Okay, here are my versions of "You might be an aspie..."
...if, while on a long drive you switch the radio every hour to listen to the news because,
A) something new may have happened in Botswana and it's vitaly important you know what (even though you've never been to Botswana or plan on going), and
B) you can't understand why everyone in the car wouldn't want to listen to the news every hour anyway.
...if, while taking a computer science degree, you can't understand why you aren't allowed to take more computer sciences classes for your electives and have to take other "fuzzy" classes.
...if you are an ordained priest, pastor, and reverend in three different religions, and hold a Doctorate in religious studies, yet can't understand how people can believe in God.
...if you could write thousands of lines of computer code off the top of your head, but a 1 page essay is impossible.
...if you love the new smartphones you bought for your wife and kids because now you can text them instead of having to talk to them, even though their only in the next room.
...if you noticed that the last sentence contained "their" but should have been "they're", and yet realize you'd probably make the same mistake yourself.
...if people can't believe your office & desk are so messy with piles of papers everywhere, and are even more astounded when they ask you for a report from a meeting 6 years ago and you tell them it's the fifth file up from the bottom, in the third pile from the corner, under the printout of the emails from payroll department, but after the letter rejecting your proposal for switching all computers to Windows 2000 because it's too new and not stable enough yet.
...if you've been programming for 30 years and know more than most university comp-sci professors but have been out of work for years because you just can't "do" job interviews.
...if your professor gives out bonus points when you point out his mistakes, and says that one student once got 27 bonus points, and you then get 71.1 bonus points
...if, in grade 1, you got kicked out of religion class at a Catholic school for asking tough questions on why there has to be a God (A: "because the universe couldn't have always just been there, there had to be a beginning"), and where did God come from (A: "He has always been there") and refusing to accept it, because the reasoning is contradictory.
...if you're working on your car and get pissed off because every nut and bolt is a different size and if you were building cars you'd make them entirely using only one or two sizes of nuts and bolts and if you were a politician you'd pass a law that all cars had to be made that way and someone points out that you're ranting and raving again because this is the n-th time you've said this and everyone knows what you'd do but you still can't stop because you don't understand why people would build cars like this and worse why people would buy cars like this and why it's just accepted that they are like this and I need to go lie down and rest.
...if you hear a song and you not only remember all the lyrics and melody, but you know exactly where you were and what you were doing when you first heard it.
...if you remember the licence plate on your first car from nearly 30 years ago because you could relate it to Star Wars (774 CPO, 77 was the year the movie came out, and the robot was C3P0... almost like 4CPO)
...if, as a child, your parents made you stay at the table alone until you've eaten your veggies but give up after weeks of it and the veggies still don't get touched
...if you refuse to hire contractors for your house because they would never do as good a job as you would, even though the weekend job you started 3 years ago still isn't finished.
...if it drives you crazy when people pronounce kilometers as kill-lom-i-ters and not key-low-meters because you'd never say someone weighs 60 kill-log-rams
...if you have a collection of thousands of video taped movies and TV series, all complete, with no commercials, completely indexed, sorted, cataloged and databased with a printed out catalog that can be searched by subject, title, actors and directors, but the catalog never gets used because everyone just asks you and you can tell them which shelf to look on to find which tape, and how far into it that particular episode is.
..if you refuse to part with your massive collection of videos even though you no longer own a working VCR.
...if you own 5 VCRs that no longer work but refuse to get rid of them because they were such great machines.
...if everyone on-your-street/in-your-income-bracket owns a Mercedes or Lexus, but your personal vehicle is a used school-bus because you have 4 kids and it's so much more convenient, and you see no problem with this. (Really, they are fabulous kid-friendly vehicles... if your kids eat and spill food, you can use a garden hose to wash off the vinyl seats, steel walls, and rubber floor. No worries!)
...if in high school your idea of fashion was a combat jacket because it's got 4 huge pockets and you can carry everything you might need in case of any emergency
...if the computer program you wrote has a bug that you can't find, so you go to bed and while sleeping you dream of the problem, a workaround, and finally the solution to the bug, wake up, get up and fix it and find your dream was correct.
...if you can't understand how anyone can fall "out" of love, because you know that if you love someone you will always love them (even if you can't stand being around them).
...if everyone in the house knows you don't like cats, and yet the cats always choose you as their first choice for cuddling.
