Growing Up and Age

Let me guess? It's like they've done it all lost interest and moved on to other things? It they've done it with people at least. All of those key moments of growing up ... you haven't done them, or had to do them alone?

A cogent example. Have you heard of the endless 8? Its a story arc about a quirky smart school girl with super powers she is unaware of. And one day her friends start getting this awful feeling of deja vu. That things happened before. Until they confirm it. They are stuck in a time loop with the school holidays repeating over and over for thousands of years with their memories erased on the last day of holiday each time. And she's doing it, this quirky girl, subconsciously with out realising it, she doesn't want the holiday to end.

So they start trying every fun activity they can think of to make her feel satisfied, to feel like she can move on from this holiday, but nothing works. Until one of them gets frustrated that they've had no time to study for tests in the new term and forces her to help them study. And that works. She was too smart to ever need help studying so she never needed to study in a group. But it was an ordinary right of passage she didn't want to leave school without experiencing.

What's the point of this long winded allegory? I'm guessing your friends have had more of a social life than you did and gone through many 'rights of passage' that you haven't. And with out that your school days don't feel complete.

People make bucket lists. Maybe some of us should make "rights of passage" lists and start ticking them off as and when we can, even if the world deems that they are no longer 'age appropriate.'

Hi H_Pcats You wowwy about that to much, yes on average we mature slower, but there is upside to that, you'll realise it next 20 years. We age slower too, so maybe at that moment you think of yourself as childish, but you'll most likely retain your  babyface until 50s. !8 is just a number. The only thing important about is that law will consider you an adult from that moment. I wasn't noit ready at all. a total shock. But it passed. Like everyone else I had to learn how to take care of things involved in living alone. Some are still a mystery but it matters not.

I was mature, as a boy, but lost control, as a young man. 

However, I'm taking responsibility, now. 

Steven said:

autists' thinking is a combination of the literal, the metaphorical, and the symbolic.

I cannot believe I wrote that as if it were fact, and not merely a very personal and skewed opinion. What a stupid, ignorant, and irresponsible thing to do.

I think that autists differ from neurotypical people in our understanding of the passage of time because autists' thinking is a combination of the literal, the metaphorical, and the symbolic. Obviously some autistic people have, like me, difficulties regarding numeracy and that fact argues against what I previously wrote...but I nevertheless feel that struggles with comprehending time, age and so on are not what they initially seem and are much more layered than even my half-baked theory. I basically mean that we don't actually misunderstand the idea of time passing...instead, we (psychologically) refuse to accept that it passes at all; and we have many reasons besides our assumed immaturity for this refusal of ours.