asperger's and chitchat?

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I can relate. I also have training in education. I can talk a lot and that makes me good at doing the longer summer session lectures that require you to talk about the subject at hand for 4 hours straight! That aside.... I find that because of my educaitonal experiences I am able to talk about a variety of things. I just prefer to talk about things that I personally find interesting or relavent to myself or my own situation. I find it difficult to "not" draw the conversation back to myself/my interests because I have to be very concious of it while trying to chit-chat at the same time. It can be distracting and this will sometimes cause me to miss information that is being communicated to me. Kind of a one track mind sort of thing.... I am either listening to someone OR thinking about trying to not interupt. I am not good at doing both! What a catch-22, eh?

On the subject of "special interests".... I have a lot of different areas of interest and I think that has made me have an easier time talking to people when I do slip up and start gabbing about my "interests".... I am capable of swithing around the topic and just come across like a major chatter box. It would be more obvious that I have a "problem" if I were fixated on "deep fat friers" or "bus schedules".

By the way? I would love to meet this person that was facinated with deep fat friers (I'm sure we've all read that example of a special interest before)! I have a few questions for them! I am trying to make really good deep fried fish, but don't know the ideal frier for fish. Fish tends to splatter a lot because there is a lot of moisture in the little buggers.....

Whoops! I started to slip off into my cooking obsession!! !

It becomes the most difficult if it's at a point in time when I'm particularly obsessed with a certain interest. The desire to talk about it is overwhelming. I will try and find any possible way I can to feed it into the conversation - even via the most tenuous connection - and I can feel myself becoming frustrated if I can't. I know I'm doing it, but I can't stop.

I don't know if there's a no-splatter way to deep fry - especially if you are using a beer batter. If you just dredge in cornmeal (after you dry the fish and dip it in egg) it won't splatter much.

Mmmm...cooking obsession. That's a good one to have. It's (almost) universal and very safe - unless you tread into controversial territory while talking to a healthnut, vegetarian or someone with a bunch of food allergies.

Deep fried! Hail to deep fried! How about beignets and hush puppies? Yum! I have a love hate relationship with my deep frier. Its just a frybaby - but still holds a ton of oil. And I don't like to be wasteful, but I can't stand the smell the next day. It permeates the entire house. Plus you just can't cook the beignets in the oil you cooked the fish or hush puppies or onion rings. So - I just cant see getting anything larger than the frybaby - but the frybaby takes forever if you're feeding more than one person a whole fried spread.

There now - isn't this a pleasant conversation? I love talking about cooking!

I can do small talk however i prefer deep topics that is my strength overall.

MmeLePen! You crack me up!! ! Yes... it is a very pleasant conversation! Much better than chatting about the weather.... hehehehe I also agree that it is a pain when you want to deep fry food for more than one or two people. I have two daughters and a husband that I have to cook for. I just use a dutch oven full of oil with one of those fry basket things when I do my deep fat frying. I would LOVE to have one of those pans that has the really high sides, however.... sigh...... it would be so much cleaner that way.

Back to the chit chat topic....

I used to smoke, but several years ago I quit. However, back in the day when I did smoke I used to find that it was totally necessary to be able to engage in at least some amount of small talk. I went to a community college and everyone went outside to smoke between classes and on breaks. You sort of had a connection with other people because you were all "smokers". Gross as it was, there was a comeradery (sp?). Since I am not very good at small talk and tend to get sucked into peoples problems (mostly because I can't figure out a polite way out of it) I always felt like some sort of "smoke break therapist". I would just listen to people and make comments. It was facinating to hear some of the crazy stuff that happens in people lives. Being an inner city community college, there were all kinds of folks there. Some of them from very shady backgrounds. I have heard about people who are trying to determine which man fathered their children, what kind of an affair someone is having, people blabbing about reasons why they got fired from jobs, how they learned to read at 40 years of age.... all sorts of crazy stuff! I don't know if I learned how to be better at small talk or not, but I will say that it was probably some good practice for later when I went to a larger university and had to "chit chat" with slightly less pathetic folks. I was a lot less nervous when someone would say something like "crappy weather today, huh?". Mostly because I was so used to people just berting out whatever to their "homies". It is sort of funny looking back on that experience..... What a crazy start to an education!! All said, it was actually a pretty nice school.... they just happened to have a very active GED program. I think that is why there such "characters" all over campus.