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Autism In Hindsight?

Eryberrie

Hi!

Was wondering the other day, because I was diagnosed at age 31, if these two anecdotes are displays of autism when I was a child.

The one is that as a child, and even still as an adult, I have a great aversion to the word 'pardon'. I don't know why - I just hate it.  I hate the sound and it just makes me cringe.  Just typing it is horrible for me.

One such anecdote was when I was about six and my family and I were having dinner. They all stopped eating and were staring at me all of a sudden.  They asked me to say the word.  Apparently, I had burped but I swear I hadn't.  Even to this day, I won't concede it.

I refused to say it.  I didn't have a tantrum or anything, I just clammed up and said nothing.  I tried to say that I hadn't burped but they did not believe me.  They sent me up to my room - about six adults ganging up on a child!

I went to my room with my dinner getting cold downstairs.  Two family members came up to me.  One had a go at me and shouted at me to say the P word.  I didn't.  They gave up and went back downstairs.  Another came to see me and was much gentler.  But he basically backed me into a metaphorical corner and I then just said it under my breath.  This was enough.  I was allowed back downstairs.

One of my family members said that I had to say the word again but the person that came to me in my room said that I didn't.

The second anecdote was that, for a long time, I had a problem with the letter B.  I hated it and on one occasion, when playing make believe (I only liked doing this if I was in charge and decided who was who), I was told I had to be a character who's name began with B.  The name could not be changed as it was a character from a film.  I would not do it so I took no part in play that day.

I eventually got over my problem with the letter B when I read a book about a horse named Bella.  I love horses and the horse was extremely beautiful.  Bella means beautiful so now I associate the letter B with beautiful.

I don't know if this type of behaviour rings true for anyone else with autism.  Please let me know.

Parents

  • HungryCaterpillar said:
    But, something I've always done - and which only came to light when discussing thne possibility of getting diagnosed, whereby friends insisted it was not the norm - was that I associate colours with certain days of the week.

    Likewise, I collect fragrances, and I associate them with days of the week too. So, one morning I may think "oooh, I quite like the smell of that one..." but then go on to think ".. ah, but I can't wear it because it's a Tuesday."

    Does anyone else have anything similar?

    If you had to assign 'colours' to each day of the week, what would it be?...

    This post and its replies reminded me that a friend of mine (never assessed for autism, though he has often wondered about it) told me years ago that he experienced something very similar.  He's asked me to share the following with the forum:

    "My synaesthesia extends to calendar items having certain colours, and numbers also taking on colours as well as personalities.  For the record, my days of the week are coloured to wit:  Monday (light blue), Tuesday (white, or very pale blue), Wednesday (green), Thursday (deep ultramarine blue), Friday (yellow), Saturday (red), Sunday (purple).  The colours have been fixed since childhood, although Wednesday can sometimes and without any reason, become brown instead of green.

    Numerals also are coloured, though not as instantly recognisable, and are prone to change, or more accurately will scintillate between colours:
    1 - blue
    2 - blue
    3 - pale green
    4 - deep red, but liable to become dark blue
    5 - dark yellow
    6 - orange
    7 - deep blue
    8 - dark green
    9 - deep red, but liable to become dark blue, same as 4.  
    Most digits have personalities female numbers are 6 & 8, male numbers are 4, 5, 7, 9.  1-4 are gender neutral.
    The numbers roughly take on the hierarchy of a Victorian household, for some reason.  1-4 are the children, without formed personalities, 5 is the young master, who is a brat and given to mischief,  6 is a housemaid, 7 is the lady of the house, benign and gentle, 8 is the jolly cook, 9 is the stern and fearsome Victorian gentleman, master of the household and tyrannical husband to 7.
    The numerical personalities and colours also extend to multiples, e.g. 60, 70 are same as 6, 7. And decades similarly coloured - the sixties were orange, the seventies blue, but strangely the eighties were magenta, and the nineties yellow. I think because in those decades I was more influenced by the world, and allowed other emotions or memes to colour them.  Since 2000, years have lost all colour, and I think that I may not have yet fully accepted the new century, it still seems an impostor somehow, and unworthy of colour.
    Fragrance also for me is exceptionally significant although I do not readily associate colour with it.  Certain perfumes are reminiscent for obvious reasons, although there are a handful of fragrances which I can often detect, though I think only in my mind.  One could be described as a mix of garden fire smoke and roses.  Another is the smell of robots, which is a sort of metallic smell and fragrant tobacco-ish, which is also coloured silver and red.  There is another smell, which is homely, and almost smells like school dinners - meaty, definitely organic.  I once smelt it on the scalp of a one night stand, I believe it to be a sort of sweaty, bodily smell but not at all unpleasant.  I once concluded that it was perhaps the smell of my mother's womb."
Reply

