Literal thinking

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were talking about things that you’ve only just learnt or realised that everyone else seems to just know, the typical - “I was today years old when I realised…”. Made me think of some things that I didn’t register about straight away, and now wonder whether this is part of my autistic way of thinking about things, that I just thought about things literally. Some examples… 

On for sale sites when people put something about collections, I always thought they meant that the person that bought the item had to be a collector to purchase it, as in a stamp collector or a coin collector, like it was their hobby. Not that they had to physically be able to go and collect it from the person selling. 

In the song ‘one man went to mow, went to mow-a-meadow’ I always assumed there was a place called mow-a-meadow. I didn’t realise he was going to a meadow to mow/cut the grass.

when people put ‘Tia’ at the bottom of a post I thought it was that their name was Tia and it always amused me how many people shared the same name. It was only recently that I realised it was ‘thanks in advance’ 

Has anyone else got any examples of things like this? Do other people do it? Is it an autistic literal thinking thing or am I just stupid? :) 

Parents
  • I used to work with someone who spoke for months about her 'little girl'.

    So, each day, she'd tell me about something her 'little girl' had got up to and I used to think that her 'little girl' was rather unusual.

    One day she said to me 'my little girl ran in from the garden, jumped on my bed and started licking my face'.

    I thought, ooh, that's a really weird child + then it struck me.

    I asked 'is your little girl a dog by any chance'? + she said 'yes'.....

Reply
  • I used to work with someone who spoke for months about her 'little girl'.

    So, each day, she'd tell me about something her 'little girl' had got up to and I used to think that her 'little girl' was rather unusual.

    One day she said to me 'my little girl ran in from the garden, jumped on my bed and started licking my face'.

    I thought, ooh, that's a really weird child + then it struck me.

    I asked 'is your little girl a dog by any chance'? + she said 'yes'.....

Children
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