00:15:52.550]when I got my diagnosis, things evaluated,
[00:15:55.150]we'd actually had to fly Transpacific to get it done,
[00:15:59.870]and I started in early intervention programs
[00:16:02.510]from that point.
[00:16:03.890]I started to speak when I was about four
[00:16:09.010]and then I had spent some time
[00:16:10.970]in special education programs and speech therapy,
[00:16:13.860]and then I was able to mainstream by kindergarten.
[00:16:19.970]And the photo on the top right corner,
[00:16:23.460]of course it's me with the harpsichord,
[00:16:25.900]but I actually am a musician.
[00:16:28.530]That's what I studied at school, in college,
[00:16:30.470]and so music has been of my biggest passions
[00:16:34.490]and I write and compose music.
[00:16:36.330]I was classically trained when I was growing up.
[00:16:39.410]So music is really just a huge, huge part of me.
[00:16:43.690]And then the photo on just in the right,
[00:16:47.490]I always like to talk a little bit about my brother
[00:16:50.800]because I have one sibling, I have one brother
[00:16:54.860]and he also has autism.
[00:16:57.340]But he has much more higher support needs.
[00:17:00.260]He's non-speaking.
[00:17:02.520]He always was in special education programs,
[00:17:06.086]and since transitioning out of high school,
[00:17:09.460]he actually has moved into a community housing program,
[00:17:13.520]where he's getting 24/7 care from staff,
[00:17:16.460]which there it's actually a really good program for him.
[00:17:20.500]But I always like to share that,
[00:17:22.800]because I feel like people of autistics
[00:17:28.310]with higher support needs are ignored often
[00:17:31.060]in the conversation and especially in the media.
[00:17:33.670]And I think,
[00:17:38.314]we're all valid, we all have our experiences
[00:17:41.350]and we all have our own stories.
[00:17:44.950]And so, having him in my life has really helped me
[00:17:49.900]appreciate the vastness of the autism spectrum
[00:17:54.297]and the various needs of the community.
[00:17:59.700]Let's see the next slide.
[00:18:01.470]History of failed...
[00:18:02.590]Wait, okay.
[00:18:03.870]So the next clip is gonna be just a short clip
[00:18:07.270]from our NPR interview that we did like 10 years ago.
[00:18:11.560]History of failed relationships
[00:18:13.190]convinced Nebeker to rule romance out of her life.
[00:18:16.590]But that changed when she met Hamrick,
[00:18:18.570]a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.
[00:18:21.370]An autism conference in Nashville in 2005, he was smitten,
[00:18:25.350]but she couldn't tell.
[00:18:26.780]So he wooed her, slowly, systematically.
[00:18:31.270]Frequent communications
[00:18:32.630]and let her know how special she was to me,
[00:18:35.400]and talk to her on her looks
[00:18:37.940]and told her how good she was with music.
[00:18:40.470]First move I made was I put my hand on top of her
[00:18:42.187]and she didn't pull them away.
[00:18:43.640]So I knew that everything was gonna be okay.
[00:18:47.760]So Dave, you're often really good
[00:18:49.730]at telling this story.
[00:18:51.260]So, can you just give a brief overview
[00:18:54.810]of the story of how we met?
[00:18:56.448]Absolutely.
[00:18:57.730]So back in 2005, we were holding quite a large
[00:19:02.600]conferences on behalf of the Autism Society of America.
[00:19:05.610]And this particular one was being held at Nashville,
[00:19:08.950]and I think we had a good
[00:19:10.140]1500 people or so registered for it.
[00:19:13.650]And this was back when we were going to different cities
[00:19:16.050]across the United States to hold our conventions.
[00:19:19.210]And I was scheduled to give a breakout session in a room
[00:19:23.400]that did not appear to have enough chair set up.
[00:19:26.740]It looked like there were only about 30 in there,
[00:19:28.730]and I wanted to have at least 50.
[00:19:30.590]Lo and behold, I walked next door
[00:19:32.220]and I see some extra chairs
[00:19:34.040]that I can just bring into the room
[00:19:35.670]where I was scheduled to present.
[00:19:37.397]And in that room, I see two individuals.
[00:19:40.300]I see a friend of mine, Josh,
[00:19:42.610]and then I see a young lady who he is conversing with.
[00:19:46.580]And since I knew Josh already,
[00:19:48.200]I thought I'd come in and introduce myself,
[00:19:51.150]and I started speaking to Lindsey,
[00:19:54.180]and we're talking about things like education
[00:19:56.230]and volunteer work and music, et cetera.
[00:20:00.310]And I did not know anything about Lindsey.
[00:20:02.033]I didn't know anything about her history
[00:20:03.160]or her marital status or whatever.
[00:20:05.240]And,
[00:20:07.430]I immediately became fond of her.
[00:20:10.020]And from that point, I introduced her
[00:20:12.380]to a lot of the friends
[00:20:13.640]that I had in attendance at that meeting.
[00:20:15.850]And I remember, we kind of walked
[00:20:17.450]through the exhibition halls together,
[00:20:20.160]and introduced her to some more people,
[00:20:22.580]but I really did not know much
[00:20:24.950]of where this could be heading,
[00:20:26.820]but I was very flattered
[00:20:27.730]that she offered me a ride back to the airport.
[00:20:30.840]And it's from there where we exchanged contact information.
[00:20:33.842]Well, it was on the way back to my apartment,
[00:20:34.700]so it was convenient.
[00:20:36.010]True, that's true.
[00:20:36.843]So. (crowd laughing)
[00:20:38.940]Well, I mean, even if it was convenient,
[00:20:40.733]I was very much appreciative of gesture that was provided.
[00:20:45.937]But I remember at that time
[00:20:48.490]I didn't have any romantic interest.
[00:20:52.380]I thought you were a really nice person
[00:20:55.240]when I first met you,
[00:20:56.073]but at that point when you met me,
[00:20:58.960]I had given up on relationships.
[00:21:00.900]And I did not pursue anything romantic
[00:21:02.760]or make any moves on her at that point in time.
[00:21:04.521](crowd laughing)
[00:21:05.354]No, not yet,
[00:21:06.187]and I probably would've freaked out if he did. (laughs)
[00:21:07.860]So I knew better than to do that.
[00:21:10.170]No, I mean,
[00:21:11.003]I had some really difficult relationship history.
[00:21:15.270]And so at that point in my life,
[00:21:17.158]I had just graduated from college six months before,
[00:21:20.650]and I'd moved to Nashville to try to make it
[00:21:23.860]at least working for a music label
[00:21:25.850]that didn't turn out to happen.
[00:21:28.140]But, I was at a point where it's like, you know what,
[00:21:30.847]I'm just gonna focus on my friends and my career,
[00:21:33.410]and I am not interested in dating anyone
[00:21:36.020]in a long term relationship,
[00:21:37.220]and I have no interest in getting married.
[00:21:38.950]And that's where I was at that point.
[00:21:41.720]But it's funny, because I dropped him at off at the airport,
[00:21:44.950]and as I was driving off,
[00:21:47.870]I was thinking, there's just something about this person,
[00:21:51.890]and I can't put my finger on it,
[00:21:54.090]but I think we need to continue to be in touch.
[00:21:59.130]So the next few months.
[00:22:00.890]We had a whole multitude of email exchanges
[00:22:05.000]and some phone calls and Facebook was still in it's infancy.
[00:22:09.220]So I'm not sure.
[00:22:10.560]We didn't really do much of Facebook
[00:22:11.580]because it was mainly confined to college students
[00:22:13.530]at the time when it was first rolled out.
[00:22:15.780]But we did do multitude of calls and email changes,
[00:22:18.730]and I think you have a slide
[00:22:20.590]that shows the different endings on those email exchanges.
[00:22:24.150]Yes, actually that's much later
[00:22:26.674]in the presentation. Oh, okay.
[00:22:27.670]But it'll show them, yes, yes.
[00:22:30.130]The very first email you sent me though
[00:22:31.720]is right after the conference and it was about tornadoes.
[00:22:34.120]I do remember that.