...if you have a pet wolf.
...if, since age 10, you have to wear sunglasses when you go out on sunny days, on cloudy days, in the pouring rain, downtown at night, or in stores with flourescent lights, or else suffer from debilitating headaches.
...if the most comfortable thing you can think of waering is a bathtub full of warm water (constant pressure everywhere, no tickling or things touching you).
- Oh, and if you agree with this one then I have to advise every AS to buy an instant water heater. Besides the obvious savings of not having to keep a tank of water hot even when nobody's using it, there's a better reason. You have a digital control panel in your bathroom and choose the temperature you want, then just run the hot water straight without mixing it with cold. You can walk away and come back and your bath is the PERFECT temperature for you (mine is 104 F), irregardless of other people flushing toilets, running clothes or dish washers, hoses, etc.
...if you hang your laundry on the clothesline by properly putting all your shirts on a hangar, and then hanging the hangar on the line because: A) they take up less room on the line, B) they are now perpedicular to the line allowing for better airflow and faster drying, C) they dry without pinch marks from clothespegs, and D) you have to put them on the hangar sooner or later and may as well do it now.
...if you have to full explain your answers to things by making an ordered list of the reasons, and label each point A, B, C, etc.
...if you have multiple avatar images, and had to ask someone to label them for you based upon their mood/expression so that you know which one to use when you wish to convey a particular mood. Example: Skywise-Angry.jpg, Skywise-Bored.jpg, Skywise-Dreamy.jpg, Skywise-Sad.jpg, Skywise-Seductive.jpg, Skywise-Startled.jpg, Skywise-Surprised.jpg, Skywise-Unconsious.jpg (yes, even had to ask to find out he's unconsious!)
NOTE: currently using Skywise-Happy.jpg because I'm so happy to have found this forum!
...if people you've never met, who live miles away, have shown up at your door with their computer and ask you to fix it
...if you wake at 1 in the morning, and can't get back to sleep until you turn on your computer and record the new YMBAAI that you thought of. (written at 1:49am)
...if you suffer a head wound that leaves the side of your head and most of your shirt covered in blood, and only find out when someone else tells you you're bleeding
...if you never understood why the "inchworm" song stopped at 32 and started from 2 again, and insist on continuing it into the millions (at the same speed that everyone is doing from 2 again).
Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, you and your arithmetic will probably grow old (I think that's the lyrics... I always sing the number part)
2 and 2 are 4, 4 and 4 are 8, 8 and 8 are 16, 16 and 16 are 32....
32 and 32 are 64, 64 and 64 are 128, 128 and 128 are 256, 256 and 256 are 512....
512 and 512 are 1024, 1024 and 1024 are 2048, 2048 and 2048 are 4096, 4096 and 4096 are 8192...
8192 and 8182 are 16394, 16394 and 16394 are 32768, 32768 and 32768 are 65536, 65536 and 65536 are 131072...
131072 and 131072 are 262144, 262144 and 262144 are 524288, 524288 and 524288 are 1048576, 1048576 and 1048576 are 2097152... (around this point it gets very difficult to continue trying to add while keeping the beat with everyone laughing and distracting me)
...if, having chewed your fingernails down the nub, you don't stop and go on to chewing the skin and flesh next to the nail until all your fingers are torn up and raw.
...if you get offended when people say "you think you know everything" because they used the word "think" and are therefore implying that you don't.
...if you can't understand why people turn the air conditioning on high and chill their homes to 15 degrees C in the summer, but complain bitterly during the winter if the house drops below 22.
...if you fold socks by pulling one sock partly inside out over the two, and make sure that the crease makes a smiley face, and stack all the pairs so that every pair is smiling.
...if, having folded said socks, you wake up in a bad mood and turn every pair of socks over so that they are all frowning.
...if you use a GPS unit to check the speedometer in your car and know the percentage that each car's speedometer is off (my truck: 5% fast, wife's car: 3% fast, daughter's truck: 2% fast) so that you know exactly how fast you are really going.
...if you re-test your GPS & speedometer at least twice a year to see if there's been any variation.
I hope people can appreciate some of these as much as I have appreciated all the others I've read (and I'm only up to page 78 so far).
28 Aug 2010, 1:24 am
I'm right there with ya, Cindy! MMMMMMMMM!! ! \m/
