Published on 12, July, 2020
There are so many aspects of autism that you wouldn't know about from reading the diagnostic criteria - which I guess is to be expected because those criteria try to focus on the core or roots of autism whilst our lives are more about the shape of the whole plant and its foliage.
Watching this video for instance made me wonder if my autism lies behind the fact that when out walking with other people, I'm the one who stops to pick up screws from the gutter in case they get into people's tyres. No-one else seems to notice them. I do notice, and sometimes get quite annoyed about the carelessness that leads to the screw being there in the first place!
Then I start to wonder.......I thought that my visual perception was "normal" (obviously, having grown up with it and having no way to compare with anyone else's). But now I know about this feature, and I also know that I have better visual acuity (when optically corrected) than average (we did experiments on it at school and I'm *very* fussy about the prescription in my specs being right) - which again seems to be correlated with autism.
Fascinating............wonder what the world looks like / feels like to "most" people?
I noticed this years ago - how everyone seems to go around with their eyes closed to details. I spot everything - I can do a Where's Wally? in about 3 seconds. I like to look at things that are correct - but hate looking at things that are wrong - a classic car with a scratch, houses where the windows are different sizes, misaligned kitchen cabinet doors etc. I even straighten up displays in supermarkets - labels should be to the front!
People think I'm a nit-picker - but I like things to be right - especially when there's no reason for it not to be.
Yep, i'm a nit-picker. But dyspraxics often need to be, if they desire to improve their own performance. I find it hard, even as a chippie to get stuff like shelf alignments looking just the way i want them. And so i'm also very conscious of other people's misalignments. They hate it, of course. ;-) And i hate myself for bothering to bring the subject up.
Right now, I'm fixated on fixing up the capital I's in this post. But just this once, i will desist, to prove I can sometimes be a tad more flexible.
The biggest problem is I'm poor at the social niceties - I'll see a lovely classic car and instead of commenting on what a lovely car it is, what a wonderful restoration etc. my first words will be "It's a shame the left indicator doesn't match the right one - it's the wrong model year". Bad move.
It's as though everything else becomes invisible and the car just becomes a collection of tiny errors - and it's all I can see and think about - so it's the first thing I say.
And walking around kitchen showrooms and tiling displays is torture - so many supposedly parallel lines and so many errors - AArrrrgh!
It's why I cannot employ contractors - to pay them to make errors is impossible - I'll learn to do it myself because it's my responsibility for problems and I get to set and meet my own standards.