[00:22:35.567](crowd laughing)
[00:22:38.100]I thought it was cute.
[00:22:41.810]But yeah, a few months later we were invited
[00:22:44.950]to present at another conference in Roanoke, Virginia,
[00:22:47.340]and at that end of that visit,
[00:22:50.670]we were at a bookstore just sitting at a small cafe table
[00:22:55.056]and you put your hands.
[00:22:55.890]Yeah, I rested my hand on top of yours.
[00:22:58.200]And that was the ultimate test to see
[00:22:59.640]whether she would pull back or not.
[00:23:02.550]So I was really nervous.
[00:23:03.480]I wasn't sure what to expect.
[00:23:05.155]So I was actually going outside
[00:23:08.184]of potentially her comfort zone.
[00:23:10.750]So I knew I was taking a bit of a chance of that.
[00:23:15.330]So, I was reading a book called "Superdate" by Tracy Cox,
[00:23:20.610]and she kind of goes over a list of things
[00:23:23.300]to observe in terms of body language
[00:23:25.280]to make sure it's safe to make a move at some point.
[00:23:27.480]And I was examining her advice and I was like,
[00:23:31.200]well, I think I have a pretty good shot
[00:23:33.500]at not making her uncomfortable
[00:23:35.420]by placing my hand on top of hers,
[00:23:36.900]and she did not pull it away.
[00:23:39.340]So I was like, my heart was beating so fast at that point,
[00:23:42.150]wow, this could work here.
[00:23:44.027](Lindsey laughs softly)
[00:23:44.860]Your heart was beating fast.
[00:23:46.540]Not super fast, but it was elevated heart rate.
[00:23:48.939](Lindsey and crowd laughing)
[00:23:49.969]'Cause I was nervous, I was nervous.
[00:23:51.710]And I was nervous as well you know,
[00:23:53.620]and this was actually the first time for either one of us
[00:23:56.480]that we had dated a partner who was also autistic too.
[00:24:02.620]This was the first time for both of us.
[00:24:05.779]And I thought, I'll give this a chance,
[00:24:07.410]and especially because we lived in different states
[00:24:09.810]with long distance, I just felt safer, you know?
[00:24:13.140]Yup.
[00:24:13.973]Okay, we can make this more gradual, slow.
[00:24:17.320]But those first years were quite something.
[00:24:19.360]I'm gonna go back to the slides.
[00:24:22.030]Yep.
[00:24:23.320]And yeah,
[00:24:24.900]so the first few years of our relationship was pretty,
[00:24:30.060]I don't wanna say normal,
[00:24:31.640]but you know, we were really like well known
[00:24:36.410]in the community at that point.
[00:24:38.460]We were doing like presentations
[00:24:41.130]and we were doing some talks,
[00:24:42.970]but other than that just seemed
[00:24:44.610]to be kind of a normal life per se.
[00:24:48.484]Yup.
[00:24:50.853]So, I don't know
[00:24:51.800]what your thoughts were about that, but...
[00:24:55.101]There's one thing I wanted to add
[00:24:56.500]before we get to that on how we met
[00:24:59.470]and making the moves and all that.
[00:25:01.670]Hm-mm.
[00:25:02.503]Getting to first base is always the hardest part.
[00:25:05.289](Lindsey and crowd laughing)
[00:25:08.670]It's like you have to climb up this huge cliff
[00:25:11.400]just to get to first base,
[00:25:12.450]and then the other bases are pretty easy to get to.
[00:25:15.243](Lindsey and crowd laughing loudly)
[00:25:19.910]It's a pretty bold statement, buddy.
[00:25:21.876](Dave laughing)
[00:25:22.840]A pretty bold statement.
[00:25:27.324](Dave chuckles softly)
[00:25:28.157]Just saying.
[00:25:28.990]I'm glad you didn't tell me that
[00:25:30.450]when we first met.
[00:25:32.060]No, I knew better than that.
[00:25:33.940]I knew better than to say that, yeah.
[00:25:37.910]So, okay.
[00:25:39.450]So, we started dating at the end of 2005
[00:25:44.532]and was it about 18 months later, we moved in together?
[00:25:47.990]So it was, I wanna say 2007.
[00:25:52.320]Was it 2007 when you moved down to Mississippi?
[00:25:54.640]Probably was.
[00:25:55.473]He got a job with the National Weather Service.
[00:25:57.660]It happened to be in a station in Jackson, Mississippi,
[00:26:00.420]and neither of us had any connections or knew anyone there,
[00:26:02.620]but at the time, as far as jobs went,
[00:26:07.986]that was a more substantial, like a steady job for him.
[00:26:11.620]And you were making a huge decision
[00:26:12.650]to move from where you loved being to a place
[00:26:14.930]where you didn't particularly wanna be.
[00:26:15.907]It was a huge risk.
[00:26:17.290]You had promised me, okay, six months tops
[00:26:19.280]and then we'll go live somewhere else we both wanna live in.
[00:26:22.290]And it was more like two years
[00:26:23.220]before it was. It was, yes.
[00:26:25.610]So Lindsey made a huge sacrifice
[00:26:27.210]to move from where she loved being
[00:26:28.363]just to be with me in Mississippi,
[00:26:30.040]'cause she knew she didn't wanna stay there
[00:26:32.560]for any length of time.
[00:26:34.010]So my goal was to move back to Virginia
[00:26:36.760]and lo and behold, that happened in 2009.
[00:26:38.770]So we eventually were able to get to a place
[00:26:40.630]where both wanted to be,
[00:26:41.810]but took a lot more time than we thought.
[00:26:43.850]And roughly around 2008, 2009,
[00:26:46.423]just sort of that last leg of when we were there,
[00:26:50.970]that is when we first had our first sort of taste
[00:26:54.510]and kind of public exposure and that experience.
[00:27:00.240]We were actually asked
[00:27:04.390]by someone that works for Glamour magazine
[00:27:06.780]to do an interview for them.
[00:27:09.670]The article actually is still available online
[00:27:11.890]at glamor.com.
[00:27:13.970]It's called "They're autistic and they're in love".
[00:27:16.810]But yeah, we did that,
[00:27:18.820]and then shortly after we also did an interview
[00:27:22.670]with Good Morning America.
[00:27:25.780]It's very surreal as far as just all of a sudden
[00:27:29.370]having people recognizing you when you're walking around.
[00:27:35.450]I know it's pretty surreal, I think,
[00:27:36.980]with a kind of sort of a sudden,
[00:27:41.682]I don't know.
[00:27:42.515]I think you managed it a little easier than I did.
[00:27:45.329]Yeah, with that first one I did.
[00:27:46.280]Yeah, I think it was harder for you
[00:27:48.539]and you were just a lot more anxious
[00:27:49.530]about how the process would work.
[00:27:51.005]Well, there's a lot of stress involved
[00:27:53.390]and because there's pressure
[00:27:54.320]because I think when you're kind of on there a platform
[00:27:57.370]and I can speak also for some of my autistic colleagues,
[00:28:00.860]there's this pressure because people are looking up to you
[00:28:03.860]and I think there's these expectation
[00:28:07.810]that you have to have a happy ending,
[00:28:11.190]that you have to be kind of clean cut and pleasing people.
[00:28:19.050]And so, that did start to get a pressure thing on me,
[00:28:25.340]but just continuing to manage that well.
[00:28:30.190]Shortly after that is when we moved
[00:28:33.070]to Alexandria, Virginia, which is by the Washington DC area,
[00:28:37.290]and that's where we actually still are today in that area.
[00:28:42.066]Well, I love it.
[00:28:42.899]I don't know if you love it though.
[00:28:44.770]Well, I certainly like it better
[00:28:45.730]than where we were living before.
[00:28:47.467]But if I had my druthers,
[00:28:49.700]I'd love to move back to my hometown
[00:28:51.130]in Williamsburg, Virginia.
[00:28:51.963]That's where I'd love to live.
[00:28:53.350]I can imagine.
[00:28:54.183]But there's no meteorology jobs there right now.
