Classic Aspie Moments. Share your own.

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Stole a sink from a pub on a night out with mates. A classic and random Aspie moment surely?

I was at a birthday party this summer and the mother was about to cut cake and her three year old daughter put her mouth near the cake or touched it, I don't remember which. But anyway I said "I don't want that piece" and then I heard my husband say "She's very honest," so I thought I said something wrong or thought someone got offended and said something bad about me. But no he told me most people wouldn't say it and I asked him why and he said they would think it might offend. Now why would someone be offended if they touched the cake and someone said they don't want that piece? Who would want a piece of cake that was touched by someone or where they had their mouth on it? Why would someone be offended if someone else said they don't want that piece if they put their mouths on it?

Heck kids talk like that all the time but my husband said they do that because their social filters haven't been fully developed yet.

Luckily no one was offended at the party nor said anything.

Well at least I know now to not ever say "I don't want that piece" since it seems to be socially unacceptable.

And for that very reason it shouldn't be a problem for us to mess up once or twice too, I know I would speak my word if a kid touched or put his mouth on the cake.

watching an woman irrationally lay into my apsie friend just because she made her teddybear Bearsac say hello to her baby was absolutely shocking, we were filming a documentary about it at the time.

I'll post a link soon

Wow... I had no idea. I'm sure I've said this numerous times. I wasn't aware it was something people were supposed to "grow out of". I might still say it though... if the alternative is a slimed on piece of cake .

To refuse food when you are a guest is surrounded by taboos. It's best never to outright refuse food in an honest way.

So what do people say instead to reject food? If someone sneezed on their birthday cake, what does everyone say? I sure wouldn't want to eat it. If someone is allergic to certain foods, what do they say?

So I guess it was bad of my niece to reject food we made when she was here. She is very picky about food.

Well, I get that it's not polite to refuse to eat anything. One time I invited somebody over for dinner (I spent quite a long time on it) and she refused to even try anything, she said she wasn't hungry or ate recently. I thought it was pretty rude (especially as she had been invited specifically for dinner. We didn't know each other previously and it was not a successful evening).

So if there is food available I try to try at least some of it. I was also raised to try everything and clean my plate, a policy I've never gotten along well with, but at least I learned that certain things are considered rude even if I still choose not to follow them (I will not train my son to clean his plate. I really think it does not instill good values. Even today I feel bad throwing away leftovers and I often feel like I need to finish something I have at home just so it doesn't "go to waste". I don't have a very positive relationship with food.).
However, despite apparent rudeness, there are certain foods I don't eat, and I sometimes have to ask people what is in a particular dish (otherwise, I just have to not try the dish, which sometimes happens at things like potlucks where you don't know what it is or who brought it). But, I do try sample things because I've been told its rude not to. More so at somebody's house especially if I know the person who made it, I will try it. It's doesn't really solve the "rude" issue though because if someone asks me how I like something and I don't like it, I can't pretend that I do (for one, it seems unethical, and for two, even if I try something uncommitted it comes out sounding like I don't like it if I don't like it). Sometimes, I pretend my mouth is full and just nod when asked "how is the food" and people often seem to be satisfied with this. Obviously if I DO like something and I am asked I will say so but the problems usually come up when it's something you don't want to eat or don't like.

But saying you don't want THAT piece of cake isn't rejection of the food is it? Wouldn't it be okay to refuse if it was dropped on the floor or something? (although I admit I've also requested "special" prices of things like corners, etc... but people usually ask if you want a particular piece. Or maybe just around me).

I do offend people asking with some regularity if food contains pork or alcohol products, because I do not eat those for religious reasons. I am more likely to avoid suspect looking items or ask somebody else I know who is already trying it, to avoid the issue. As far as I have observed people seem to have more positive reactions to people asking if something has meat in it becuase they are vegetarian, or if it contains something they're allergic too, but maybe it is because those people ask more "nicely" than I do or something.

Well my husband has made breakfast before and my cooking teacher came over and we offered her some but she rejected it. We weren't hurt or anything. We just had extras and wanted to get rid of it. better than having it go to waste. He made it for him and I and we had a lot left over so we tried offering her some.

Fun fact: she also has social problems. I didn't even know about it until she mentioned it when I found we both had something in common. She also tends to offend people with her jokes and people don't always know she is kidding and said they need to grow a thicker skin. That's my thinking there too. Then she mentioned she is just socially awkward and then mentioned last time she was bullied in high school so she dropped out. She had social problems so kids picked on her. But she got her GED and went to college.

I guess if I go over to my aunt and uncles for Thanksgiving, I have to try every food there is on the table and try every dessert.

