The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

Post Reply New Topic

[quote="sinsboldly"
I have heard from Lau, he is extant, is not extinct and doing quite well. Glad I could connect

MM[/quote]
Good to hear! I hope you told him we'd been looking for him...

Just lurking and stimming
as usual....

Hello. I am 41 (almost 42).

Pleased to meet you.

~Matthew~

Registered here a few years ago but haven't been active on this forum.
After that got diagnosed with ASS (two years ago).
Still living on my own without aid, but with a regular job again (engineering).
Updated my profile and reading the forums.

Ah well... here I am again. I was hiding quietly behind the aspidistra all the time.

I too have been making myself kind of scarce.....My sixth anniversary on WP is this Friday..Whoop-Dee-doo!! !!
Other wise just lurking and stimming away the night.....

I may have to be even scarcer than usual for a while. Apparently, my insistence on applying scientific techniques and the laws of physics to answer a question in the Computers, Math, Science and Technology forum makes me a "bully", and my every effort to explain that physics doesn't care how you feel about it just makes me worse. Can't really handle this just now.

Hi Lau, I freaked out a bit I guess, good to see you.

Ya Nan, was a bad ass storm and some are still suffering, minor thing for us here at the old homestead, wasn't even much as a normal Nor'Easter goes, but that is how Nor"Easters go here. I was glad for the rain actually.

Hi to all the new folks, that aren't really new, just new here, together that is...pull up a toad stool and have a Muffin and I'll tell you a story about, hell I dunno, something will come around...... later


Good to see you back too Merle, I damn near sent out a search party for you too

Hi...I think this might be the thread or corner of the wrong planet I'm supposed to be in...maybe.

I'm 61, and I'm pretty sure I'm on the AS someplace. I took the Simon Baron-Cohen test as a lark last year and got rather a shock...43! Ive done it a few more times and coming up in the low 40's and I took one of the other self tests and it was rather blunt in saying that I'm autistic. I guess I flunked the eye recognition test with a score of 19 - I found the thing very strange in that most of the choices seemed wrong altogether and it seems my best guesses were too (tho someone said I could practice on it and get better).

I've been lurking on WP for a while and I keep seeing so many posts (especially of the younger members, that read like awful versions of my own early years...) - but frankly, like this thread says - There were no Aspies in the 50's or 60's ... no high functioning autism diagnoses - just odd children who never fit in, who didn't get it socially, melted down when overwhelmed, got into arguments with teachers about the origin of the development of paper (the woman WAS wrong - I just could not figure out why I had to go to the principal's office -AGAIN) who made few friends, who had unique and intense interests. I could talk alright...but didn't know when to shut up or when it was 'their' turn!

Idon't give a &*^$% whether I ever get a dx now - what's the point anyway? I'm just enjoying finding a place online where I'm finally part of group that feels pretty normal to me. Things have gotten so much better as I've gotten older - I've finally begun to realize that it's okay to be like myself. the only other reason to hang out on the site is that I realize, I'm a survivor and I've learned how to survive in a world that is sometimes not so kind.

I learned that it is definitely OK to say I do not like certain things that everyone else says is normal (like being in loud crowds) and also how to handle it when I get in those situations and how to prepare myself for upcoming 'events'. (like my daughter's wedding - where there will be about 200+ people) good thing there is that I highly suspect my new SIL is more deeply on the spectrum than I am... and we're all preparing to make it an AS friendly event (like putting earplugs on all the tables) and scheduling some time out spaces where one can grab a breath!

And besides - i like the name dino-cafe; anyplace with a chocolate hot tub sounds and an aspidastra in the corner sounds homey and heavenly at the same time!

Let me guess, Born - the same teacher insisted that moveable type was invented in Germany in 1450, and never heard of its Chinese or Korean antecedents?

Welcome to the Cafe, both of you! Grab a cuppa, and beware the evul muffins...

Oh Deacon...Did you have her too? She had the peculiar talent of being able to squeal the chalk on the board at least once a day, sometimes twice - which always got a shriek out of me, and a black mark by my name; and you never knew when it was coming! It was sixth grade, and while I was pretty safe in my comment that the pyramids were not made from dixie-cubes, my assertion that papyrus was not really paper, but more like a grid of laid out fermented reeds, and that the Chinese had actually invented real paper got me in a lot of hot water. Also, it was very important to explain how it was made from a shredded fiber slush ...To this day I remember her sending me out into the hall, only to be later told, as she wagged her long scarlet nails in my face, that SHE was the teacher and that I had no respect and well ... - I guess the look on my face, as I suddenly realized she was nuts was what got me sent to the office that day. Stuff like that, and my regularly mispronouncing words in oral reading (I still don't know why she insisted I was doing it on purpose - I wasn't, and was mortified by the classroom laughter rather than seeking attention) - things like this got me in to see Sister Salome, the Prinicipal, rather often. I didn't mind too much - the office was quiet and no one pulled my hair or put out a foot to trip me in the aisle and oddly enough though, the nuns were pretty nice to me - kinder to me than the secular teachers. Oh, I got my knuckles rapped with the ruler a couple of times, but on the whole I did okay.

Seventh grade was the year that I learned from my fellow classmates (they were definitely not my peers) to NEVER volunteer any student based information to the authorities. How was I to know that the playboy pix being shuffled around the room were not supposed to be reported, even when asked after...the correct action was totally obvious - right? It was a Catholic School for heaven's sakes...we had catechism about purity every damn day...I knew they were wrong, so I turned 'em in...(silly me!) Argggh! I look back on those days now and I still cringe a bit.

Anyhow, sixth grade was the year in parochial school that I discovered that I could go pray and meditate in the chapel by myself and avoid the playground altogether - in those days, kids were allowed a bit more freedom outside than now...all I really wanted was friends and love and and comfort. What I got from the other kids led me to understand that lonely holiness was a better deal - and in the end, it really was, because I began to develop an inner life in a way others could not begin to fathom.

As an adult with decades in between, I can laugh at myself a bit...but sometimes I'm still the naive twit. I still get my kids saying..."Mom, that man did not mean for you to throw away his cup of coffee - he was only joking"....I wonder if cynicism is one of those NT traits that Aspies only learn later in life - but when we do learn it, we tend to pull it around us like a cloak of identity.

Never had that teacher, but I'm familiar with the type - if it didn't happen in Europe, or at least the Mediterranean region, it never happened. They aren't aware that the US Constitution draws heavily from the Iroquois Confederation; they insist that the existence of pyramids in Central America proves that Egyptians must have come there, because of course the locals couldn't possibly come up with the concept themselves; they actually believe that Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he was the first non-Indian to ever visit the continent (ignoring evidence that there was trade between Japan and the coastal tribes prior to that), and that he proved the world was round (in point of fact, it was pretty well known at the time that it was round; Columbus was actually wrong, in that he thought it was only 5000 miles around and sailing west would be a shortcut to Cathay, where the Greeks had determined it was something like 25,000 miles)...

Fortunately, my father taught me to always check my information with as many sources as practically possible, so I learned a bit more about world history than anyone in the schools ever intended.

I read 1491 by Charles Mann, and I am now reading 1493 by the same author. I also have 1434 and 1421 by Gavin Menzies.


If we are out of muffins have some rhubarb pie instead.....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq08wFhAGgc[/youtube]