My name is Chris Hall. I am an autistic adult from Braintree, Massachusetts. Over the years, I have worked with computers, bicycles, and accessible transportation while trying to create a life and a way of working that fit my abilities.

The path that brought me here was not always easy. My experiences in special education affected how I viewed myself, what opportunities I believed were available to me, and how I learned to relate to other people. I am sharing my story because those experiences did not simply end when I left school, and because I hope something I learned along the way may help another autistic person or family.

Childhood and School in the Early 2000s

I grew up in Randolph, Massachusetts, and attended the Donovan, Devine, and JFK schools during the early 2000s. Our special-education group moved from one placement to another with many of the same adults. We had few chances to join mainstream classrooms, and our areas had separate hallways and bathrooms.

That separation taught us, and the other students, that disabled children did not belong beside everyone else.

At JFK, adults much larger than me dragged, held, and restrained me. I remember being held on a dirty gym mat until I went limp because they had decided I was dangerous. I also remember a cubicle-sized containment room that resembled a modified janitorial enclosure. It had a steel door and almost nothing inside. Adults may call a space a time-out room or processing room, but the child remembers whether he was allowed to leave.

I did not begin speaking until I was around seven. I struggled to pronounce words, find the right language, and explain what adults were doing to me. I still use speech-to-text and writing assistance today. My difficulty speaking never meant that I did not understand, and it did not stop me from remembering.

After incidents, I had to complete Therapeutic Processing Sheets. Those records focused on what adults believed I had done wrong, not what they had done to me or what I was trying to communicate.

Restraint and seclusion did not make me calmer. They damaged my mental health and contributed to anger that I later had to address through anger management.

At the same time, I was experiencing neglect and instability at home. There are parts of that family history I am not choosing to discuss publicly.

Education and Exclusion

Most of my schoolwork came from worksheet packets rather than the books, literature, and course material used in mainstream classes. We repeated many of the same basic lessons from one grade to the next. Life-skills education can be valuable when it fits the student, but for us it often replaced a real education. It felt as though nobody expected us to grow.

I wanted to attend Blue Hills and develop practical career skills, but I was told that the school did not have the special-education program needed to support me. At Randolph High School, I also faced resistance when I tried to enter mainstream courses. Instead of asking what accommodations would help me succeed, the system often seemed more interested in keeping us quiet and occupied.

By my late teens, I had become involved in problems that school officials believed made it too risky for me to attend with other students. Instead of receiving a supported path back, I was isolated in night school. I graduated inside the special-education office with a certificate of completion rather than walking with my classmates. Adults had treated me as a nuisance or a risk while providing little of the education and guidance that could have helped me succeed.

When I later entered the Braintree school system, better instruction and expectations helped me earn some of my strongest Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) results. That showed me that autism was never proof that I could not learn. These events occurred in the early 2000s, and I cannot describe every Randolph classroom today. I can only say that the education I received there was not acceptable.

Sometimes I am surprised that I survived long enough to tell this story. I do not say that because I want pity. I say it because a child who is repeatedly treated as dangerous, burdensome, or incapable can carry that message far beyond graduation.

Leaving School and Facing Employment Barriers

The way I was treated at school followed me into employment. Traditional work was difficult for more than one reason. When I was younger, an accidental, nonviolent incident led to a legal case and five years of probation. I am keeping the specific charge private because I do not want to be defined by it or have readers assume that I intentionally harmed anyone. Because I was autistic, I had difficulty understanding and navigating the situation, and the record remained a barrier when companies considered hiring me. I participated in the Road to Responsibility program during that period, but for roughly five years I still had to explain that history while trying to find employers willing to understand my disability.

Those barriers did not mean I was unwilling to work. They meant that the usual path into employment was not safe or workable for me. I needed a way to remain active, learn practical skills, and contribute without repeatedly entering environments that treated my disabilities as disqualifying.

Starting the Computer Foundation in 2012

Because employment did not provide a safe or workable path, I created one for myself. In 2012, around age nineteen, I began the Computers for the Autistic Foundation to keep myself active while helping people in the community. For about 12 years, we refurbished and donated computers to autistic and disabled children and adults who might not otherwise have had access to technology.

We experimented with gaming at first, but our mission shifted toward homework, education, communication, life skills, and independence. Some children in special-education programs did not receive their own Chromebook or tablet because of concerns about damage and replacement costs. We converted older hardware into simple Chromebook-style systems that could provide homework access, educational resources, and familiar content such as Thomas the Tank Engine.

