“I drift through life,” said Cooper Briggs,12, who was born deaf and has recently been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. As he goes through his first year of middle school, he faces not only these challenges but also new challenges, like girls, bullying and finding himself. Cooper uses cars as his escape from the world but also his connection to it. He spends nearly all of his time and energy away from others focused on gaming about cars and drawing them. But he also uses cars to connect with others, talking about them with his friends and family constantly. “I basically drift for a reason, because I want to be prepared for the future,” Cooper said.

Cooper has to sleep without his ability to hear when he takes his cochlear implants out at night, which causes him to crawl into bed with his mom and dad. “George and I go to bed. Then, Cooper will come and poke George and he leaves, and Cooper lays down with me. I get Cooper to sleep and then go back with George, and then I go to sleep and the cycle continues,” Jennifer Briggs said. Jennifer Briggs, Cooper’s mom, wakes him up from her bed before school with a hug. “He is a very loving child. His love is when he first wakes up and when he goes to bed. That is his time to show affection. He wants to wake up with a hug. He wants to give you a hug before bed,” Jennifer said.

Cooper was born deaf in both ears. He couldn’t hear the crying as he came into this world or the voices of his mom and dad whispering that they love him. “We were blindsided that Cooper was gonna be deaf,” Jennifer Briggs said. She still helps him get ready for school in the morning and helps him fix his hair. Growing up, Cooper was an invigorating character. He wore bowties everywhere he went. His treat for being good at his cochlear implant appointments was to go to the car wash. He listened to siren noises loudly on his iPad. He was loud and proud of himself at being able to use all his senses to take in the world around him. Now, as a middle schooler, he is experiencing changes in how he takes in the world around him. “For the most part, he does really well with his hearing. Right now, we go through a lot of the preteen ignoring us,” Jennifer said. “More than the hearing is the Asperger’s and the social issues that he has.”

During class, Cooper uses his free time to draw cars on paper and animate them on his teacher's iPad. He has always received good grades and gets his work done quickly, so he has enough time to do his art. Cooper has a new drawing to show his family and classmates nearly every day. While he enjoys going to school and learning, one thing that he says bothers him about middle school is that everyone talks 24/7. “He doesn’t like the chaos at school. It just really bothers him when things are not in order. Things need to be a certain way,” Jennifer said.

When Cooper was in first grade, he was diagnosed with ADHD. By the third and fourth grade, the school psychologist noticed that he scored really high on his IQ test and showed signs of Asperger’s. “I don’t think that he knows that he’s different. He is just so absorbed in him. Not in an arrogant way, he just doesn’t know any different,” Jennifer said. Cooper’s Asperger’s, along with his hearing disability, have caused him to interact with others and view life differently. “People think I am stupid, but I am actually highly intelligent,” Cooper said, “and what bothers me is that I am starting to see more bullying going on, and I don’t know if it’s just me or if everyone else is getting bullied.”

While he believes that people pick on him and others at their school sometimes, he also believes that his friends are there for protection from all the fights and chaos that happen in middle school, and he often eats lunch with them. He said he is picked on by some kids in his class. Because Cooper is different, he tends to isolate himself, but he sits with friends at lunch. He said, “I would call them friends, but I don’t exactly remember their names.”

Cooper sits behind the gym bleachers in his last class of the day after doing sit-ups because he said he wanted to “lift something heavy.” He also plays basketball and catches a football with the other kids at his school.

Since his Asperger’s causes him to have food aversions, Cooper eats ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He sits alone and eats in his game room while his family sits in the living room. “He doesn’t want to sit at the dinner table because he doesn’t like the smell of the food. He won’t eat at the same time we eat. He doesn’t want to be around us. He just wants to game,” Jennifer said.

While getting him ready for the middle school prom, Cooper’s mom gives him a kiss on the cheek. “He is a people pleaser. He doesn’t want anyone to be sad or hurt. He wants to help people,” Jennifer said. Cooper’s compassion for others is what drives him out of the isolation that he creates for himself and back into the world around him where he is learning to overcome, not only his disabilities, but the challenges of getting older.

Cooper got to ride in his dad’s Dodge Charger to go to the dance. When it is nice outside, they will take it for drives, and Cooper helps him wash it and work on it. This is one way that Cooper’s love for cars connects him to people around him. “I love cars because my dad loves cars,” Cooper said.

As Cooper walks through the streamers to enter the dance, his nerves begin to rise. He was supposed to have a date, but she ended up not being able to make it. He was nervous to go alone, but he wanted to push himself out of his comfort zone.

Though he felt awkward, Cooper said he had a good time at the dance talking to his classmates and dancing by himself. “I almost didn’t come to the MORP (prom spelled backwards), but I am glad I did,” Cooper said. Even though he faced his fear of going alone to the dance, Cooper feels like his biggest struggle is with girls. “I feel like my life is depressing for some reason because literally everyone else in the school has a girlfriend except me,” he said.

After a long day, Cooper plops onto his bed exhausted, more than most, from all of the social interaction he encountered. Cooper said he wishes his friends and family could understand that he needs his alone time sometimes. “I’m kind of sensitive, but I also want people to give me alone time, and let’s just say my life is kind of stressful,” he said.