Little things you do that are unique, even to other Aspies

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I do some of the things that have been already mentioned. The list could be longer, of course.

- Eating raw pastry as I prepare them (they sometimes taste better than baked...)

- Eating baked pastry as hot as I can (can't wait until they cool down)

- Smelling things (book, compact cassette, textile)

- Sitting in the chair with my feet on the table.

- I also like to sit with my toes on the floor, heels up in the air / one leg over the other / cross-legged.

- I tap my face way too often (one of my favorite stims).

- I don't like to wear clothes, so whenever I have the opportunity (when I'm alone home), I will wear nothing on me.

I'm the same way. Sometimes if I have a special interest in something and it becomes too popular, I will force myself to quit liking it. So far it's happened twice - first with Naruto when I was a teenager and more recently with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

I also like to try things out when the popularity dies down. For example, within the past two weeks I have read the first Harry Potter book, watched the first Lord of the Rings movie and watched the first two episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I like all of them and they may even eventually become special interests if I can get over my mental hangups first - such as the fact that they used to be popular, are aimed at kids and the feeling that I'm "betraying" my former special interests by enjoying other things. Don't know why those things are an issue for me, but they are. I baffle myself sometimes.

I do all these things. But I also sit with my legs under the chair off the floor.

I like to draw circles in the air above the mousepad in my laptop with my fingers.

I also have been known to growl when irritated (I see this is not unique to me, however).

I need a giant, loud almost industrial-sized fan to fall asleep.

I turn the turn signals in my car on and off with my pinkie. (This avoids wear to the paint on the light switch)

I am in love with 2 and 3 cylinder cars. (Gimmie a Fiat Panda Twinair!)

I drum my fingers only on soft surfaces,
I have a cold cup of milk before bed,
I've been told that I glare a lot when concentrating, usually with my head tilted down,
Whenever sitting down cross-legged, I spell out words in my head with my foot,
I carry baby wipes with me wherever I go, and use them to open doors or afterwards if I have shaken someone's hand.
I don't blink much, and sometimes forget to breathe, or generally just breathe really shallow and take deep breaths every few minutes,
I have 3 computers running every day, and always 100% will have a game of spider solitaire running on each one, sometimes more when I forget one is already open.
Every word with K in it, I have to repeat out loud several times.
I'm a terrible cuticle biter, often until my fingers are raw or bleeding, surprisingly I don't chew my nails, though I have in the past but have since accumulated a fear of damaging my teeth,
I cannot stand fuzzy teeth and don't feel right at night until I have brushed them,
I smell everything, books, dvd cases, dogs, shoes, leaves, liquids etc... Smell seems to be really stimulating for me, and smelling a particular smell can affect my mood for the rest of the day, and often make me feel different. Smells like peppermint tea makes me feel like a child again, it also makes me think of patchwork and generally makes me feel really calm.

There's probably lots more, but those are the ones that stand out the most.

Oh, I forgot to mention I smell my hands and forearms all the time and sometimes pluck the hair with my teeth... Weird?

The smell of tobacco smoke makes me cringe. (Only tobacco has this effect.)

Also I listen to my OWN songs on my MP3 player. By that I mean, I play songs on my keyboard and record them on to my MP3, and also record songs off the internet that aren't mainstream (like hymns, nursery rhymes, themes, et cetera).

Sounds a bit ''tinned'' on my MP3 because they're recorded, but never mind. But this is VERY unique, even my Aspie friend was like, ''why the hell do you do that for?''

I sing to my backhoe loader models
I constantly twitch my nose back and forth
My hands jerk once in a while
I pace around the house shaking when I really get angry
While stimming I watch the same shows and movies over and over again

I "space out" and (according to friends) have a creepy gaze when I'm eating and cannot drink standing up.

I don't do this exclusively, but I listen to loads more obscure music than standard-issue popular music. Even with popular music I sometimes use an audio editor to delete the bits I don't like, or I'll listen to just one channel of the stereo. Anything but the standard version.

