Hi, I'm a kid. I'm 17. I don't know if I'm Aspie or neurotypical but it doesn't matter much either way. Either way, I really like this forum and I've been following many of the threads before I decided to join.
I guess I'll follow the format of other 'hi, i'm new' topics:
It never occurred to me that, outside of school, I never spend time with people my own age until someone pointed out that, outside of school, my best friend and I don't see each other for sometimes even a month at a time and I don't really notice. My best friend, on the other hand, has a large amount of friends, so my absence isn't a problem. In school I'm pretty social, and even deeply active in several clubs. In class, I'm usually the one to raise my hand and answer a question. I like doing favors for people and being praised and though I'm capable of a lot of verbiage, I'm terrified of simply chatting with people. I hate it when other girls go 'aw' at things and when people are emotionally gushy because I don't know how they want me to react. I can express myself clearly verbally very easily when it comes to indirect conversation (in debate club, answering a teacher's question, making outbursts to the class) but the less people there are, the more incoherent I become. I can't talk to people I don't know intimately on the phone, especially if they're adults. Sometimes my mom makes me do my own phone calls and I either throw the phone to her or hang up. In general, I have trouble making productive conversation face to face. The only time I'm really inclined to express inner emotions is when I'm called on to interpret them accurately. I keep a diary but I only rarely mention other people and that's in passing. I constantly feel guilty that I'm so wrapped in navel-gazing.
One of the few people whose company I enjoy is this boy in my class. He was fifty points off from getting a perfect SAT score and he always tells me to shut up even before I open my mouth. He's always sarcastic and sometimes vulgar with people, but he always says bizarre things. Like today, I was calling my mom to come pick me up from school and he told me I probably don't have parents, only a Barbie and a G.I. Joe doll that I talk to and pretend are my parents. For some reason, I always laugh too much at even the dullest joke. But in general, people in school don't shun me or anything. Most of them think of me as artsy or hipster or something.
Another thing is, I doubt when people tell me things. For example, my mom might give me something and say 'could you bring this to so-and-so?', but then I'm afraid to bring it to them because I start thinking that maybe the so-and-so I'm thinking of is different from the so-and-so my mother meant, even though there might be only one person we know who has that name. And I hate it when I'm in a car with someone and they tell me to open the window and ask for directions because I don't like talking to that person and when they start telling me the directions I don't pay attention and even if I tried, I can't remember them in order, but that might just be a thing of mine. In any case, I'm bad at following directions unless they're very specific. I don't have any trouble understanding metaphors, though, and I like fiction very much.
I have some very mild obsessive habits, which are easy to conceal from other people. I used to have to have my hand on the microwave handle when it went 'beep', but then I started thinking about the health effects of standing so close to a microwave. When I pass by a cemetary while in a car I need to hold my breath, which is really annoying when the car stops at an intersection and I start feeling lightheaded (haha) or when the car turns perpendicular to the cemetary and I'm not sure where the boundary for cemetary/noncemetary territory lies.
I never thought of my interests as narrow until I joined my school's Academic Team and realized that while I might be able to tell you that the face on a doorknocker is called a mascaron or the Arabic word for 'beans' or what an uroborus is, there are certain pieces of common knowledge that I never bothered to learn. In fact, despite the fact that I read avidly, I feel a little like an idiot on the Academic Team. Here's an anomaly, though, at least from what I've gathered of Aspies: I've never been interested in math. I'm a senior in high school but I'm in a low math class and even though my math teacher said I have a very good grip on the concepts, my arithmetic is ridiculous. I still have to do my nine times table by hand (I figure out 9 X 6 by subtracting 60-6 and for some reason I keep forgetting it's 54. Even now I took out a calculator to make sure.) And sometimes, though not that often, I switch digits or write one number when I mean another. But this problem is probably more related to dyscalculia (I think that's what it's called) than Asperger's. Word problems are sometimes hard for me because the wording seems vague to me.
One of my biggest hobbies is painting, but it's all the same to me whether what I'm drawing or painting is my own or a copy of another artwork. Lately, I've started painting Persian miniatures with oil paints on small boxes, which is fun but sort of a strain on the eyes (one of my pictures is two by three inches, or something like that). I only have one and a half done because I've been busy with school or busy with procrastinating (like now). I'm just saying this as a hobby, not particularly as a testament to my possible Aspie-ness.
Wow, it's 3:00 AM and I have school tomorrow. Good night.