My dad hired Penelope to coach me. Here’s what happened.

Chairs (1970) Tom Berg This is a guest post from a college senior I coached. When my parents divorced, my mom more or less kept my younger brother and my dad more or less kept me. We each saw the other parent, but never very much and never for very long. My brother and I only saw one another every other weekend for the better part of four years. I didn’t think anything of the fact that my brother and I were split up. I didn’t think anything of the fact that I went to work with my dad every day, even on weekends. As far as I knew, this was just how families worked. It wasn’t until Penelope explained autism that my family started to make sense. From a young age I knew there was something different about the way I responded to situations compared to most people around me. “Autism” was a word that carried a lot of stigma when I was growing up, so when Penelope first suggested it explained some of my behavior, I resisted. The idea itself wasn’t new. Autism didn’t reveal something about me…