Can't think of much else I do that's all that unique to me, once you add Aspies into the thing. I don't watch live television. I don't label people unless I'm at war with them. My sense of morality ranges from rigid puritanism to complete anarchy, depending on the subject. I'm probably the only person in the world who still writes programs in GW BASIC. I can't believe I'm the only male who is bored with mainstream standards of female beauty. I've got depressive realism, which is quite rare, but I bet I'm not the only one.

No, apart from stuff that's down to being autistic, I would seem to be depressingly normal.

Oh, I remember GW Basic. I used to program C64 and Plus 4 too, even in assembler, later used Borland Turbo Pascal on PC.

I'm also not too impressed by today's mainstream standards of female beauty...

I messed with Z80 assembly language, got my ZX81 to print out a little book of the instruction set and corresponding 8-bit codes, so I could write programs directly in machine code. It was the only thing that made sense to me before I fathomed one of those weird assembler programs.


Modern "goddesses" look so stereotyped to me that I can barely tell them apart if they're not lined up in a row. I might qualify as a grumpy old man but I've always been this way.

I did that to a rental place I had once, I bought a few bottles of glow-in-the-dark clear nail polish, thinned it out with a solvent and misted it onto all the walls and ceilings with a spray bottle set to mist. During the day even the landlord couldn't tell I had done anything to the place but at night with the blacklights going.... It was like living inside the Oort Cloud... The mister bottle would leave many different sizes of droplets giving it more depth and realism. It was really hard to keep the stuff from running, had to take my time. The end result had no runs. Made the livingroom look like it was miles larger.

I tried the astronomy sticker packs, but they didn't work for me, to many hard edges and they looked very child like/cartoony.

My boyfriend simply won't let me do it in this house as we are getting ready to sell it.... I still have my black lights though.

As for odd stuff I do... I like to find parts of songs that have the sounds I find most agreeable and take mp3Trim to it, cutting out the pieces that I want. Then I try to make a musical collage edited together with fruityloops. I kind of suck at it so far, I mean I have a gigantic mp3 collection to sample from, I just never get enough time to learn the software and edit my tracks. So what I have are dozens of tracks with just random sections of bits'n'pieces of cross faded songs, which I turn up really loud just about to the point of clipping the signal, close my eyes and just let the sounds, colors and patterns wash over me and envelope me. Yum!

I even download sound packs, like from popular games, cell phone ring tones, etc and toss them into the mix.

I would NEVER listen to these in mixed company, to other people it would just sound like noise.

I like touching things, not everyday things that every one has to touch like hand rails, elevator buttons, door handles.... I actually won't touch those things in public with my bare hand... But I like things like bark on trees, fiberglass boat hulls, oil on canvas paintings, leaves (dry or fresh), element worn glass pieces, smooth rocks, foam rubber, big Bic lighters, coins (I have a one ounce silver buffalo I keep with me at all times that I've worn the nose off the Indian by rubbing it). Essentially anything that has what looks like a unique texture, I have to fight the urge to touch it.... I used to try to touch everything with my lips (awkward), I grew out of that and have to settle for touching things with my hands, at least while I'm in public.

I thought I was the only one! I have done this my entire life. I even do it at work, during meetings, etc. I am uncomfortable if I can't do it. The worst part of weddings is having to sit. One time my boss commented on it and I said, "So... you want to tell me how to sit? Do you have a charge number for that?" And that was the last I heard of it...

(note: we use charge numbers for everything so that our time gets charged tot he correct client and project)

I sit half lotus all the time, waiting rooms, on the couch, dining room chairs, my office chair (where I spend most of my time and it rocks so there's that), I even sit this way when I'm driving on the highway with the cruise control set but I keep my right foot on the floor on my toes (foot out of shoe but on top of shoe) and the left foot flopped over my right thigh, this way I can still get to the brakes in a hurry if I need to. I'm usually bored to death by this point and I'm stimming by rocking my right knee side to side..... I get rocking side-to-side so hard the van starts to rock while doing 120kph down the highway... I don't mind it, my boyfriend does though....

At least 20 monkeys in every room? That's awesome! How did you paint glow-splotches on your walls? Did you break open glow sticks, or is there such a thing as glow in the dark paint?