Because I do not drive, I delivered many of those computers on manual adult trikes and other bicycles. The work was physically demanding, but it allowed me to bring equipment directly to children and families. It also connected computers, transportation, repair, and community service long before I became an e-bike technician.

Reclaiming Trains and Finding Edaville

Thomas the Tank Engine was one of my earliest and strongest interests. My father introduced me to trains, but when I was around seven, he decided that my interest was a severe obsession. He expected relatives and the school to keep trains away from me. Some relatives followed his instructions. Others quietly kept trains hidden so I could play with them when he was not present.

I did not openly collect or play with trains again until my later teens. My father still discouraged me and eventually destroyed a collection he had helped me begin. The loss was about more than the objects. It taught me that something important to me could disappear whenever another person decided it was unacceptable. My family believes my father may also have been autistic, although he was never diagnosed. That may help explain the pattern, but it does not excuse the harm.

When I reclaimed my interest, trains connected naturally to engineering, mechanics, electrical systems, transportation, history, and community. From about 2016 through 2019, I worked with Edaville Railroad while Thomas Land USA operated there. Through the Computers for the Autistic Foundation, I offered ideas for sensory-friendly areas and other accessibility improvements for disabled visitors.

Thomas helped me connect with autistic children and their families through something familiar and meaningful. My experience showed what can happen when an autistic interest is respected instead of removed. Before adults decide that a child’s passion is a problem, they should ask where it might lead if someone gives it room to grow.

Edaville and Thomas Land, 2016 to 2019

A Facebook post dated September 18, 2016, records my work at Edaville’s first annual Autism Weekend and Touch A Truck event. Over roughly four years, I helped with special-needs programming, staffed a Computers for the Autistic Foundation booth, and offered ideas for sensory-friendly areas and other accommodations. It was one of the clearest examples of an autistic interest becoming useful work.

Each April, when Edaville opened for the season during Autism Awareness Month, the park provided the Computers for the Autistic Foundation with the first ticket of the season. I rode one of my trikes about 30 miles to the park so I could be the first person through the gates. Those moments mattered because trains had once been treated as something that needed to be taken away from me.

Repair Advocacy and iFixit in 2017

On August 6, 2017, I met iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in Boston. iFixit made repair information easier for ordinary people to access, and meeting him mattered to me because repair was never just a hobby. It was how we kept donated computers useful when replacing everything was not an option.

That same belief later became central to my e-bike work. People should be able to understand, maintain, and repair the equipment they depend upon instead of losing their transportation because one company will not supply a part or service information.

Trying Traditional Employment in 2017

In 2017, as the Computers for the Autistic Foundation was beginning to struggle, I tried to obtain my own job at HomeGoods. I lived directly across the street from the store, which made it one of the most accessible employment opportunities I could have found. HomeGoods completed a background check while I was receiving support through Road to Responsibility and decided to give me a chance. It was my first employment with a major company, but I was dismissed within about a month.

I was told the reason was that I had difficulty “listening,” but that explanation did not capture the whole situation. I had difficulty doing many tasks independently because of the abuse I had experienced, and sensory issues meant there were certain things I could not touch or handle. Instead of receiving enough assistance and accommodation to learn the job, those needs were treated as evidence that I was unsuitable for employment. I was fired in front of my supervisor, my job coach, and the job coach’s supervisor. From my perspective, the way I was treated reflected disability discrimination and a failure to understand how autism, trauma, communication, and sensory needs affected workplace expectations.

Mass Rehab, now called MassAbility, and other traditional job-placement programs also became difficult for me to navigate. Their goal was employment, but the process often did not protect me from misunderstanding or discrimination once I entered a workplace. I am willing to work. I had to create work that fits my disabilities instead of repeatedly entering environments that recreate the fear and powerlessness of school.

Continuing Computer Donations Through 2021

From Bicycle Deliveries to E-Bike Repair

The Pesky Rabbit E-Bike Repair grew directly from the computer work. The manual trikes and bicycles I used in the foundation years proved that transportation could become part of the mission, but hauling heavy computers over long distances took a great deal of effort.

Another cyclist introduced me to the Organic Transit ELF, an enclosed electric-assist velomobile that made those trips more practical. He became a longtime friend and supported me through many difficulties related to my autism, especially when much of my family did not want to be around me. His friendship became an important part of my life.

Over time, he taught me how to work on e-bikes and helped me develop the mechanical skills that led me to become a certified e-bike technician through the Light Electric Vehicle Association, or LEVA, in 2021. Local bicycle shops often could not or would not support the unusual vehicles I depended upon, so learning to diagnose and repair them gave me both greater independence and a new way to help other people.

