Your first memories of being "different"?

Post Reply New Topic

i do remember other random things...

like in 2nd grade we were learning how to read clocks and i couldn't... i kept gettin them wrong and that just made the teacher call on me even more.

so i asked for a didgital wrist watch and tried to use it to cheat in class when the teach would call on me.

being a 7 yr-old... it didn't dawn on me that maybe the clocks @ home (which mom used to set my watch) were diff than those @ the school.

i still got the wrong answer when the teacher called on me, though i didn't get caught cheating

i got put in the slow match class the next year

I know I didn't know what I was supposed to do the first time I was supposed to play with another child (< 3 years, maybe < 2 ).

I'm not really sure I thought about WHY I was different (I just thought I was a freak until pretty recently when I learned about Aspergers), but I didn't have a clue how to do social interactions right back in kindergarden for sure. I mean I'm not completely crippled in that regard, but I clearly wasn't doing it as well as the people around me. At some point it reached the point that I just gave up. I expect people to make fun of me, so I try to keep interactions to a minimum. That's where I am to this day. I don't know how to make small talk. I don't know how to get friends, or how I'd know if they were interested, etc.

I don't have many memories of my childhood in general but there was one time (not the first but very striking) when I noticed that the difference between me and other people was very clear.

It was at my aunts funeral when I was about 6 or so. She had died of either a heart attack or lung issues (she smoked) and had two young children (my cousins, the littlest was 4). I remember going up to see her body and wondering why we were looking at a dead person. My parents made me say a small prayer and then we went to sit. As the service went on and everyone got all sad and weepy, I sat there wondering why I wasn't crying. I didn't know my aunt terribily well, but I had loved her and was at least mildly sad that she was gone, but I wasn't crying at all.
I remember looking up at my dad (who never cried) and wondering how he was and I wasn't. I cried about stupid things like dead cats and lossing a toy, but not about the death of a family member.

I thought I was a terrible, evil person for a long time before I realized that I just didn't respond that way.


When I think back to my childhood I wonder how could my parents not have noticed I was at least a little weird!
I have other random memories that I'll have to post later. Can't think right now...

I was around 8 years old when I started to
become self-conscious and aware I was
different.Until then I'd always felt like I
was normal,wanting to go and play football
with the other kids and keep up with them.
I don't know what triggered it,but my whole
thought process seemed to change and
I became inward-looking and detached from
what was going on around me.

I have always felt and knew I was "different" than others.

I had "different" interests than other people, and still do.

I guess that is why people see me as different, for I do not seem to follow the "crowd".

I do try to conform to the social norms, and I am not disruptive in any way.

I could go off for ever, but I have to say the kindergarten pre-testing was one of those days. They wanted to flunk me and make me wait another year to start, but my mom prevailed and I started the next month.

Go mom!!

Yes, I find this topic fascinating too. These are great stories.

Like EvilKimEvil I was confident until age 5 too. I really liked the world - trees, dogs & cats, birds, squirrels, insects, flowers, sky, clouds, rain, snow - I loved the world until I ran into people.

AC

I think my first memory of being different was probably in kindergarten, but I was probably different from others from the time I was born.

This wasn't really the first time I noticed that I was different but when I was in 4th or 5th grade I was trying to explain to one of the many friends of who I considered to be my only friend that: "I don't like you but i don't dislike you either." This (I thought) perfectly reasonable stance was both offensive and illogical to him and the more I explained myself the more defensive and incredulous he became. "you can't not like someone without disliking them" He said. "It's the same thing." Apparantly I could.

Knowing what I know now, mostly through my fascination with evolutionry psychology, he was right to be amazed by my total lack of tact. From the standpoint of a cognizant socially dependant organism in competition for scarce resources, it is rediculous to be ambivalent in feelings toward someone who you regularly interact with. Everyone at least in the arena where humans evolved into what they are today, is either an ally in the competition or actually is your competition. Of course no one told me this but that's because everyone else knows it instinctually, even monkeys seem to have a pretty solid grasp of it. This is where I got my theory that when people are walking around saying "hello" and "good morning" all the time, what they are actually saying is: "I don't hate you", "I don't hate you", "I value your ability to contribute to our mutal well being and I willing to do my part" etcetera.

Of course this isn't the paleolithic anymore but being normal still means operating under the instinctual rules that were relavent and useful 20,000 years ago.

Thats a hard one,
I always was a bit different,
I would go chase cloud shadows and grass waves in a good breeze instead of playing with other children.
I was more happy making my own play cars and toys out of dirt clods instead of worrying about playing with real toys.
I was more interested in reading about things then going out to play fantasy games.

Are you sure? I can see that he'd be hurt or whatever from your comments if he thought you were friends, but I'd think it's normal for people to just feel neutral about most people. At least that's how I am, unless they do something to specifically change how I think about them. Well, I suppose I have SLIGHT feeling about people I see on a semi-regular basis. I don't know.

They never let you forget topic

My memories of difference and separateness began when I entered kindergarten at age 5; I knew I was different and so did the others and the teachers. In a room of 50 kids. I wish I could have found someone who was similar.

To make a long story short, they never let me forget. I used to hate this finger pointing. Now I feel proud of who I am and revel in my difference.

can't pick just 1 maybe when my mother would do the lack of eye contact thing as in say look at my nose" all the time . when i would play with the same toy for ages.

all the years of going to treatments for some strange reason made it sink in.

He probably did think we were friends. According to the normal definition of friends, we probably were. I guess I just had my own rather not normal definition of "friends" and "like/dislike" and so I wasn't aware that I was severing a tie that at 10 years old I didn't know existed. Sometimes I am basically a robot.

I had no friends in preschool, and in kindergarden I was the only girl who had no interest (or, at least the only girl who didn't pretend to have interest) in playing house; I played with the blocks with a boy in the class, until he told me that 'he couldn't play with me any more because I was a girl, and I should go play house with the other girls,' this parroting what I had just heard a different boy say to him. I refused, and had the blocks to myself after that.

It didn't occur to me that there was a problem with any of this until first grade, when a classmate handed out invitations for a birthday party during class and I was the only one not invited.

Definitely understand that. I remember thinking back to childhood and realizing I didn't process most of what was going on around me because I was too enmeshed in my own thing.