Published on 12, July, 2020
So as a male with aspergers, I went to a work meal for once to try to "fit in" with people, it didn't work out that well in my opinion anyway... But yeah so we had our meals then the desert was the last one, then one of the colleagues (she is female a lot older than me) asked if she could have my cherries (I don't like cherries anyway so I said yes and offered them) While I was giving them to her my manager said "that's it, give her your cherries" then the other girls next to me laughed really badly and so did my manager after he saw them laugh and the other lady who I offered the cherries to but she did give my line manager a evil stare at first before she laughed, after that the others laughed at the other jokes as well what was said without me or my line manager getting involved. But is that a friendly joke what my line manager did or not? Is it rude? Targeted at me. I really hate these situations and that is why I didn't go to any of these meals the past few years because I knew it would make me feel like this annoyed, anxious depressed etc, or is it my social difficulties and I misunderstood the social stuff etc? I don't even know/get why it was funny. (My line manager is quite nice though well apart from the light teasing which I do not like so I'm never sure if he's being nice to me or not which is really frustrating as well)
The cherry in it's various guises is an idiom. My advice is to study, either a book or online the various idioms in common use so that you can better understand the humour NTs use.
And my advice to NTs is - study, either a book or online, the various reasons why autistic people behave the way they do, and why NT humour and leg-pulling isn't always as much fun for NDs. That way, they can perhaps better understand NDs.
Somehow, though, I don't think that's going to happen.
Don't think so either, for the simple fact that there's no need unless you are a parent of a child or partner of someone who is like that.
Unless you have a friend or colleague who is honest with you about being autistic, and you genuinely like them enough to want to find out more. Like, for instance, if someone said to me 'I'm a narcoleptic' - I'd want to find out what I could about narcolepsy so that I might be able to understand a bit more about them and their condition, instead of laughing at them each time they dropped off to sleep, and ribbed them for being 'dozy'.