Taking things literally
I tend to hear things literally initially then the interpreted meaning pops up. This means I'm always picking up and generating puns, innuendo etc. People have said I'm quick witted and funny (in a childish sort of way), but it is just because I usually see multiple meanings in what people say - whether they intend to or not.
I also "see" what people say to me a lot. If someone says they laughed their socks off a picture appears in my mind with them wearing no socks. The images can get a bit bizarre though - so if someone says they laughed their head off the immediate image is a bit gruesome.
It helps me to play some of the games on this site though such as "corrupt a wish"
All the friking time. My gf will say things like "why can you sput out random information about history and not follow simple instructions even when i tell you literally what to do?"
what she doesnt realize is that her left may be my right, know what I mean???
ThatRedHairedGrrl
Veteran
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Joined: 10 May 2008
Age: 56
Gender: Female
Posts: 912
Location: Walking through a shopping mall listening to Half Japanese on headphones
I don't do it so often now, but I used to take things literally a lot when I was a kid - in the sense of not being able to tell if something someone said was true or not. I got a lot of flak for being 'gullible' mainly - I mean, the stuff about there being a witch living in the house on the waste ground behind our school, about how if you touch a dead bird you'll get sick and die, stuff like that. Or the time someone at a school bric-a-brac sale in the 80s sold me a postcard of Sandringham that I seriously believed had been signed by Lady Di. That kind of thing.
As for metaphors - I had a problem with 'seeing a man about a dog' (i.e. going to the bathroom, or doing anything unspecified, in my family, that you didn't want to tell a kid about, like going to the doctor's, because they just knew I'd ask what for!). Trouble was, I had a real dog thing going on about the age of 8 or so. We'd had one dog, a Border Collie, a very energetic breed, and as my parents were older than some, they decided they didn't want to walk this dog miles every day like she wanted and needed. So they got rid of her, but I still wanted another dog...and every time anyone went to 'see someone about' one, I'd get excited thinking we were going to get a puppy. Which they found hilarious, although I didn't.
I got accused of 'having no common sense', and also of 'not listening' when someone gave me one set of instructions (which I would happily follow) and then changed their mind and went off on a different tack.
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"Grunge? Isn't that some gross shade of greenish orange?"
Yup. I've always found double standards, and the constant backstabbing and sniping that many (not all) people indulge in. When I was in the last two years of school, there would always be at least two of my friends not on speaking terms with each other, for the stupidest and most trivial reasons. Then everyone else in the group would have to pick sides. The next day, the two people who had fallen out would be best of friends, and they'd be not on speaking terms with another person. They were worse than a couple of senile old grannies fighting over a sponge cake. I always refused to join in with that, which didn't always make me too popular.
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Back to the main topic, I don't take things literally as much as I did. My mind used to be so literal that I thought a 'landmark' was literally a scar on the land. Now, I understand sarcasm, satire, irony and other non-literal language fairly well. I still sometimes get caught off-guard by a small comment that I interpret the wrong way, but some NT-ness does rub off on you after a while.
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"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."
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