Are there things you just 'don't get' in life? (as in understand the rules of)

To be honest, I am pretty certain that I would suffer your A, B, C & D above if I tried to engage/enter/initiate within the fraternities/societies/orders that you mention above and that I could largely fall into your list of;

NAS83898 said:

  I rely on others to "break the ice" and have extreme difficulty with finding common ground.

.  I am self-conscious with admitting I have autism and don't view it as some sort of badge.

.  I stand in amazement at others holding continuous conversation.

.  I seldom respond appropriately.

 I am really not sure that these types of organisations can cope with free-thinking and independently minded people.  If I were in your shoes, I would struggle to know whether my accent or my mode of thinking was most to blame for a negative experience.

I would strongly anticipate a negative experience (for all concerned) if I tried to join these type of "outfits."

I readily accept that many Brits get a "bit sniffy" or can be "damn-right rude" to/about our American cousins, but I also know that many Brits are more prepared to 'take-as-we-find', so please don't give up on finding some accepting and embracing natives at some stage.

Your point E. above was covered by me in one of your first posts I believe.

I don't write much as I'm a social outcast but thank you for making such an interesting thread..I don't write much but I read through what everyone says.

U3A meetings are problematic for me.  I've had a go at trying to join both the Lions and the Odd Fellows lodges as well. As soon as I do speak with my American accent people either:

A. Switch off and politely excuse themselves very shortly

B. Cautiously engage with where they may have visited

C. Enquire which part I come from

D. Totally ignore me, as with the Odd Fellows

E. I have to include this one:  Having a Lions member take delight in saying he used to kill Americans in the Vietnam conflict (although I am a naturalised Brit with dual nationality) 

Protracted over many years here, A,B,C,D, have been continuously repetitive.  I have become very tired of these scenarios and do not have any social life which I have learned to tolerate. I'm not on a sympathy kick.

I just accept realities for what they are. One very large lesson I have learned is exactly how a person of colour feels, and who probably has received better treatment than a "Yank" who is considered "fair game" --- at least here in the Norfolk/Suffolk region. I know this sounds like I am feeling sorry for myself ---not true!  I reiterate, above with an avoidance tactic.  I recently retired from a one-man-band service business visiting customers. Two particular customers stand out in my memory. One woman was an American wife to a Brit who surrounded her house with small American flags stuck in the soil. The other was a woman who had a large American flag on a high flagpole in her front garden. I fully understood why these women found this kind of reaction necessary. A third memory springs to mind. My work took me to the far reaches of East Anglia. Somewhere in Bedfordshire I completed a job sub-contracting to a tree surgeon from that area. We were approached by an American guy making an enquiry about some tree work he needed. We were in a group of 4 people with one person in that group a bystander who happened to be a neighbour of that American who on the departure of the American found it necessary to say" I often take the piss out of him" I did not speak so he did not realise who I was. This just reinforced my reality of being considered "fair game". I do try to live up to the last line of Desiderata pinned to the wall behind my monitor despite these unfortunate and consistent events.

"Keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful and strive to be happy".

What kind of events do you go to? I find I do fine with conversation in particular situations where I know people share an interest with me. e.g. at parkrun I can ask people "is this your local parkrun/have you done this event before/what did you think of that race whose t-shirt you're wearing" as an ice breaker and then they'll happily chat away about running. It's much harder at social events not based around an activity as I don't know what anyone's interests are!

I've unsuccessfully tried to join in with social events but just don't get the conversational bit that's part of it. People walk away thinking I am stuck up because :

.  I rely on others to "break the ice" and have extreme difficulty with finding common ground.

.  I am self-conscious with admitting I have autism and don't view it as some sort of badge.

.  I stand in amazement at others holding continuous conversation.

.  I seldom respond appropriately.

Thank you everyone for your replies to this thread.

It has rather taken on a life of its own.

Its popularity is interesting as I think it stems from some common denominators in us:-

Our sensitivities, our tendency to analyse, our questioning - we don't just accept things at face value, our relationship to others and the awkwardness that can involve, our insight, our thoughtfulness.

I'm sure there are many more.

The other aspect that I found interesting is that my original post and my examples were about how I don't understand what is expected of me so have a great tendency to do the 'wrong' thing in the eyes of society.

However, quite a few of you turned that around to being what you see others doing that you don't understand.

Two sides of the same coin.

