SixTimesNine
New Member
1. I hate “making conversation.” Some people accuse me of being “rude” because I do not talk enough. I don’t say much in a conversation about third-cousin Bill, whom I have never met. I can be very talkative, however, when I have something to say about something that interests me, such as human rights.
2. People also call me rude when I am trying to be polite—and they are being rude! Every time I start to say a sentence, they talk right over me. Then they have the nerve to call me rude for not talking enough!
3. I have generally had trouble making and keeping friends. In some cases, I have put up with abusive “friendships” and even sexual relationships, partly out of not recognizing the abuse but also out of fear of not having any connections. I had an easier time with pets.
4. I was HORRIBLE at dating. I felt like everyone else knew the rules but would not tell me what they were. Looking back, I think I did not pick up on a lot of attempts of women to either ask me out or even proposition me for sex when I was younger. I did not lose my virginity until a woman made it explicitly clear that she wanted to have sex with me. Another problem with dating was that a woman said she could not relate to me discussing the authors I was reading in graduate school.
5. Fashion made no sense whatsoever to me. (I now understand it as a way to convince people to throw away and replace perfectly good clothing so that there is a market for new clothes.)
6. I was slow to grow up—I was told things were supposed to be one way when I was ten, for example, so I continued acting that way as other kids started acting like twelve or thirteen year olds. I also did not transition to a teen-age/adult haircut until I was older. I also had a hard time picking up on some of terms kids used for sex topics.
7. I don’t like to get rid of things.
8. I regretted things ending, even when I hated them! I was sad that middle school ended, but I had a horrible, horrible experience there.
9. I remember having some OT classes at a young age, but not too many details. There was speech correction—I said “froggie” instead of “foggie”—and motor skills, like cutting and skipping. I am generally uncoordinated and not a sports person. I used to get teased in gym all the time, especially for things like jumping jacks. I also showed no interest in sports, which led to accusations of being gay and physical abuse.
10. I have had some sensory issues. I hated pencils. At a young age, people told me I made noises while writing with a pencil, but I did not notice myself making any noise. I hated wooden Popsicle sticks and always kept the plastic rapper to hold around the stick. I was very annoyed by wrinkles in my socks. I still hate certain foods that people try to convince me I must really like, such as mayonnaise and seafood, that I just somehow don't realize I like them! I am "missing out" on seafood. To me, that's sort of like saying I am "missing out" on food poisoning.
11. I did not take well to people doing things differently. It annoyed me when someone called soda “pop” or pancakes “flap jacks.” And there was a McDonalds song that went “Spring, Summer, Winter and Fall” when it clearly should have been “Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter”! I still remember the time that I let another kid color in my coloring book—and he gave the blonde character from the cartoon brown hair!
12. Some humor did not work for me, such as a character disappearing behind a thin tree.
13. I hated how everyone saw all of those symbols in English class that made no sense to me. Where the did they come up with the idea that Hemingway putting grasshoppers on fishhooks was really about children??? Why did someone wearing a red jacket have to mean he was an angry person? Why not just assume he liked the color red? I hated Shakespeare. When did Romeo ask Juliette to marry him? I understood that poetry meant rhyming, but meter made no sense. How was I supposed to tell which syllables were stressed? And why would I care, anyway? Also, I could not follow reading a play. I liked reading novels (especially science fiction), but I could never visualize something from a script and frequently lost track of who said what.
14. My 10 year old daughter (and to some extent my 16 year old son) may have autism.
2. People also call me rude when I am trying to be polite—and they are being rude! Every time I start to say a sentence, they talk right over me. Then they have the nerve to call me rude for not talking enough!
3. I have generally had trouble making and keeping friends. In some cases, I have put up with abusive “friendships” and even sexual relationships, partly out of not recognizing the abuse but also out of fear of not having any connections. I had an easier time with pets.
4. I was HORRIBLE at dating. I felt like everyone else knew the rules but would not tell me what they were. Looking back, I think I did not pick up on a lot of attempts of women to either ask me out or even proposition me for sex when I was younger. I did not lose my virginity until a woman made it explicitly clear that she wanted to have sex with me. Another problem with dating was that a woman said she could not relate to me discussing the authors I was reading in graduate school.
5. Fashion made no sense whatsoever to me. (I now understand it as a way to convince people to throw away and replace perfectly good clothing so that there is a market for new clothes.)
6. I was slow to grow up—I was told things were supposed to be one way when I was ten, for example, so I continued acting that way as other kids started acting like twelve or thirteen year olds. I also did not transition to a teen-age/adult haircut until I was older. I also had a hard time picking up on some of terms kids used for sex topics.
7. I don’t like to get rid of things.
8. I regretted things ending, even when I hated them! I was sad that middle school ended, but I had a horrible, horrible experience there.
9. I remember having some OT classes at a young age, but not too many details. There was speech correction—I said “froggie” instead of “foggie”—and motor skills, like cutting and skipping. I am generally uncoordinated and not a sports person. I used to get teased in gym all the time, especially for things like jumping jacks. I also showed no interest in sports, which led to accusations of being gay and physical abuse.
10. I have had some sensory issues. I hated pencils. At a young age, people told me I made noises while writing with a pencil, but I did not notice myself making any noise. I hated wooden Popsicle sticks and always kept the plastic rapper to hold around the stick. I was very annoyed by wrinkles in my socks. I still hate certain foods that people try to convince me I must really like, such as mayonnaise and seafood, that I just somehow don't realize I like them! I am "missing out" on seafood. To me, that's sort of like saying I am "missing out" on food poisoning.
11. I did not take well to people doing things differently. It annoyed me when someone called soda “pop” or pancakes “flap jacks.” And there was a McDonalds song that went “Spring, Summer, Winter and Fall” when it clearly should have been “Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter”! I still remember the time that I let another kid color in my coloring book—and he gave the blonde character from the cartoon brown hair!
12. Some humor did not work for me, such as a character disappearing behind a thin tree.
13. I hated how everyone saw all of those symbols in English class that made no sense to me. Where the did they come up with the idea that Hemingway putting grasshoppers on fishhooks was really about children??? Why did someone wearing a red jacket have to mean he was an angry person? Why not just assume he liked the color red? I hated Shakespeare. When did Romeo ask Juliette to marry him? I understood that poetry meant rhyming, but meter made no sense. How was I supposed to tell which syllables were stressed? And why would I care, anyway? Also, I could not follow reading a play. I liked reading novels (especially science fiction), but I could never visualize something from a script and frequently lost track of who said what.
14. My 10 year old daughter (and to some extent my 16 year old son) may have autism.
