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Funny moments of realisation

Oakling

After a few positive changes, and a bit of time to begin processing those changes, I’m feeling in a much brighter place than I have for a little while.

I’ve even started to laugh again.

I’m autistic. Always have been, always will be. Increasingly I am beginning to feel proud of this fact. But there are moments, where, when relaxing or with friends, I sort of forget this. Well, it’s probably not so much about forgetting, but more to do with the thought not being at the forefront of my mind. But then something happens and that realisation zooms back into reality. I’m referring to lighter, more comical moments in this instance, rather than areas of difficulty (which certainly exist too).

Recent examples include playing a party game where our answers had to match the rest of the group. In this moment we had to say the first thing someone would notice when looking at someone’s face for the first time. Everyone, of course, said eyes. I on the other hand was the only person to have a different answer, which was nose. Why on earth would you look at someone’s eyes? That got a laugh.

More recently, when my wife and I were watching tv she asked “Shall we watch this?” She didn’t elaborate on what, so try as I might I could not answer. There were no clues as to what ‘this’ was. This went on for a few minutes, both of us getting more frustrated with one another’s inability to communicate with each other. In the end, she got up and pointed at the screen. Where I’d been looking for some sort of box around the title of the selected show to answer the question with, she’d assumed the giant picture of David Mitchell’s face that took over the entire screen would be enough of a clue. I didn’t even see it! We laughed after, because it was another example of me avoiding looking at someone’s face. 

Does anyone else experience funny moments like these? I quite like to laugh about this stuff, as it’s who I am. Why not enjoy it when in the right frame of mind. These moments don’t happen all that often but it’s quite nice to reflect on something, that I probably would have felt embarrassed about pre-diagnosis, in a positive way.

  • in reply to Martin

    I was once paid to talk for an hour about my special interest, which was great. But I did worry about boring them, so I made the mistake of looking at my husband, who looked bored out of his skull! I nearly panicked, but then looked at the rest of the people and they all looked interested (hopefully they were, it was a history group and the talk was historical, so maybe they were autists who shared my special interest! Or NTs who were also interested of course. Or just polite!) so I just kept going and hoped for the best. They told me after that they had enjoyed it anyway, and I did get paid which was a bonus.

    But at uni we were told we had to look at the audience, so I did tend to just look in the general direction. My main reason for having good powerpoint was so they could look at that rather than looking at me.

  • in reply to Oakling

    When I gave seminars I would tend to look at my visuals, powerpoint etc., rather than at the audience. If I did look at the audience, I would just scan over them as an amorphous collection, my worst nightmare would be to make eye contact with anyone, especially someone I knew.

  • in reply to Oakling

    I have problems singing in public also, but in private I am fine. The drone of my electric razor in the morning, often gets me singing, probably connected to the sound of the drones on Irish  uilleann pipes.

  • in reply to AuTriker

    Yes I can see this having an impact too.

    Taking my initial comment further, I found myself avoiding eye contact with myself when I had to record some videos during working from home time in the pandemic. When looking back, I seemed to be looking everywhere other than at the camera/screen. That was quite something to behold.

  • in reply to Martin

    I can relate to this entirely. For me, it’s singing. I’ve never been able to bring myself to try. People often ask me, when they discover this aversion of mine, if I do it even when alone in the car or shower etc. They are often shocked to find out that I can’t even do it then. I would like to try sometimes, but for whatever reason, I can’t.

  • Oakling said:
    we had to say the first thing someone would notice when looking at someone’s face for the first time

    I would find that hard for a different autistic reason - it depends on the face! There was a chap at a meeting I went to who had a really huge bulbous nose, which would be the first thing surely most people would notice. Or if they had a scar or a big beard or blue hair.

    I'm sure I've had lots of amusing autistic moments but I can't think of any right now.

  • Though retired, I am still active in my trades union (UCU). Yesterday, I was on a union protest march through the centre of Manchester, drums beating, banners waving, smoke flares. I found that I just could not shout or chant at all. Not a new situation, but I thought that in the anonymity of a large crowd, I should be able to do so. It is only in meltdown that I can shout, when I can do little else but shout.

  • in reply to Glitter

    It’s nice to have someone who will put effort into understanding a difference. I am grateful to my wife and my friends for this. I know I reciprocate, so it’s a nice feeling that I can relate to. The gesture of kindness and understanding, done in a human way, is nice to read. Thanks for sharing! I also know that feeling of taking things literally. As a child, I was once given some slices of cucumber because I had sore eyes. I immediately ate them and noted that it didn’t make a difference.

  • I had a wonderful moment the other day. I was getting dinner as my wife got home from work, and I managed, after a fair amount of struggles, to express that I was not in a good place emotionally.  We then talked about a couple of other ordinary things and then she turned around and handed me a bunch of teaspoons from the drawer.  I took them, entirely confused, thinking that we dont need them for dinner,  and then she explained.  "So you've got more spoons!" 

    It made me giggle and feel heard because I've previously tried to explain spoon theory and now apparently she's got it, but it took me longer to get past the literal interpretation.