# Oops. Making friends was always difficult for me, especially in my earlier years. I didn't have real friends at school until 4th grade. Also, my auditory processing isn't that great at times--especially when I'm really focused. Sometime in 1st grade, we went out for recess and I found a quiet spot under the jungle gym to draw pictures with a stick in the sand. I did that all recess and apparently continued to do it even after our class went back inside. At some point, a teacher I didn't know came up and said something like, "I don't think you're supposed to be out here right now." Confused, I looked around and sure enough, all the other kids on the playground were big kids and were not the same kids in my class. The teacher who found me was really nice about it and walked me back to my classroom and explained to my teacher that she found me outside before heading back out to her own class. My teacher, however, was not too happy. I don't think I was punished, if I was, maybe she took away my next recess or something, but I know she had a talk with my mom that day and that upset me. I remember seeing them talking outside the car at pickup and then bursting into uncontrollable crying--the kind where I can't talk because my breathing is so dysregulated. Anyway...yeah. That's how I got an extra-long recess because of autism. To this day, I have no idea how long I was out there. It could have been 5 minutes extra or 30 minutes extra.