[00:28:56.336](Lindsey and crowd laughing)
[00:28:57.669]Not that are closer.
[00:28:58.880]So we're gonna play a short video clip
[00:29:00.330]from our NPR interview that just talks just a little bit
[00:29:02.970]about like our experience moving in together
[00:29:04.930]and figuring out accommodations.
[00:29:08.490]Oh yeah, that's our NPR thing when we did our NPR thing.
[00:29:10.960]Okay.
[00:29:19.350]On the first floor
[00:29:20.260]of a town home in Alexandria, Virginia,
[00:29:22.560]Lindsey Nebeker rattles the keys of her piano,
[00:29:25.480]her eyes are closed, her body sway,
[00:29:27.870]entranced in a musical spell.
[00:29:31.760]In the basement, her live-in boyfriend, Dave Hamrick,
[00:29:34.400]tinkers on another handyman project.
[00:29:36.930]As usual, they don't spend a lot of time with each other
[00:29:39.440]when they're at home together
[00:29:40.450]because like most couples, they have their differences.
[00:29:43.390]For one, the two haven't shared a bedroom
[00:29:45.300]since they first moved in together four years ago.
[00:29:47.720]Our temperature tolerances are very different.
[00:29:50.670]So, he likes to keep his room cooler
[00:29:54.280]at night when he sleeps,
[00:29:55.718]than I do. About 65 degrees.
[00:29:57.990]I haven't measured temperature
[00:29:59.570]of what I usually like. About 72.
[00:30:01.170]I'll take your word for it.
[00:30:02.490]I just know I like it more.
[00:30:03.940]You like it about 23 Celsius.
[00:30:07.410]Sleeping in separate bedrooms
[00:30:09.040]may be unconventional for most couples.
[00:30:11.200]But then again, they're not most couples.
[00:30:13.630]These two face rigid behavioral patterns, sensory issues,
[00:30:17.130]and an innate social clumsiness
[00:30:18.890]that makes finding and keeping friends difficult.
[00:30:21.460]For people with autism, dating as one can imagine,
[00:30:24.370]can be daunting.
[00:30:25.802]People with autism
[00:30:26.804]want to have a romantic relationship,
[00:30:29.640]but they're unable to, they feel they don't know the rules.
[00:30:33.750]That's Steven Shore,
[00:30:35.010]an associate professor of special education.
[00:30:37.340]He too is autistic
[00:30:38.590]and has been married for more than 21 years.
[00:30:40.610]He's talking about the sexual
[00:30:42.030]and social knowledge most people pick up
[00:30:44.010]through adolescence.
[00:30:45.180]What other kids learn by observing,
[00:30:46.960]kids with autism miss out on,
[00:30:48.730]and it's often tough to learn it on their own.
[00:30:51.120]How do you go about asking a woman out on a date?
[00:30:54.860]How do you maintain the relationship?
[00:30:56.720]How do you move from being friends to intimate friends?
[00:31:00.240]These are things that most people seem to take for granted.
[00:31:03.550]Things like nonverbal communication
[00:31:05.460]that can allude and frustrate people with autism,
[00:31:07.950]innuendo, tone of voice, body language.
[00:31:10.640]In her tidy, private bathroom, Nebeker practices
[00:31:13.790]for facial expressions in the mirror.
[00:31:16.130]It's so funny,
[00:31:16.963]'cause it's like I look into myself in the mirror
[00:31:19.290]and when I'm ready and I think to myself,
[00:31:21.260]okay, I look okay, I look okay today,
[00:31:23.580]and then I walk out the door
[00:31:25.150]and then I immediately feel very subconscious.
[00:31:31.060]So,
[00:31:35.224]I wanna talk a little bit about the different ways
[00:31:38.450]that we perceive love,
[00:31:39.330]because you're a scientist and I'm an artist,
[00:31:43.240]and so I think there's like unique ways
[00:31:46.210]that each of us perceives love.
[00:31:47.820]I'm gonna start with a short clip from "Autism in Love"
[00:31:52.240]of you talking about,
[00:31:54.750]love is a force, releasing the weather balloon,
[00:31:57.890]and then we can go from there.
[00:32:00.710]Slide.
[00:32:07.770]Love is a very abstract concept
[00:32:09.550]that many people with autism have a hard time grasping,
[00:32:12.480]and it's one of those things that's not concrete.
[00:32:17.750]As a scientist, I wish I could put it into perspective
[00:32:20.930]as a type of subatomic particle but it's not.
[00:32:23.790]Love is basically more like a force.
[00:32:30.290]Like in physics, you have forces and forces of attraction,
[00:32:33.730]and I have a feeling that love is that,
[00:32:34.917]and the best way to describe that is,
[00:32:37.470]a force of attraction between two people
[00:32:39.610]that is neither visible, measurable or heard.
[00:32:45.470]There's no way to quantify it.
[00:32:49.620]So I have a couple of diagrams that you had created,
[00:32:53.220]that I've put, I'm gonna show,
[00:32:56.130]and I want you to kind of explain it to people.
[00:32:59.500]You'll like this, you'll like this.
[00:33:01.411](crowd laughing)
[00:33:02.300]So, let's see.
[00:33:04.840]Here's the first one.
[00:33:06.675]So this is basically the electromagnetic spectrum.
[00:33:09.370]So any of you who have science backgrounds
[00:33:12.260]or just particularly knowledgeable
[00:33:13.620]about the physical sciences,
[00:33:14.860]you'll be familiar with this slide
[00:33:16.670]that shows wave lengths of energy
[00:33:19.010]that go from radio waves all the way to gamma waves,
[00:33:22.000]and visible light is somewhere in the middle.
[00:33:23.410]That's the part of the energy spectrum
[00:33:25.160]that we're able to perceive,
[00:33:26.350]and you have ultraviolet light,
[00:33:28.210]which is greater energy than visible light is,
[00:33:31.510]and you also have infrared or heat energy
[00:33:33.300]that is a lower wavelength than visible light is.
[00:33:37.180]So,
[00:33:38.610]absorb that for a second,
[00:33:39.970]because that particular analogy will apply
[00:33:42.880]to our next slide here.
[00:33:46.850]Let me know.
[00:33:47.683]Ready.
[00:33:48.604]Ready?
[00:33:49.437]Okay.
[00:33:50.901](Lindsey speaks indistinctly)
[00:33:51.900]So, since I'm a scientist,
[00:33:53.700]I'd like to come up with these analogies.
[00:33:56.580]Are you all able to see the screen okay?
[00:33:58.928](Lindsey speaks indistinctly)
[00:34:01.740]Just quickly, I guess label,
[00:34:02.980]what are the waves. Okay, yeah.
[00:34:04.719]So, I was able to divide my spectrum
[00:34:07.760]in the four different types of wavelengths,
[00:34:09.840]going from lower energy to higher energy toward the right.
[00:34:12.850]So,
[00:34:14.310]as we go to the right are increasing emotional depth.
[00:34:18.960]So,
[00:34:20.530]if you're really shallow,
[00:34:22.130]the really shallow stuff is sex drive,
[00:34:25.680]horniness, libido, et cetera.
[00:34:27.610]You're just trying to get some sexual gratification in.
[00:34:31.770]That would be your alpha waves if you will.
[00:34:36.040]As we can increase our emotional depth further,
[00:34:38.830]that's basically our general interest
[00:34:40.950]in being with somebody else, but not a specific person.
[00:34:44.730]So you're thinking about love, romance, sex, et cetera,
[00:34:49.430]but it's not as shallow as what the alpha waves were.
[00:34:53.400]So that's kind of a hybrid category.
[00:34:55.690]As we progress over to the C or the gamma waves,
[00:34:59.880]this is when you really have a genuine crush on somebody.
[00:35:03.490]You're somebody who you want to be with,
[00:35:06.630]and you're thinking about that person day in and day out.
[00:35:09.550]You're just yearning for a relationship
[00:35:12.040]with that specific person,
[00:35:14.480]and you're not just thinking about sex
[00:35:18.290]or any specific acts or romance,
[00:35:21.200]but you're thinking about being with that person.