At one point, I maintained what became the largest private collection of ELFs. I later worked with a former Organic Transit technician and helped assemble what I understood to be the final two vehicles produced from that platform for a successor effort.

As computers became easier to obtain, more families needed dedicated augmentative and alternative communication systems that the foundation was not clinically authorized or funded to provide. I eventually ended the computer operation rather than promise services we could not properly support. The transportation and repair work became the next chapter of the same mission.

Today I work with adaptive and accessible transportation. I help riders whose bicycles or disabilities are often dismissed by traditional shops, advocate for right-to-repair, and sometimes donate bicycles or repairs. I have also been able to help people I first met through the computer foundation. Jon, one of the first children who received a computer, is now becoming an adult, and I helped return his bicycle to service and deliver it to him. I want safe equipment that independent technicians can maintain instead of transportation that becomes disposable when one proprietary part fails.

Bicycle Donations and Independence

Housing Benefits and Advocacy Today

For more than ten years, I moved through unstable and sometimes unsafe living situations without dependable family support. I now have my own apartment and feel safer, but I remain isolated and have difficulty trusting people. My father and many other relatives are still not part of my life.

I live on an extremely limited income and receive Social Security benefits. I fear that earning money, accepting a donation, or making an innocent reporting mistake could threaten the support and housing that make independence possible. I do not want pity or pressure for anyone to donate. I want partnership: repairable bicycles, parts, tools, workspace, transportation, benefits planning, or connections with organizations that can help the work remain lawful and sustainable.

My advocacy comes from knowing how many autistic and disabled people are afraid to speak about what happened to them.

They may fear being judged, dismissed as telling a “woe-is-me” story, or punished for criticizing the systems they depend on. I speak because people who were denied a voice still deserve to be heard. I want my work to help people build practical independence and find support without having to prove that their suffering is dramatic enough to matter. My guiding idea has been to take the negatives I was given and turn them toward something positive—not by pretending the harm was acceptable, but by using what I learned to help people who face similar barriers.

I also use cannabis now, and in my personal experience it helps me feel calmer while managing PTSD. Earlier in life, I did not have that option, and medications I was prescribed affected me in ways that made school and participation more difficult. I am describing my own experience, not recommending cannabis or asking anyone else to use it. The larger point is that autistic people need individualized, respectful mental-health support rather than being excluded when a treatment or environment does not work for them.

What I Hope Changes for Other People

Autistic children eventually become autistic adults. When school-based services end, many face poverty, inaccessible employment, unstable housing, limited transportation, and a confusing benefits system while still carrying childhood trauma. I want young autistic adults to have stable housing, transportation, benefits guidance, opportunities to learn useful skills, and work built around their abilities and interests.

Parents should listen when a child communicates fear, even with only a few words or without speech. They should ask to see every room their child uses, question vague terms such as calming room or therapeutic intervention, request accurate records, and insist that schools treat mental health as seriously as observable behavior.

Teachers and support staff need to understand that restraint and seclusion do not teach communication or emotional regulation.

A steel door and an empty room teach a frightened child that adults can make him disappear. Staff may consider the incident finished after completing the paperwork. The child’s nervous system may experience it for decades.

My work with computers, trains, accessible transportation, and e-bike repair did not erase the trauma. It is what I chose to build while carrying it. The school opened the seclusion-room door many years ago. I walked out, but part of me remained inside. If this story helps one family protect a child or one autistic adult find a path toward independence, then telling it will have served a purpose.

Take the negatives and turn them toward a positive.

That is something I often say as advice to others. In life, we may struggle with people and experiences that bring us many negatives. But one day, we may be able to turn those experiences into something positive—something we can share with others as we heal from the wounds left by those who oppressed and abused us.

How You Can Support Chris’s Work

Readers can support The Pesky Rabbit E-Bike Repair by donating repairable e-bikes, bicycles, replacement parts, safe batteries, tools, workspace, or transportation assistance. Connections with responsible e-bike companies, right-to-repair advocates, disability organizations, and community partners would also be valuable.

If you do not have equipment to donate but would still like to help, even a small, completely optional Venmo contribution (@TheLEVGuy)—something as simple as the cost of a cup of coffee—would help us cover parts, tools, transportation, and other basic operating expenses during slow periods.

Learn more, contact Chris, or find the appropriate support links through:

https://dot.cards/thepeskyrabbitebikerepair

Learn more about Chris’s work:

• RadBurro Mobile E-Bike Repair and Camper Project.
• Fox News feature about the Computers for the Autistic Foundation and our computer-delivery work using the Organic Transit ELF.