I swore everyone rejected food, I mean you go over to someone's house and they have food on the table for people to help themselves and to me I always thought it was voluntarily. The food is there if you want it. You don't have to eat everything there. You can choose what you want to eat from that table and what you don't want to eat. But that doesn't mean taking everything from a bowl or plate before others get some. I would just wait and see if others have put some on their plate before I eat more. But my husband has a huge issue with taking food because he sees it as eating other peoples food and it drives me crazy. I told him if they make food and buy some and have it lying out on the table for guests to eat, it's okay to eat it. That's what it's for but his empathy still gets in the way and he hardly has any because he would feel too bad taking their food Now I can tell him he is being rude by not having their food and he should try everything because it's rude if he doesn't eat it. Even if he goes to my aunt and uncles house for Christmas and Thanksgiving, he still has a hard time eating their food, same as when he went to his sister's house for Thanksgiving he didn't want to eat lot of their food there, he even did the same at the birthday party. He didn't want to eat their food so he only had little of it which is typical of him. So he was starving after we left and wanted food now and I was like "oh FFS" because he couldn't wait to get home to eat and then we had an argument over him not eating there. His excuse was they are on welfare and they may have made too much food and if he ate more of it, they have no food left over to feed themselves. To me that was the lamest excuse ever so I said the food they had out was what is there for us to eat, the rest they have put away wasn't for guests to eat. If they gave out too much of their food, their problem, not ours. They had it out on the table for everyone to eat. My husband is pretty crazy over some stuff but if he wants to starve himself at peoples houses, his choice but I will not use our money to stop at McDonalds or some other fast food place just because he can't wait till we get home because he chose to not eat there. I just hate to spend money when you have food at home to eat.

Heck even when we went out to Montana, oh boy he had a hard time eating my parents food and was always concerned how much he was having.


I would agree it is rude to not eat when you are invited over for dinner. It's not like you came over on your own just to drop by and visit and bam someone had made food and they decide to offer you some. I mean if you are invited over for dinner, you don't eat anything before you go because you know you are going to have dinner at someone's house so you know to not eat anything. But if you had just eaten and then all of a sudden your friend called asking if you want to come over for dinner, is it still rude to not come over because you had just ate? I would think even NTs would say no thanks and that they had just eaten. It just means your friend called you on short notice.

It has always pissed me off when I would just have eaten and then all of a sudden my parents tell me we are going up to my grandparents for breakfast. Bam I wouldn't eat anything up there because I had just eaten so I was being rude right? I guess I could have just thrown it all up when I got done eating but I never thought of that then. I just didn't want to gain weight by giving myself more calories than my body needs. It would still make me mad if no one told me we were going out to eat or something so I had just eaten something and then they tell me we are going out because why didn't they tell me before?

Blimey, I refuse food as a guest all the time. I know it may offend people but I can't help myself. When I see somebody touch the food with their bare hands it's more than I can take.
Sometimes my mother says 'here, try this' when she's cooking and reaches to put a morsel of whatever it is that she's cooking in my mouth. Whenever I can avoid it, I do, and when I can't - well, I close my eyes and think of England.

I wish I could stop doing it, but it happens no matter how many times I tell myself to remember not to do it.
When a person extends their hand for a handshake, like if they put out their right hand, I always try to shake it with my left hand, which usually causes an awkward moment, or I have to try to save it with a weird two-handed shake.

This is what I kind of do.



I don't understand your husband's logic. He was invited there to eat. He has permission to eat their food.



Again, I don't understand your husband's logic. Here is my thinking. I do not think a rational thinking adult would leave themselves without food like that. If they truly had a problem they would not have invited you over to eat and they wouldn't have made all of this food and bleed themselves dry.



Exactly League Girl. I say just take a plateful and everything is fine. They want you to have a good time. My wife goes crazy about food as well.


Sounds similar to my wife. It seems like your husband is worrying about nothing. The hosts have all of that covered. Yes, you should not take the whole lot he's being extreme.

I've always had problems about food with my wife. I've always had problems knowing how much exactly I'm supposed to share with her. She gives me this vague set of instructions that says "save for me how much you would want to have." Here is the problem with her logic. What if I wanted all of it? Do I let her have all of it? What if I wanted none of it? Do I give her none and take the whole thing or thrown the whole thing away? If I want 75% do I save her 75%? I'm called selfish because I do not know how much I'm supposed to save. How much food am I supposed to save for her and other people? This is with leftovers. League girl do you have any answers to this dillema? IMHO why not both of us divide up the leftovers in half and I get half and she gets half? She does not want to do that. She wants me to consider her feelings. How do I do that? What is her logic and what is her system? Why does she talk in this cryptic way?