[00:35:23.270]And then we graduate even further
[00:35:25.230]to what I call delta waves,
[00:35:27.430]and this is like the electromagnetic analogy
[00:35:32.280]to ultraviolet light.
[00:35:33.930]We're not always thinking about delta waves,
[00:35:35.980]but as you're in a relationship that's newly blossoming,
[00:35:39.670]let's say the first six months,
[00:35:41.250]you're constantly thinking about the other person,
[00:35:44.380]but there becomes a time where
[00:35:46.890]that's not on the forefront of your mind anymore.
[00:35:50.280]The love, that feeling for somebody else matures,
[00:35:54.050]and it's really becoming true love at that point.
[00:35:56.430]So, once you have a true love,
[00:35:59.370]those initial feelings of a crush start to wear off,
[00:36:02.860]and they kind of go into a deeper phase
[00:36:05.070]where it's not always perceivable.
[00:36:07.740]That's what the final wavelength is.
[00:36:10.499]Does that make any sense?
[00:36:12.576]One a last a point.
[00:36:14.040]I think one thing I just wanna add to this.
[00:36:16.970]Oh, where's the slide.
[00:36:19.100]Yeah, we lost it.
[00:36:20.210]One thing I wanna add to the slide is that,
[00:36:24.240]these phases in these waves,
[00:36:27.699]it's not gonna be, how do I explain.
[00:36:31.313]In sync always. In sync, right?
[00:36:32.980]So you can actually go out to delta,
[00:36:35.250]but then you can go out to the gamma
[00:36:38.240]and you can actually go back and forth,
[00:36:41.760]and each person in a relationship
[00:36:44.710]has their own wavelengths,
[00:36:46.810]and so there's going to be times
[00:36:49.050]when there's gonna be some out of sync wavelengths,
[00:36:52.580]but this can go back and forth.
[00:36:55.070]This isn't necessarily just like,
[00:36:56.690]this is the first stage of relationship
[00:36:57.970]to the deeper end of things.
[00:37:00.700]So it's very flexible in that sense.
[00:37:03.920]So one thing I'll mention is,
[00:37:05.390]if you're ever in the delta phase
[00:37:08.410]and there's some degradation of those delta waves,
[00:37:11.640]or they start the weaken,
[00:37:13.080]that can allow infiltration of shallower wavelengths,
[00:37:15.890]like A and B waves for other people to come in.
[00:37:19.190]So if those Delta waves don't remain strong,
[00:37:21.677]you can see bit of a shifting back
[00:37:25.490]to the alpha and beta waves,
[00:37:27.530]and not necessarily for the person you're with.
[00:37:29.100]So that's kind of another way how the wavelengths
[00:37:33.050]can go out of sync.
[00:37:35.640]And there's one more formula
[00:37:37.470]that you have that I'm gonna play a bit.
[00:37:39.150]You explain this in a short video clip in the film.
[00:37:42.280]So, you can go ahead and play that.
[00:37:47.320]For me, it boils down to three things.
[00:37:48.950]I have a formula here.
[00:37:50.220]It's
[00:37:51.720]L plus P plus two T.
[00:37:55.130]So, each part is 25 percent.
[00:37:57.197]So you have 25 percent of the P and L,
[00:38:01.500]and you have 50 percent of the T,
[00:38:03.290]which results to what that person's grade would be
[00:38:06.480]in terms of relationship and dating potential.
[00:38:09.500]Now you're wondering, L is how they look physically,
[00:38:12.210]physical appearance and attributes.
[00:38:16.076]The P is personality and what is their lifestyle like?
[00:38:20.370]And most importantly is T, is how they treat you.
[00:38:23.260]Treatment towards you.
[00:38:25.999]If I say, for example, the person is relatively ugly,
[00:38:28.620]then they get like a 50 percent category in the L category,
[00:38:32.530]but they have nearly perfect personality
[00:38:35.710]and nearly perfect way they treat you,
[00:38:38.730]they're gonna score pretty well
[00:38:39.940]in the overall scheme of things.
[00:38:42.050]So the T has greater weights,
[00:38:44.370]twice as much weight in the formula
[00:38:46.100]than the personality and looks is,
[00:38:48.420]how they treat you.
[00:38:52.950]Anything you wanna add to that?
[00:38:54.200]Yeah, that formula still applies today,
[00:38:57.760]since we use formulas a lot in meteorology school,
[00:39:00.650]I figured it'd be cool to kind of use a formula
[00:39:04.350]to approximate, how to evaluate dating prospects,
[00:39:08.380]and again,
[00:39:10.740]if they don't treat you well, why pursue it?
[00:39:13.630]You gotta be treated well,
[00:39:14.888]and there's no ifs, ands or buts about it.
[00:39:17.850]I actually had dug in recently to our old interviews,
[00:39:21.830]and there is a segment from an our interview
[00:39:25.840]we did with the Washington Post back in 2016,
[00:39:28.290]and you talk a little bit about this L plus P plus two T.
[00:39:31.730]One of the things that stood out to me
[00:39:33.347]and I had forgotten about this was quote,
[00:39:36.770]on a good day, Dave says,
[00:39:39.147]"Lindsey gets A's or B's in all three categories".
[00:39:44.077]"If Lindsey's in a bad mood,
[00:39:46.550]one of those might drop to a C or C minus", Dave jokes.
[00:39:51.460]Or worse.
[00:39:52.800]Or worse. (laughs)
[00:39:53.850]But that doesn't happen too often.
[00:39:57.680]But those usually we (indistinct) perfectly.
[00:39:58.860]Hey, you know what,
[00:40:02.200]I can be high maintenance, I'm difficult to work with.
[00:40:06.094]That formula that I just gave you,
[00:40:07.280]for some people could be L plus P plus three T,
[00:40:11.430]whereas L and P are 20 percent and T is 60 percent.
[00:40:14.840]So that formula can be modified for other people
[00:40:19.980]as they see fit.
[00:40:20.813]So you can certainly adjust those ratios.
[00:40:24.884]So the next clip is gonna be from our NPR interview.
[00:40:29.010]They're gonna play here and here on the screen.
[00:40:32.060]And this is me just briefly talking about
[00:40:34.770]how I perceive love,
[00:40:36.630]kind more from the artist perspective of things.
[00:40:41.840]Sharp, unexpected noises
[00:40:43.600]are physically painful for Nebeker.
[00:40:45.690]So, before she or Hamrick enter a room,
[00:40:48.070]they alert each other with a soft reminder,
[00:40:50.490]a sort of, hey, I'm here.
[00:40:52.730]We will do a little pssh,
[00:40:54.910]and we'll wait for the other person to pssh back.
[00:41:01.338](piano music)
[00:41:03.280]In an essay, Nebeker wrote
[00:41:04.680]for Autism Spectrum Quarterly,
[00:41:06.610]she describes their love
[00:41:07.790]as an evolving contemporary symphony,
[00:41:10.420]full of offkey chords and uneven meets.
[00:41:13.710]A bit of skew if you will but...
[00:41:16.090]When you listen to it,
[00:41:17.420]it's like one can learn to appreciate
[00:41:20.310]the unique, different melodies and rhythmic context.
[00:41:27.060]You love each other or not,
[00:41:29.860]you will make it work.
[00:41:32.690]I did wanna clarify something in an earlier clip,
[00:41:35.460]about separate bedrooms.
[00:41:38.488]That video was done in 2013 and at the time,
[00:41:43.840]each room had just queen beds,
[00:41:46.350]and that was a big factor in having separate rooms.
[00:41:49.390]But now that we put a king bed in the master bedroom,
[00:41:52.430]we do share the bedroom more often that we used to
[00:41:54.460]when that video was taken.
[00:41:58.590]What helps save your relationship?
[00:41:59.880]Get a king bed.
[00:42:01.351](crowd laughing)
[00:42:02.184]It makes a difference.
[00:42:03.240]But we do still have our own rooms though,
[00:42:05.360]because you have rotating shifts sometimes.