  • HungryCaterpillar said:
    But, something I've always done - and which only came to light when discussing thne possibility of getting diagnosed, whereby friends insisted it was not the norm - was that I associate colours with certain days of the week.

    Likewise, I collect fragrances, and I associate them with days of the week too. So, one morning I may think "oooh, I quite like the smell of that one..." but then go on to think ".. ah, but I can't wear it because it's a Tuesday."

    Does anyone else have anything similar?

    If you had to assign 'colours' to each day of the week, what would it be?...

    This post and its replies reminded me that a friend of mine (never assessed for autism, though he has often wondered about it) told me years ago that he experienced something very similar.  He's asked me to share the following with the forum:

    "My synaesthesia extends to calendar items having certain colours, and numbers also taking on colours as well as personalities.  For the record, my days of the week are coloured to wit:  Monday (light blue), Tuesday (white, or very pale blue), Wednesday (green), Thursday (deep ultramarine blue), Friday (yellow), Saturday (red), Sunday (purple).  The colours have been fixed since childhood, although Wednesday can sometimes and without any reason, become brown instead of green.

    Numerals also are coloured, though not as instantly recognisable, and are prone to change, or more accurately will scintillate between colours:
    1 - blue
    2 - blue
    3 - pale green
    4 - deep red, but liable to become dark blue
    5 - dark yellow
    6 - orange
    7 - deep blue
    8 - dark green
    9 - deep red, but liable to become dark blue, same as 4.  
    Most digits have personalities female numbers are 6 & 8, male numbers are 4, 5, 7, 9.  1-4 are gender neutral.
    The numbers roughly take on the hierarchy of a Victorian household, for some reason.  1-4 are the children, without formed personalities, 5 is the young master, who is a brat and given to mischief,  6 is a housemaid, 7 is the lady of the house, benign and gentle, 8 is the jolly cook, 9 is the stern and fearsome Victorian gentleman, master of the household and tyrannical husband to 7.
    The numerical personalities and colours also extend to multiples, e.g. 60, 70 are same as 6, 7. And decades similarly coloured - the sixties were orange, the seventies blue, but strangely the eighties were magenta, and the nineties yellow. I think because in those decades I was more influenced by the world, and allowed other emotions or memes to colour them.  Since 2000, years have lost all colour, and I think that I may not have yet fully accepted the new century, it still seems an impostor somehow, and unworthy of colour.
    Fragrance also for me is exceptionally significant although I do not readily associate colour with it.  Certain perfumes are reminiscent for obvious reasons, although there are a handful of fragrances which I can often detect, though I think only in my mind.  One could be described as a mix of garden fire smoke and roses.  Another is the smell of robots, which is a sort of metallic smell and fragrant tobacco-ish, which is also coloured silver and red.  There is another smell, which is homely, and almost smells like school dinners - meaty, definitely organic.  I once smelt it on the scalp of a one night stand, I believe it to be a sort of sweaty, bodily smell but not at all unpleasant.  I once concluded that it was perhaps the smell of my mother's womb."
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