League girl, is your husband the same way? Does he throw these vague sayings at you that means nothing to you and tells you nothing about what to do? How do you handle it? I end up getting into circular arguments with my wife.

NT people are always saying you are supposed to treat people the way you want to be treated. This is the so called "golden rule." The best advice I ever got was, "DON'T treat people how you want to be treated, treat them how THEY want to be treated." Simply put, the way I would want people to treat me (and probably this applies to others with Asperger's) is not usually what other people like and it annoys them. Of course then you have to figure out what the other people want and usually I have found they will not just tell you directly which would make everyone's life a lot simpler.

If you are dealing with leftovers (I am not living with other adults right now but I had the issue you describe when I lived at home) I have found it is easiest to ask when you are about to have some "There's one piece of cake left and I'm having some... do you want any?" Then they will either say yes (in which case the best course of action is, like you said, cutting it in half... to avoid as much argument as possible) or no in which case you can just eat it all. If you are leaving at least another serving (say there is half a plan of lasagna left but you aren't going to eat it all) it's probably not necessary to ask. Unless she was planning to serve it as a regular meal later, which is sometimes the case. Then, I have found (based on my mother's feedback) that if there is enough leftover that there is another meal planned from it, you should ask because she might have several days worth of meals planned and it screws up the plan. Then the best thing is to ask when the first meal is finished, "are you planning to use this for dinner later or do you mind if I eat the leftovers later?" If she says "I'm planning to make it into such and such for Saturday night" then you probably shouldn't have any, otherwise, the first rule applies where you eat it until there's one serving left and then ask.

These guidelines are not foolproof by any means but at least they avoid the responses of "I wanted to have some of that and you ate it ALL"(because you asked when there was one serving left) or "I was going to serve that for dinner and now there is no backup or I have to do a lot of work to make something else at the last minute".
There's still a fair amount of complaining in my family's household that I notice when I visit about people wanting to reserve various foods for lunch the next day, etc (my father actually sticks treat items on this high shelf with the hopes that people forget about them and he can eat them all), but at least there aren't generally surprises with somebody finding out all of something is gone, which usually seems to cause the most distress.

My mom recently taught me when people tell you to help yourself, they mean "take one." I always thought it meant have as much as I want because they told me to help myself but never told me I could have only one or how much I can have or to save some for others. Just imagine if I ate the whole bag of candy because I was told to help myself and then the person was mad at me about it? Good thing that has never happened. I can imagine the person didn't think I was going to eat the whole thing because people usually don't eat all of it. I had the same issue with my first ex. he was staying at my house and I told him he can have some cereal but I thought he would put it in a breakfast bowl like everyone else does but instead he takes out a plastic food storage container and pours half a box in there and I flipped out. He was full of surprises. Things you expect him to do because everyone else does it, he did it differently so that's how we also had lot of misunderstandings. Our minds worked too different and we thought too different. Now with my husband, it's with words because he can say something but it means something else to him but to me it means in exact and bam we have a misunderstanding and I feel lied to. Like I recently learned when he says something isn't going to cost much more, he can mean it will cost twenty bucks more but to me twenty bucks more is not much more, it's a lot more. Five bucks isn't much more but 15 bucks and 20 bucks is more than not much more. I am still mad at him about bringing our phone bill up to 96 bucks because after he got a new phone it made our bill that high and it used to be $75 a month, now it's 21 bucks more. I'm also mad at myself too for listening to him and trusting him. Now I feel I can't trust him since he can't talk right. He told me it wouldn't be much more and I said okay and go ahead and get a new phone so he did and then I found out about our new phone bill and I was furious with him and chewed him out for a half hour and he was telling me I agreed to it. I told him I never agreed to 96 bucks and he said not much more and then he said that isn't much more and I told him it is too much more. No he can't take the phone back because our bill would still be that high so no point. It seems like Cricket only changes your phone plan when you get a new phone after they have changed their phone plans but they keep the price the same for everyone until they get a new phone or want upgrades and there is no turning back after you do it.

I usually don't hold grudges but damn he knows how I am about money and don't want anymore bills and we have a baby coming and then he does this and I am just pissed about it because it was that bad what he did and I feel mislead and taken advantage of. He just had to tell me about it as I was driving so I was concentrating on the road and he told me he didn't tell me that to trick me to agree with him. Well I learned I should say no to everything when I am driving or focusing on the computer or on other things because I might not be listening well because my mind is still focused on something else and then I forget it happened and then my husband goes telling me "You agreed to it" and I have no memory of it. I get so angry I sometimes want to cancel cable and Children International and downgrade Netflix and Gamefly so we have more spending money and less money to spend on bills. I hardly watch TV anyway these days.