[00:42:07.440]We both need our personal space and solitude, right?
[00:42:10.740]'Cause, we get sensory overwhelmed,
[00:42:12.910]or sometimes we do just need to alone.
[00:42:14.416]Or if I'm working a night shift
[00:42:15.297]and Lindsey needs to use the vanity in the morning,
[00:42:17.770]that way I can sleep after the night shift
[00:42:20.170]without being bothered.
[00:42:21.478]So, we still have our own rooms,
[00:42:22.840]which I think has been incredibly helpful
[00:42:24.980]in being able to gravitate. It does help, it does help
[00:42:26.210]to have that extra bedroom available when it's needed.
[00:42:28.290]Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:29.650]So as far as that, our perspective,
[00:42:32.680]the way that I view love
[00:42:34.560]is like an all evolving contemporary in symphony.
[00:42:38.310]So, you're having all these different parts and instruments
[00:42:41.930]that are coming into play,
[00:42:43.470]and if you're familiar with contemporary music,
[00:42:45.870]which is kind of within the last century,
[00:42:48.870]it's gonna be very different than what you hear
[00:42:50.670]in baroque music and classical music and romantic music,
[00:42:54.240]and there's times that keys might not sound
[00:42:58.550]like they are predictable,
[00:43:00.500]or there's just chords that might not really be in sync,
[00:43:04.840]or the sound just might not be very recognizable,
[00:43:08.390]and some people get very uncomfortable about that.
[00:43:11.160]But, the thing is though,
[00:43:13.750]is that when you take the time to learn to appreciate
[00:43:17.670]the contemporary music and specifically like a symphony,
[00:43:20.970]when we have a lot of different instruments going around,
[00:43:27.516]you learn that you have this deep appreciation for it,
[00:43:31.880]and you take the time to kind of look into it,
[00:43:34.700]and that to me is how I perceive love.
[00:43:39.940]So in short, I think it's safe to say love
[00:43:43.570]is both an art and a science.
[00:43:46.011]Oh, absolutely.
[00:43:46.887]When you really think about that.
[00:43:48.820]Probably more of an ark if you ask me.
[00:43:50.830]Well, no, I mean your scientific methods,
[00:43:52.940]I think kind of shows up pretty well
[00:43:55.230]as far as the love aspect of things.
[00:43:56.590]But more than anything, love is a very abstract concept.
[00:43:59.480]Yeah.
[00:44:01.380]So, we're going back to the slides.
[00:44:05.230]Go back here.
[00:44:10.320]So, a few years later,
[00:44:13.410]we were approached by an independent film crew.
[00:44:16.840]It was interesting.
[00:44:17.967]It was shooting an independent documentary
[00:44:21.227]and they titled "Autism in Love".
[00:44:23.110]They approached several different people
[00:44:25.060]and we were selected as two of the featured individuals
[00:44:30.870]that's in the film and filming was I think in 2013, right?
[00:44:35.288]Yeah, that's right.
[00:44:36.196]Yes, so. The majority of it was.
[00:44:37.637]And it was quite something,
[00:44:38.970]it was like around the course of nine or 10 months.
[00:44:42.550]The crew was from California.
[00:44:43.850]So they would make several trips over to DC
[00:44:46.910]to do some shooting with us and some interviews,
[00:44:49.950]and B roll and all that stuff.
[00:44:51.950]And it was quite interesting
[00:44:53.150]'cause we're having them now in our house
[00:44:56.429]and we're having to kind of pretend cameras are not there
[00:44:58.980]and catching us in some interesting conversations
[00:45:02.080]and going to work,
[00:45:05.890]but it was a really wild experience,
[00:45:08.820]a very educational experience as well.
[00:45:12.414]I think I have one more slide, yup,
[00:45:13.730]of cameras and things like that.
[00:45:18.640]We're gonna talk more a little bit into
[00:45:23.950]the after effect of all that experience.
[00:45:26.900]But first of all, I'm gonna play a couple of scenes
[00:45:31.350]from the film and then we will return
[00:45:34.090]to talking more about what happened afterward.
[00:45:49.240]You get married for love too.
[00:45:50.230]But for me, there's more of a practical component as well.
[00:45:53.060]Probably 60 percent practical, 40 percent emotional.
[00:45:56.220]I'll always love her, that won't change.
[00:46:00.210]But for the specific reasons for the marriage,
[00:46:02.040]that's kinda boil down to.
[00:46:07.880]I had told him a few years ago
[00:46:12.540]that whenever he was ready to take that next step,
[00:46:15.130]that I would be willing to accept.
[00:46:23.851]I've yet to hear any kind of Indicator
[00:46:29.340]that that next step may be taken.
[00:46:34.430](kids talking indistinctly)
[00:47:05.360]I know that we kind of brushed over this,
[00:47:07.624]when we chatted about it.
[00:47:09.370]I do believe you and trust you,
[00:47:11.937]when you've told me that we're in it for the long haul,
[00:47:15.370]and I do believe you and I do trust you,
[00:47:19.034]and,
[00:47:21.550]I definitely am in it for the long haul for us too,
[00:47:24.470]and I wouldn't be here if I wasn't.
[00:47:29.236]No, I know that.
[00:47:30.352]Yeah.
[00:47:32.781](indistinct crowd chatter)
[00:47:39.010]I guess, I was just still kind of just figuring out.
[00:47:43.360]A part of that conversation made me
[00:47:45.030]a little bit uncomfortable too.
[00:47:50.940]Oh, you mean at the time?
[00:47:52.134]Yeah, yeah.
[00:47:52.967]Yeah.
[00:47:53.800]Well, it's uncomfortable for me too, but it's important.
[00:47:59.240]It's important.
[00:48:00.390]It's sometimes I think there's conversations
[00:48:03.410]that are uncomfortable for us,
[00:48:04.900]but they're really important to have,
[00:48:09.790]or at least to address them
[00:48:13.640]in order to us to understand
[00:48:16.420]where we each other are coming from.
[00:48:19.730]So, I'm not gonna lie.
[00:48:23.210]But having this on camera.
[00:48:24.460]I don't like at all.
[00:48:25.500]I don't like having this conversation on camera at all.
[00:48:28.330]Okay.
[00:48:30.160]It's one of those things that's best left off camera,
[00:48:32.778]I think.
[00:48:33.880]Okay, we can stop talking about it.
[00:48:35.390]Yes.
[00:48:37.830]All right, thank you for letting me know.
[00:48:40.510]I just feel better that way.
[00:48:41.992]Okay.
[00:48:42.825]I just feel uncomfortable
[00:48:43.658]being on camera. Okay, all right.
[00:48:44.950]No, thank you for letting me know.
[00:48:51.468]But you know how I feel, so don't worry about it.
[00:49:06.150]There's been times that I have questioned
[00:49:09.730]whether he really wants to be with me.
[00:49:16.300]Within yourself, you think you can communicate,
[00:49:19.070]you think you've said something,
[00:49:20.360]you think it should be obvious
[00:49:21.710]to somebody that's this, this and this.
[00:49:23.920]But again, go back to the antenna.
[00:49:27.330]Maybe you are,
[00:49:28.163]but then maybe they haven't picked that up.
[00:49:36.421](soft emotional music)
[00:49:42.800]Yeah, let's see.
[00:49:44.460]I will say that was one of my least favorite parts
[00:49:46.690]of that whole movie.
[00:49:48.280]I don't know why they put that clip in there,
[00:49:49.820]but they decided to put it in.
[00:49:51.723]Yeah, we'll chat a little bit about that,
[00:49:55.090]and I'm gonna play one more video clip
[00:49:57.290]and then we'll tell you a little bit of behind the scenes.
[00:50:00.698](soft emotional music)
[00:50:04.750]In physics, we have
[00:50:06.545]something called electromagnetic spectrum.
[00:50:08.259]How much energy a wave length has?
[00:50:09.779]You go from radio waves to light
[00:50:11.529]to ultra-violet to x-rays, gamma rays.
[00:50:16.802]And then, how I feel towards someone
[00:50:18.602]is kind of on similar scale.
