A musing on Autism.
Nov. 21st, 2004 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kippurbirdSometimes I really hate being Autistic. Especially when it comes to social situations. It really makes things messy and leads to some real misunderstandings.
Let me illustrate.
Say you have a person, lets call them Zero. And Zero is really peeved at One, and decides to drop an Anvil ontop of One's head to show how upset they are at One. If One were a non-autistic person, they would scream in pain and fury, look up and start yelling at Zero. Things get discussed and they work things out.
Now lets say you have the same situation again, but One is Autistic. Zero drops the anvil on One's head. One, if they're lucky will go, "Ouch. Something seems to have hit me. How strange." and then One will go about their business, not giving the incident a second thought. Frustrated Zero will go down and say to One, "Hey look I just dropped an Anvil on your head. Why aren't you doing anything about it?" And One will say, completely surprised, "You did? Where's the anvil? Oh! Is that what it is? It doesn't look like any anvil I've ever seen. How strange. It seems a bit on the heavy side, you must have had a real problem dragging it up the stairs. And you dropped it on me? Was it an accident? I hope you didn't sprain anything. Where did you get the anvil anyway? It seems like a strange thing to carry around." And One will completely and utterly not see that Zero dropped it on One's head because they were mad. In fact the idea will never come into their head. Unless Zero says, "Hey I dropped an Anvil on your head because you really pissed me off." Then One will say, still completely surprised, "I did? When? What exactly was it that I did?" Where upon Zero will have to explain, using small words and concrete language exactly what One did and why it hurt them. Where upon One will hopefully say, "Oh my. I didn't even know that. I'm dreadfully sorry." And that being that, One will completely forget about it since it's in the past and the past is no longer existant.
So yeah.
I imagine it must be frustrating for the Zeros in the world as well.
Let me illustrate.
Say you have a person, lets call them Zero. And Zero is really peeved at One, and decides to drop an Anvil ontop of One's head to show how upset they are at One. If One were a non-autistic person, they would scream in pain and fury, look up and start yelling at Zero. Things get discussed and they work things out.
Now lets say you have the same situation again, but One is Autistic. Zero drops the anvil on One's head. One, if they're lucky will go, "Ouch. Something seems to have hit me. How strange." and then One will go about their business, not giving the incident a second thought. Frustrated Zero will go down and say to One, "Hey look I just dropped an Anvil on your head. Why aren't you doing anything about it?" And One will say, completely surprised, "You did? Where's the anvil? Oh! Is that what it is? It doesn't look like any anvil I've ever seen. How strange. It seems a bit on the heavy side, you must have had a real problem dragging it up the stairs. And you dropped it on me? Was it an accident? I hope you didn't sprain anything. Where did you get the anvil anyway? It seems like a strange thing to carry around." And One will completely and utterly not see that Zero dropped it on One's head because they were mad. In fact the idea will never come into their head. Unless Zero says, "Hey I dropped an Anvil on your head because you really pissed me off." Then One will say, still completely surprised, "I did? When? What exactly was it that I did?" Where upon Zero will have to explain, using small words and concrete language exactly what One did and why it hurt them. Where upon One will hopefully say, "Oh my. I didn't even know that. I'm dreadfully sorry." And that being that, One will completely forget about it since it's in the past and the past is no longer existant.
So yeah.
I imagine it must be frustrating for the Zeros in the world as well.
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Date: 2004-11-21 03:00 pm (UTC)Anyway. That was just great. Thank you. I think I'm going to copy it and just hand it out to people when they don't 'get' Charlie.
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Date: 2004-11-21 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 09:09 am (UTC)And I still feel bad about never finishing betaing the Marrissa PPC for you...I know that was ages ago, but I'm the opposite way and stay in the past *too* long sometimes...
Anyhow...like I said, you're brilliant and so was this post.