No my husband isn't like that how your wife is. He still eats at peoples houses but not much because he is too worried and he always has to ask first before he helps himself and to me that is ridiculous or else the food wouldn't be out if it wasn't for people to have. He doesn't even care how much I have and if I eat it all up but I still save some for him in case he wants some and if he says I can have it all, I do. He is pretty understanding.


But with my last ex I would save food for him like when he make oatmeal and there be left overs, I would have some and make sure I save some for him but to him it wasn't good enough. So he call me self centered and tell me I hardly left any for him. I would tell him I did leave some and that's plenty but to him it wasn't even a bowl and he wanted more than that. To me, people don't need to have a lot of something and I did save some for him but I felt no matter how considerate I was, it was never good enough. I think the problem was we both eat different levels of food, some people eat more than others so someone might prefer a big piece while someone else prefers a small piece and some don't care. So it makes it hard to judge how much you should save for others. If you make something for you and your wife, try and make it half and half, even so that way you both have the same amount. But if it's left overs, it makes it hard because you have no idea how much you should leave. I think the other person should just have how much is left, even if she doesn't think it's enough or hardly any left and be thankful than making a fuss about it. It's left overs. It just sounds like your wife is very hard to understand because I think I would be confused too and be asking questions like "But I want all of it, so what are you telling me? That I can have all of it?" or "But I don't want any, do you want any or just want it thrown out?" What I would do instead is make it half and half, part of it is hers and part of it is yours so that way you are both even. Like if you were to make chicken breasts and you only cooked four, you each get two. You split it. That's what I always do when we buy things. Like if I were to buy a box of fruit snacks and there were only ten pouches, we each get five. So that way it keeps us from eating them and one of us never got to have any because we weren't paying attention to how much we had or how much left is in the box. So if my husband only had three so far, he would know he can have two more. With dessert, I would ask if he has had any yet so I don't end up eating the whole thing because I thought he was having some too and I wasn't paying attention to how much was left. If he says no, I don't have any and I wait till he has some. If he said it was okay I can have more and he doesn't care if he doesn't get any, okay I don't think about him anymore regarding that dessert. If it's with cake or pie, I can easily count how many pieces I have had. If I have had four so far and I notice there is half a pie left, I know he hasn't had any so I save the rest for him unless he tells me I can have some. I would try and leave at least one piece unless he says I can have it too. This is how I be considerate of others. I split things and make things even and I ask my husband if he has had any if it's with Egg Nog or ice cream or anything that is in a container. It's hard to split things that are in containers because what am I going to do, open the ice cream and scoop it in storage containers to make it even? Same with egg Nog, take put the cups and pour the Nog in them to make it even so we both know how much to have?

This week at work we had an extremely busy day at work(I work in a video game shop and it was release date of a massive game).
There were customers lining up and the shop was full of people.
My brain was starting to get overloaded because it had been this busy most of the day.
I finally got to the stage where my brain got stuck and I kept repeating the same question to the customer, then apologise, then ask the same question, then apologise.
I did this 5 times. I was so embarrassed. But I think they could see I was having trouble so they were nice to me

League girl, Here is the problem. The phrase not much more is very vague and ambigious. He has a different usage to the definition to this phrase. Do you remember you and I talking about words having different meanings and each meaning having different usages. This is what you're encountering. IMHO, you should have asked him for a quantitive answer or to put it in more lamens terms you should've asked for the exact price of the phone. This is what I would've done. I understand and empathize with your frustration. When my wife gives instructions she gives these vague phrases all the time.



He did not lie to you or attempt to try to trick you in anyway. The phrase "not much more" is very abstract. He did not attempt to mislead you as well. It was one big misunderstanding over this stupid phrase. When you're dealing with money and bills make sure to ask him for exact numbers. Be aware though, he may get annoyed with you on that.






The problem is you're dealing in ambiguities again. This is similar to the phone incident with your husband. On the food situation, I have no advice because I'm trying to figure it out myself with my wife.



I will make it half and half. I did not think of that.



This is wonderful information. Thank You League_girl. Here is the problem. I actually suggested this as a system. I suggest other things like this. She doesn't like it. She does not want to be bound by a system. She wants to be free. She says I'm being controlling and I'm a control freak. She wants me to deal with her feelings. I don't understand how to deal with her feelings. All I want is for my wife to tell me what she wants in detail and she says she has no time to tell me the details. I want her to Cut the vagueness and the guessing games.