[00:50:19.929]You have different wavelengths.
[00:50:23.840]Going from this physical lust,
[00:50:26.500]then you go graduate from a general interest
[00:50:28.880]in the opposite sex,
[00:50:29.730]and then you graduate from having
[00:50:31.540]a specific, intense crush on specific person.
[00:50:34.834](emotional music)
[00:50:39.120]And after that, it kind of evolves into another stage,
[00:50:42.030]which is the true love stage.
[00:50:43.510]You're not having that deep crush
[00:50:47.480]where you're thinking about her 24/7,
[00:50:48.924]and you have a hard time sleeping,
[00:50:49.757]'cause she's so much in love with her,
[00:50:51.150]but it kind of graduates to a more subconscious form.
[00:50:54.310]Let's say you're going from light waves
[00:50:55.996]that you can visibly see to ultraviolet waves.
[00:50:57.810]They're still there but you can't see them,
[00:50:59.630]but they're stronger.
[00:51:01.035]Does that make any sense?
[00:51:05.177](soft ethereal music)
[00:51:11.427]Are you sure that was the spot
[00:51:13.860]where we did that photograph?
[00:51:15.450]I wanna say it was taken somewhere around here.
[00:51:26.258]This is nostalgic isn't it?
[00:51:30.780]Almost eight years ago.
[00:51:34.070]It's always amazing when you look back in time,
[00:51:38.700]how things have grown and how our relationship has grown,
[00:51:42.680]and what we've been through.
[00:51:44.723]It's been really amazing.
[00:51:47.080]That says something.
[00:51:47.913]When you go for a relationship that long,
[00:51:50.410]that is a very strong signal.
[00:51:53.510]The relationship is meant to be.
[00:51:55.610]And at first you were kind of confused
[00:51:58.410]as to where we were headed,
[00:52:00.070]and I remember you telling me,
[00:52:01.890]you could have been totally happy
[00:52:04.340]just pursuing your career and being a single woman,
[00:52:07.340]and then.
[00:52:08.230]Remember that slide you kind of show on your presentation,
[00:52:12.250]the physics related slide?
[00:52:13.740]Yes, yes.
[00:52:15.040]Where you have... The wavelengths.
[00:52:17.160]The alpha, the beta, the gamma.
[00:52:19.840]And the delta. The delta.
[00:52:22.230]And I think how I have viewed
[00:52:26.440]our experience and our adventure together,
[00:52:31.010]is that our wavelengths might have been different
[00:52:34.800]at different times.
[00:52:36.100]There's a mutual thing.
[00:52:38.130]And I think
[00:52:40.720]having those different wavelengths at different times,
[00:52:44.210]may have been a significant reason
[00:52:46.880]why we both may have struggled
[00:52:52.060]to
[00:52:54.500]really understand
[00:52:55.940]where we may be seeing ourselves in the far future.
[00:53:02.214]But now I feel our wavelengths are in sync.
[00:53:05.230]I feel like we've grown.
[00:53:07.960]We have.
[00:53:09.200]And I wanna only go,
[00:53:13.850]by what's in here.
[00:53:15.470]Absolutely, in here.
[00:53:17.694]And what's in here.
[00:53:19.238]You're pressing against what's in here.
[00:53:22.504]It's in here, always will be.
[00:53:26.619]I can say that from the bottom of my part.
[00:53:38.325](Lindsey laughing)
[00:53:40.924]And it's okay to blush if you want to,
[00:53:44.363]but,
[00:53:47.042]I understand if you do it.
[00:53:48.125](Lindsey laughs)
[00:53:49.618]But this has been a remarkable journey
[00:53:52.980]and somebody as beautiful as you deserves the very best,
[00:53:59.087]and a life happiness together.
[00:54:01.430]And I would very much be honored
[00:54:07.560]to have you as my wife.
[00:54:13.600]Will you marry me?
[00:54:31.890]Yes, I will marry you.
[00:54:35.794](Lindsey laughing excitedly)
[00:54:46.686](emotional music)
[00:54:49.907]That's why I wore my vest.
[00:54:51.325](Lindsey laughing)
[00:54:53.497]I was wondering about that.
[00:54:55.630]Practicality.
[00:54:58.967]But, definitely in the delta region where it's true love.
[00:55:03.170]That's the wavelength we're both in.
[00:55:05.792](emotional music)
[00:55:17.420]Your task is not to seek for love,
[00:55:21.660]but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself
[00:55:26.910]that you have built against it.
[00:55:29.980]That quote really resonates with my life.
[00:55:34.470]All the negative things that I heard on autism growing up,
[00:55:42.180]it definitely made me feel worthless or less.
[00:55:50.120]I had consistently set up barriers to protect myself.
[00:55:57.250]It's very easy to not feel like that you can trust people.
[00:56:11.890]I thought that
[00:56:15.740]perhaps Dave was holding back more than I was.
[00:56:21.440]But what I discovered through a lot of introspection
[00:56:27.580]is that I was really holding back too.
[00:56:36.170]I have to admit, it's kind of,
[00:56:37.948]well, I don't wanna say haunting,
[00:56:38.930]but it's very bittersweet to go back
[00:56:43.140]and listen to these clips and to watch
[00:56:47.540]where we were at that point of our relationship,
[00:56:50.370]as well as our own personal lives.
[00:56:52.890]And it seemed like,
[00:56:56.150]after the post-production and about a year or so later,
[00:57:00.030]all of a sudden we were hopeful,
[00:57:04.550]I guess that it was gonna to have some success,
[00:57:08.290]just because we had really poured ourselves into it,
[00:57:11.290]our hearts into it.
[00:57:13.940]But in 2015, was when we really started
[00:57:18.930]having the big break, the slides.
[00:57:23.020]So 2015,
[00:57:25.620]spring of 2015, the film actually got accepted
[00:57:29.320]into the Tribeca Film Festival,
[00:57:31.570]and that's when everything just at once,
[00:57:36.130]just one outlet after the other outlet
[00:57:38.980]after the other outlet would have photos of us in there.
[00:57:41.770]And it was just like,
[00:57:43.940]so,
[00:57:46.150]the second round of the interaction
[00:57:49.770]with national media was bigger I think.
[00:57:52.960]It was something, I certainly didn't expect
[00:57:55.777]it was gonna get this big.
[00:57:59.200]After Tribeca Film Festival,
[00:58:03.280]PBS had actually picked it up as well,
[00:58:05.910]and they aired it in their channels in early 2016.
[00:58:09.510]And then after that,
[00:58:11.980]Netflix actually had picked it up
[00:58:13.890]and I think they ran it for a couple of years,
[00:58:15.860]but I don't think it's currently on Netflix anymore.
[00:58:19.750]But,
[00:58:23.521]it was a lot to take in and talk about pressure,
[00:58:27.630]when you're feeling like,
[00:58:28.610]okay, all eyes are kind of watching you
[00:58:30.340]and you're trying to figure out, okay,
[00:58:34.708]you're just trying to make sure that you're doing your best,
[00:58:39.420]and then also in the middle of all this,
[00:58:43.350]we also got married at the end of 2015.
[00:58:49.280]Actually we made a decision,
[00:58:50.500]it was two years after he proposed to me
[00:58:52.460]and we made that decision
[00:58:54.460]to get married around October, 2015,
[00:58:56.910]'cause it was around our 10 year dating anniversary.
[00:59:02.571]So we had a really small wedding.
[00:59:05.460]We looked nice there, Dave.
[00:59:09.055]It was in Washington DC.
[00:59:09.990]It was a very small boutique hotel.
[00:59:11.240]We had about 32.
[00:59:13.970]Yeah, it was pretty small.
[00:59:15.706]33 People.
[00:59:16.563]Mainly family and closest friends.
[00:59:18.890]Yeah, yeah.
[00:59:21.504]And it was a beautiful event.
[00:59:22.390]It really was.
[00:59:26.400]And the thing is,
[00:59:28.490]and back what Dave was kind of alluding to earlier,
[00:59:38.272]that was a point where I know I was struggling,
[00:59:42.320]and I think you might have been too with,
[00:59:47.510]how authentic really was our relationship story,
[00:59:51.410]because you have so many people looking at you
[00:59:55.930]hoping you're gonna have that happy ending,
[01:00:00.240]thinking that, oh, everything's just wonderful and great.
[01:00:06.580]But for example, the scene.
[01:00:11.120]I think sometimes a filmmaker,
[01:00:13.800]when they create a documentary,
[01:00:19.220]they might have a different narrative in mind
[01:00:21.870]than what the narrative really was going on
[01:00:24.900]in the documentary subject,
[01:00:27.210]and I think this was a perfect example of that.
[01:00:30.120]The scenes of course were unscripted.
[01:00:33.890]They were real.
[01:00:35.080]So the proposal was real.
[01:00:36.180]It was not rehearsed or scripted or anything like that,
[01:00:40.850]but that was still a time in our relationship
[01:00:43.903]that I think we were not quite ready to take that step yet.
[01:00:48.920]I had been struggling with ongoing eating disorder
[01:00:52.960]and mental health issues,
[01:00:55.200]and I just was not in a place
[01:00:56.640]where I felt like I was really ready to take that step yet.
[01:01:01.870]I felt like we needed to do, have some more work,
[01:01:04.870]but there was this pressure from the filmmakers.
[01:01:10.756]There was kind of a clue
[01:01:11.760]that if we didn't have some sort of ending or conclusion
[01:01:15.140]that we may not be in that final cut of the film.
[01:01:20.017]And so that scene with the peer
[01:01:22.710]was uncomfortable for both of us,
[01:01:24.340]because I actually was coached to bring that topic up
[01:01:32.430]into the conversation and I really didn't want to,
[01:01:34.710]and I wish I didn't but it's okay.
[01:01:37.290]You know, I'm glad that it was able to at least see,
[01:01:41.980]'cause again, I said, things aren't always happy deary,
[01:01:46.690]but it was really hard the first few months
[01:01:52.010]after we got married.
[01:01:54.650]I got really depressed,
[01:01:57.680]and that was actually right around the time
[01:02:00.500]PBS thing came about is January, 2016.
[01:02:05.020]And,
[01:02:09.300]during all this coverage and interviews,
[01:02:12.170]I tried to allude to the idea that I was really struggling.
[01:02:19.770]So one of the excerpts from that Washington post article
[01:02:25.230]is quote,
[01:02:28.270]recalling how Dave comforted Lindsey tenderly
[01:02:31.940]during a recent emotional meltdown,
[01:02:34.360]Lindsey said to him, even though you were very confused
[01:02:38.200]and concerned about me,
[01:02:40.000]and unsure of why I was feeling that way,
[01:02:42.750]you ended up just going down the floor with me
[01:02:45.520]and allowing me to just hold you
[01:02:47.540]because you knew I needed that.
[01:02:49.710]For Lindsey, those meltdowns can be triggered
[01:02:51.780]by things online commenters said about her.
[01:02:56.660]So, I was trying to kind of clue things in a little bit.
[01:03:03.480]Do you remember that Dave, when we had that interview?
[01:03:07.052]I vaguely remember it,
[01:03:07.885]but you probably remember it a little bit better than I do.
[01:03:09.820]Yeah, yeah.
[01:03:15.770]So, one of the things that they actually asked us to do
[01:03:18.110]during the filming back in 2013 was,
[01:03:21.050]they actually loaned us an amateur video camera,
[01:03:24.010]and they told us just to shoot whatever,
[01:03:27.320]in between the times that they were coming to visit.
[01:03:30.110]So, this is a short clip of one of these
[01:03:33.910]sort of diary entries entries I put into the camera.
[01:03:38.020]None of the clips got into the film,
[01:03:40.810]but this was kind of more alluding
[01:03:42.830]to what was really going on.
[01:03:44.700]And Dave, I don't think you've even seen this one yet.
[01:03:54.970]I step back and,
[01:04:01.170]I get really sad
[01:04:03.740]at how I think about myself,
[01:04:10.610]and all the years that I have spent
[01:04:15.360]not treating my myself very well.
[01:04:19.346]I really wish
[01:04:23.230]I could go back
[01:04:28.350]to my 10 year old, 11 year old self
[01:04:34.290]and tell that girl,
[01:04:39.660]you need to love yourself.
[01:04:47.580]I wish I knew how to.
[01:04:54.530]I have always had a struggle of loving myself.
[01:05:12.280]I wish I knew how to love myself.
[01:05:22.010]So,
[01:05:24.190]around three weeks after
[01:05:27.770]the PBS premiere of the film
[01:05:30.120]and around after the Washington Post article came out,
[01:05:36.960]we were at a filming event,
[01:05:41.090]and,
[01:05:43.860]that was a point where
[01:05:47.690]I said this is it.
[01:05:50.070]I can't handle this anymore.
[01:05:52.170]This questioning about whether our relationship
[01:05:55.810]or our story was really authentic
[01:05:57.280]or was this something that was being forced
[01:06:00.100]or just the pressure I felt
[01:06:02.700]from just some commenters on the internet,
[01:06:07.780]and some criticisms and just that pressure.
[01:06:12.560]And,
[01:06:15.760]that night, right after the screening event,
[01:06:23.210]I was found
[01:06:27.070]in the hotel lobby,
[01:06:30.680]unresponsive.
[01:06:34.140]They called 911, and got me into an ambulance,
[01:06:37.370]into a hospital.
[01:06:39.470]Dave actually was not there at the time.
[01:06:41.370]They actually had to contact him in the hotel room,
[01:06:45.300]and he went over there
[01:06:48.830]and stayed with me all night in the ER.
[01:06:53.580]Eventually I woke up.
[01:06:57.360]I mean,
[01:06:59.410]I don't actually have any memory of this.
[01:07:01.230]So Dave, this is based on what Dave has shared with me.
[01:07:04.440]And 13 hours later, I happened to be discharged from the ER,
[01:07:09.410]and then we went back to the hotel
[01:07:11.280]and there was a period of about 21 to 22 hours,
[01:07:15.360]I have no memory.
[01:07:16.860]I don't remember collapsing.
[01:07:18.770]I don't remember the hospital at all.
[01:07:28.280]Yeah.
[01:07:30.690]So, I'm surprised they let me out
[01:07:32.570]because I actually had tried to take my own life,
[01:07:40.330]and it surprised me that no one figured it out at the time.
[01:07:45.770]Neither did I.
[01:07:47.107]And I had to tell you.
[01:07:49.470]And I think it was scary that you actually had to tell me
[01:07:51.590]everything that had happened,
[01:07:52.640]because I don't remember any of it.
[01:07:56.760]It was below my radar screen too.
[01:07:58.340]It was a very traumatic experience,
[01:08:01.600]but you know, that experience as dark as a place
[01:08:06.700]I was in my life and that just...
[01:08:14.020]I felt like it was the ultimate test for us
[01:08:17.840]because I think when you really know
[01:08:20.610]if someone's gonna be there for you,
[01:08:24.130]it's when the worst happens.
[01:08:27.680]It's when there's something big like that happens
[01:08:32.240]that you know,
[01:08:33.500]and Dave was there.
[01:08:36.380]He stayed there.
[01:08:41.004]You were there,
[01:08:42.760]and I was really touched by how strong your love was.
[01:08:48.010]I could feel it at that point,
[01:08:49.630]and I knew you knew at that point,
[01:08:53.950]our story was definitely real.
[01:08:55.893]And I feel bad, I didn't know why you were there at first.
[01:09:00.400]And that's okay though.
[01:09:01.310]You stayed with me, you were there.
[01:09:04.230]And you know, even in the months afterward,
[01:09:07.780]we had to heal and through that experience,
[01:09:11.890]but we were able to sort of step back,
[01:09:14.030]and,
[01:09:17.900]just really give ourselves space,
[01:09:20.860]and I think that really helped us,
[01:09:23.150]at least me, feel like, you know what,
[01:09:26.950]it's real, it's real,
[01:09:32.620]and it's authentic,
[01:09:35.700]and that brought a lot of peace and comfort to me.