Just assign all NAS forum to your spam if all else fails

Thanks out_of_step, and you, Debbie.  Maybe it's best if I don't get hung up about this issue; I'll try to feel less stressed.

Steven said:

I must have been on this board for around a fortnight now and I *still* can't work out how to completely stop notifications (like this: (2), for example) appearing at the top of the page. I can press the 'Turn off notifications' button, but even that fails to stop them & it apprently switches back on again by itself. It's driving me sane. I get stressed by the panic I feel about possibly failing to respond to replies in threads - especially if someone's waiting on a respinse from me - or by failing to even find the relevant threads. I must be doing something wrong; either that or it's a fault. Hellllppppp...

PS I've tried all the options on the proper Notifications page in the Profile section.

Simon, I've brought this down to the bottom so you may see it as the thread has become rather unwieldy.

I've had a problem with notifications for quite a while.

You can turn them on and off individually in your settings.

However, I turned them all off once and then turned them back on again but continued to not receive them.

So, I contact NAS and after a month or so I started to get some again.

However, although I've individually set what I want to receive a response to, I don't get all of them.

I would like to know for certain when someone has replied directly to me so that I can respond accordingly, but unfortunately I don't receive those notifications still, even though according to my settings I should receive them.

Screenshot below.

I started another thread about this at some point, and members told me that their notifications were inconsistent too so I do think there is a general problem.

I've no idea if I'm replying in the right place, this thread is so long now. But I think if you go into your profile settings you can turn off all notifications for everything. I don't get any notifications at all and don't turn them off each time. It does it automatically.

Sorry that's just repeated what you said.  Maybe sign out then sign in again might reset ? Or tag a moderator in for help

Plenty of times, even though there's generally only one thing in my pocket (a Visa card). I hadn't given this any thought until you asked, mate.  Like when Sparkly kindly alerted me to some compulsive behaviour of mine recently, sometimes it takes someone else to point things out to me. Thank you.

PS Thanks also to Number and Triker. 

I genuinely don't understand how humans have survived this long as a species when our offspring makes such an irritating sound. The obvious solution to me when I hear that noise, or at least it would be obvious in the absence of laws and prisons etc, is to kill the baby so it never makes that sound again. Surely if they sounded pleasant, there would be less violence towards infants?

One reason in a very long list of why I don't have kids.

I don't understand going to restaurants when your own kitchen is within reach, tbh. Why would I pay someone to prepare a meal that isn't going to be exactly the way I like it, when I could just go home and make it the way I like it?

I like self checkout, but it annoys me that Aldi has decided not to bother opening normal checkouts since they installed them. With an operator checkout, I can sweep all my stuff into the basket and then pack it into my backpack at the packing shelf. With self checkout I pile stuff up on the scales, then move it back into the basket, and then pack into backpack at the packing shelf - an extra step. Can't pack directly into backpack because the scale won't accept it, can't pack directly from scale into backpack because then it's too heavy to lift from the floor. That was my major irritation of the day today. That and the fact that some products are too light to register in the scale but it won't move on until it's detected them.

Number said:

You clearly don't have a sufficiency of OCD trait.

We can verify your theory.

Simon, how many times do you check your pockets when you are leaving home?

If you look in the right hand column, near the top, you can turn notifications off for the thread, you could just do that after each time you post a reply?

I don't really get why you want to turn them off if you are worried about missing a reply though - that's why I leave mine on!

You clearly don't have a sufficiency of OCD trait.  Personally, I check that elongated button toggle thing every time before I leave a thread - think of it as "double-checking your flies" whilst you are walking out of the main toilet door !

I am glad I could help you in this instance.  I like to feel useful. (INSERT satisfied and happy emoji)

Number said:

 Also, I think (don't quote me on this) that if you write a response to a thread, the system automatically sets the toggle back so that you DO receive notifications

Ah, that explains everything. Thank you, mate. 

So there's no relief then? *cries* 

OK - so do you realise that every thread has it's own setting independent setting (in my world) - ie each and every thread that I interact with can either be ON or OFF for notifications?  Also, I think (don't quote me on this) that if you write a response to a thread, the system automatically sets the toggle back so that you DO receive notifications.  Does any of that help?

Hello. 

I virtually always find that it almost immeditely reverts to Notifications being on again, after I've switched them off via the button. Granted it's silly to feel stressed by such a trivial thing but I worry about seeming rude by (apparently) not replying. It's like a mad Whac-A-Mole experience for me.