The Aspie #2 – Explaining… Autism 101 (Part 2): Reality of The Hallmarks

Communication

In general, I feel I have reached the point where my style of communication is articulate, detailed and clear-cut. At the same time, I like to keep my use of language simple and done through the medium of writing rather than speaking, although I am part of a club which has helped develop my confidence in the latter. Even so, that doesn’t mean I don’t have difficulties from time to time when it comes to getting my point across well or understanding what (mostly) neurotypical people are actually saying. Hell, one of the reasons I subscribe to Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day e-mail is so I can keep my brain refreshed and up-to-date about common words and phrases that are thrown around a lot but I often confuse with others. On top of that, slang was never my vibe and I’ve been playing catch-up via e-mails from Dictionary.com since starting college.

But that’s an easy problem to fix. What’s much harder is knowing when people are making a joke or being intentionally ironic or sarcastic. In fact, my second-biggest challenge, besides trying to get to know people, is wrapping my head around the phrases thrown around, the jokes that are made, the things that are deemed funny and knowing when I must dig deep to understand subtlety in action. All this stuff usually ends up dead on arrival into my brain simply because I don’t get it and I must constantly ask Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. That’s difficult enough for me with people in real life. It’s ten times harder on Social Media, especially Discord.

Here’s a true story that I think illustrates my problem perfectly. I was in the server of the (former) host of Game Theory’s science-themed videos for a brief period of time. One day, in the General Chat, someone posted the following comment:

“I was a kid. A little kid. And I had a thing for burning things and messing with electricity. I simply liked to stick things into holes they do not belong. And I think those were the earliest signs of me being gay.”

When I first read it, I viewed the idea for what it literally was to me on paper and called out how ludicrous I found it as an idea. The poster responded by suggesting I should be a moderator if I can’t take a joke. But I didn’t view it as a joke and, even if I did, it is a terrible and poor taste joke to me, and I genuinely think the combination of the two things is a non-sequitur. The poster then called me one of those “I am sorry, but I am too logical” types. I retorted (rather stupidly in hindsight) that they can call me Judge Judy, I guess because of her no-nonsense approach to Smart Aleks, and then they went quiet on me out of fear that calling me something rude would be punished with a Ban Hammer.

I almost wanted to start a fight in DMs with them and demand a justification for why such comments were being made in this particular server, considering the person who owns it, and what kind of rhetoric they wanted to refer to me as. But I stopped, declared to myself that it’s a pointless endeavour, and walked away out of sheer frustration. Not only by what I read but also with myself for my total failure to either read between the lines, ask politely what it was implying deep down, or just ignore it and scroll on. I could sit here and talk about would’ve, could’ve, should’ve but the bottom line is, that’s just how my brain operates and the way I’ve tried to avoid similar incidents happening in the future is by assertively demanding that people are very clear about what they are trying to say to me. That and not bothering to pass comment on everything I see online publicly anymore. Otherwise, I might end up creating a modern PewDiePie moment. If you don’t know what that means, check out this classic Film Theory.

And in case anyone asks, I DO have a sense of humour! It’s just dry, witty and finds things I shouldn’t find funny actually funny. It doesn’t rely on the latest Internet Memes, Slang or Fails. It simply relies on my brain looking around at people and things and sorting out the pathetic from the fantastic. My body does the rest in terms of actually laughing. In fact, I’ve never scrolled aimlessly around social media for those things people sometimes take the mick out of because I’ve never understood the appeal of them.

The final challenge I have when it comes to communication is what to do when a plan is put in place and then can’t be executed as agreed suddenly. My most prominent example of this is when I was in Transition Year. I’ll go into more detail about the whole year in a future post but one key component of it was a Social Placement, basically a week volunteering at something in the local community. Now I had no idea what to do for this, but a teacher had a contact at a community centre nearby and I arranged for that contact to be my guide. But when I arrived on the first day, said contact was no where to be seen and this caused me to panic. Sadly, I did not know of anyone else, nor did I ask anyone else to act as a Substitute and so the week consisted of me wandering around aimlessly and becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of structure and direction. It was one of the worst weeks of that year and put me off volunteering at places like it.

Now it wasn’t anyone’s fault my primary contact was absent, but it was a major problem I didn’t have the maturity or mindset to deal with properly at the time. Subsequent occasions where things like this have happened have always involved me arranging a time and place in advance and being prepared to change if warned about in advance that it must. And that’s how it should always be, with me at least. Change is natural and sometimes can’t be helped but curveballs thrust upon me in the spur of the moment can often throw me completely off balance and upset the apple cart in my brain. And when they happen, even if it isn’t the fault of the hosting party, it can really affect my level of interest and willingness to give something a second chance. Although it is more than just first impressions that contribute to the third and final way autism influences the person that I am.