[01:09:44.100]We'll go back to the slides.
[01:10:01.426]And I think the opportunity for us to step back,
[01:10:07.940]what really helped was going back to remembering
[01:10:11.920]the first few years of our dating life.
[01:10:14.500]You know the years
[01:10:15.470]that people were not really paying attention to us,
[01:10:19.190]and thinking back, how did we feel at the beginning?
[01:10:23.090]That feeling,
[01:10:24.810]even though we might be back in the delta waves
[01:10:27.040]and not have felt those butterfly feelings,
[01:10:29.400]but there was a reason why we had gotten together
[01:10:34.840]in the first place
[01:10:35.840]and thinking back through those things
[01:10:41.400]really touches my heart.
[01:10:48.360]I'm gonna actually skip this clip.
[01:10:50.470]This is my very favorite photo of us.
[01:10:53.780]I actually took it.
[01:10:55.780]But this was taken in 2005.
[01:10:59.330]This was taken a very long time ago,
[01:11:04.510]'cause we've been dating how long for now?
[01:11:06.070]Like over 16 years.
[01:11:07.270]Yeah, going on 17.
[01:11:08.780]Yeah.
[01:11:09.750]It's been a really long time.
[01:11:10.583]We were young.
[01:11:11.416]We were really young.
[01:11:12.249]And so, that picture's so old,
[01:11:13.700]it's in black and white.
[01:11:15.281](Lindsey and crowd laugh)
[01:11:17.700]We're not that old, Dave.
[01:11:20.970]We're not that old. Just saying.
[01:11:22.530]We're not that old.
[01:11:28.690]But looking back at things like that,
[01:11:31.990]it's just makes me feel like,
[01:11:33.460]okay, you know, this is real, this is real.
[01:11:38.240]And I also went back and looked at all the emails
[01:11:42.800]that Dave and I had traded
[01:11:46.700]after we first met at the conference,
[01:11:48.073]all the way to when we moved in together.
[01:11:50.860]Let's get back to what I was saying earlier.
[01:11:52.460]This is the slide I was alluding to.
[01:11:53.860]So you wanna?
[01:11:55.280]So I got very creative
[01:11:56.350]with all my sign off expressions,
[01:11:58.300]first by saying, your friend, your new friend with autism,
[01:12:03.460]have a wonderful day, many thanks, to love,
[01:12:07.310]to overflowing heart, to yours forever.
[01:12:11.660]So I kind of ramped up the wording
[01:12:13.730]on those sign offs on emails.
[01:12:15.230]So that's a collection of those.
[01:12:18.420]So if you wanna get creative in how you sign off emails,
[01:12:22.670]you're certainly welcome to use this slide
[01:12:23.910]to get some ideas.
[01:12:25.173](crowd laughs)
[01:12:28.750]But just little things like that
[01:12:30.640]when you pay attention to them has a tremendous impact in,
[01:12:37.823]you're just figuring out your narrative,
[01:12:39.970]like this is our narrative and this is our adventure,
[01:12:44.950]and we are riding this together.
[01:12:47.730]And as we go through experiences,
[01:12:50.910]whether it's positive experiences or challenges,
[01:12:54.200]we're creating new experiences together,
[01:12:57.330]and that can really help strengthen a relationship.
[01:13:01.730]I know it has for us.
[01:13:06.130]I concur.
[01:13:06.963]Yeah, and one of those little co-creating experiences
[01:13:10.300]was a few years ago, we actually adopted a senior dog.
[01:13:15.060]Her name was Piper.
[01:13:17.200]She actually ended up being completely blind
[01:13:19.800]and almost deaf.
[01:13:20.650]So, she had a lot of needs,
[01:13:23.930]but Dave was amazing with her and it was really nice
[01:13:29.690]to be able to kind of create a new experience together
[01:13:33.470]without kind of being in the spotlight,
[01:13:35.260]and it was a very rewarding experience.
[01:13:38.590]We had her for about three years
[01:13:39.810]and then she passed last summer,
[01:13:42.340]but,
[01:13:47.030]when you're allowed to create your own narrative
[01:13:49.950]and sharing strengths in your own narratives
[01:13:53.820]by creating new experiences.
[01:13:57.850]So, I feel like I've been talking a lot.
[01:14:01.100]So, Dave, do you have any closing thoughts?
[01:14:05.830]Well, it really has been quite a journey
[01:14:08.040]and Lindsey (indistinct) summed up better than I ever could.
[01:14:11.640]She was really quite amazing with her slides
[01:14:15.180]and what she used to explain
[01:14:17.670]all the things we've gone through
[01:14:19.420]and going through all those public press experiences
[01:14:23.570]was definitely new territory for us,
[01:14:25.907]and it was stressful, but also at the same time,
[01:14:28.580]I'm glad we did it.
[01:14:29.650]It was good to get that message out,
[01:14:32.490]and that's why we're here today
[01:14:35.480]to kind of just give you an idea
[01:14:37.640]that love and autism really does work.
[01:14:40.500]It's really no different from people without autism.
[01:14:45.155]We may see it a little bit differently,
[01:14:46.680]but works fundamentally the same way.
[01:14:50.597]Yeah.
[01:14:52.100]Yeah, like we're all capable of love.
[01:14:56.282]And love is blind to disability or race or age.
[01:14:59.960]We are all capable of being loved and loving back.
[01:15:04.434]Yeah, we all wanna be loved and accepted and validated,
[01:15:08.540]and understanding each other for our differences,
[01:15:12.520]and I just, before playing the very last video clip here,
[01:15:18.360]which is gonna be end of the film,
[01:15:21.070]I just wanted to let you know, Dave,
[01:15:22.840]how much I really appreciate you being in my life,
[01:15:26.220]and I feel like every year, just things get really stronger,
[01:15:29.760]and even with any experience,
[01:15:31.050]whether it's dark or it's beautiful experience,
[01:15:35.990]we don't have to take that for granted anymore.
[01:15:38.107]Our love continues to mature.
[01:15:40.590]Delta, but sometimes other fluctuations, right?
[01:15:43.920]Which is normal.
[01:15:46.030]So here's one last final video clip
[01:15:48.570]to close off.
[01:15:54.070]Okay, ready?
[01:15:55.290]Okay. All right.
[01:15:56.920]So, starts here.
[01:15:59.680]Okay, ready? Hm-mm.
[01:16:01.749](piano music)
[01:16:11.491]Nailed it.
[01:16:12.765](piano music)
[01:16:40.203](soft emotional music)
[01:16:42.790]Thank you so much for being here.
[01:16:44.807]Thank you.
[01:16:45.640](crowd clapping)
[01:16:57.640]We just love seeing everybody in person again.
[01:16:59.730]Isn't that awesome?
[01:17:01.800]We all can be together again.
[01:17:05.117]Aw, that was awesome.
[01:17:06.040]Thank you very much.
[01:17:08.660](indistinct chatter)
[01:17:11.948]Oh, go for it, yeah, absolutely.
[01:17:14.300]Okay, that was awesome.
[01:17:15.640]If they were holding mics, I'd tell them to drop them,
[01:17:17.760]because that was outstanding.
[01:17:19.570]Really quick, so you know,
[01:17:21.250]Lindsey recorded a beautiful two part webinar series for us,
[01:17:25.680]more on some of the struggles
[01:17:28.220]that she has battled with depression
[01:17:30.630]and what things were helpful
[01:17:34.210]and what things were not,
[01:17:36.230]and so it's very informative,
[01:17:38.110]it's so beautifully done as everything Lindsey does
[01:17:41.230]is so artistic and beautiful.
[01:17:43.130]Those are available on our state ASC website.
[01:17:45.640]So definitely check those out.
[01:17:47.500]Thank you so much.
[01:17:48.610]Enjoy your break and the next session starts at 10:30.
[01:17:52.307]So you have a little time.

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Let's Get Personal with Dave and Lindsey

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