Life on the Spectrum

What does it all mean?

If you don’t have Asperger’s, or don’t know anyone who does (or simply don’t KNOW that you know someone who does), you may be wondering: what does it mean to have Asperger’s? What makes you different? Why is it a big deal?

For me, most of the time it’s actually not a big deal. But then something happens that reminds me that I don’t see the world the way non-Aspies see it. A joke goes over my head. I take something seriously that was not meant to be taken seriously. Maybe someone was sarcastic, and I misinterpreted the sarcasm. Someone asks a rhetorical question, and I answer it, because I didn’t realize it was meant rhetorically.

To some extent, writing is less open to misinterpretation than speech, because many writers, especially in blogs or other social media sites like Twitter, use smiley faces or other emoticons. But not always. Some people just assume that everyone knows they like to be sarcastic, or they think it’s obvious that their question was rhetorical. Who can blame them? They didn’t write that Tweet or blog entry with Aspies in mind.

A few days ago my father mentioned that I never made eye contact when I was a kid, and I still don’t. I was a bit surprised that he mentioned it now, after being my dad for more than 40 years, but these days it’s more troublesome for him because he’s losing his hearing. I took lessons in American Sign Language a few summers ago, and because my teacher was Deaf it was important that I looked at her when I spoke or signed to her. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult for me to do that, which made it very hard for me to communicate with her.

Another situation in which eye contact is important is job interviews. Job interviews are stressful to begin with; add a requirement to do something that is very difficult for an Aspie, and it’s not hard to understand why so many of us Aspies are unemployed or under-employed.

I also find it hard to come up with situations that fit the questions the interviewer asks, such as: “Describe a situation in which you had a dispute with a co-worker, and how you resolved it.” What if you haven’t had any disputes with co-workers? What do you do then? Also, being very literal-minded, I try to find something that fits every question exactly, down to the most minute detail, which makes it even more difficult.

Sometimes those of us who are Aspies will offend people unintentionally. We may be rude without being aware of it. I once had a friend buy me lunch, and I fully intended to thank her when the meal was through, but suddenly, in the middle of the meal, she glared at me and said, “YOU’RE WELCOME!” Apparently she had expected me to thank her sooner. I thanked her profusely when she said that, but it must have appeared to be less than sincere thanks.

Contrary to popular opinion, people with Asperger’s do not go around offending people willy-nilly in the belief that we can use our Asperger’s as an excuse. The Aspies that I know, myself included, will apologize sincerely if we have offended people. Sometimes I will offer my Asperger’s as an explanation if I have missed a social cue, but I don’t believe that Asperger’s excuses me from behaving according to social norms.


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google+ photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo



Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: