Do you have close family members on the spectrum?

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My brother and possibly my father.

Completely convinced that dad is a dead-ringer: computer engineer, obsessed with radios, guns, and police work; even dresses like a cop these days (kids in school used to ask me if he was cop whenever he had to come to my school for some reason). I think he's on the citizen's patrol where he lives (we have no contact any more - he was never interested in me). Was never demonstrative with emotional support at all; shooed me away when I would greet him with open arms as a kid. Not the tiniest bit interested in other people's feelings or thoughts with respect to his own behavior. My aims for perfection never pleased the man - I just couldn't be good enough, even if I was perfect. He is very mechanized in how he presents himself to the world. He alienated some long-time friends over how he treated me when I was in his care.

My half-brother showed signs as a child - trouble learning to read, behavioral issues in the classroom, hand flapping, bouncing against the car seats when he was very young, liked to really rock out on his rocking horse, liked watching the same movies and cartoons over and over . He continues to manifest what seems a likely pathology as an adult. He's 27 years old and has never completed high school, had a job of any kind, refuses to get a driver's license and still lives with his mother.

I have suspicions about my own mother as well. She ditched me when I was young and I haven't seen her in over 20 years. She has other children now, one grown. Attempts to interest her in seeing me over the years have failed miserably. No empathy over how I've struggled without a mother, she never could keep a job for more than two weeks, lived on welfare forever and ever, refused to let me go to school at times (even if I begged her to let me go), and we even lived in her car for a year when I was 5. I guess she may be a dead-ringer, too.

Boy, I really got it from all sides, now that I think about it...

yes...a few. two diagnosed, others are not. I am dx'ed.
and quite a number of others would fall into the "broader autism phenotype" group.

Do you have a close family member

My dad is an Aspie.

My husband and 2 children are all diagnosed on the spectrum. There are definite AS tendancies running through my father's line with my father being the most likely to receive a diagnosis if he'd pursue it. He's all but acknowledged it in words that he passed it along to me once he knew what it was. There is a very strong genetic component indeed.