NT story

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A NT just told me a story, which I think is highly interesting. And I dont mean it sarcastic, I think stories like these are a problem I have to solve.

She starts by saying that in the former city she lived, her home was always just a spit away from any place in the city. Then she told me that you have to walk through a big park to get home, which she describes as dark and scary. It takes about 5 to 10 minutes to go through that park. But anyway, she had a bike on that spesific day and had to cycle around the park and not through it. And then there was a police car and a police man shouted at her through the roof speakers that she should stop. He came out of the car and she started shouting back. She told a lot of excuses and asked questions if it was criminal to drive a bike right there. Then the police man just turned around without words and went back into the car, which she is totally surprised about, and then she laughs.

I think I missed about 80% of the story, and she also told me exactly the sentences she was saying to the police, but I dont remember. I almost got a headache.

To get over that spitting part in the beginning I used maybe 30 seconds

The point of the story? ->not interesting, just talking. I can switch subject myself if Im in the right mood, and then I just have to tell a detail in between; and so on. One million points, and Im so concentrated that I cant follow in real time = the insight.

I am slow processing.

This never happens when talking to aspies and thats why I think my slow processing is because NTs speak without the adequate emotion. It was all the time too tense and I hardly noticed the change of subjects. I had no anxiety, only concentration issues.

Now I just want to ask one question:
Are you only interested in stories with one big point, or are you sometimes amused by peoples way of speaking and therefore you dont miss a word even if the point is not the most important thing about the story?

I ask because I think that maybe all of my issues can be related to a different emotional state than that of NTs.

Ahem, that story started good, and fell totally flat! either i didn't get it, or nothing really special happened , either way, blah. I think the important part of the story might have been what the policeman and her told each other? But yeah, i could have focused enough on what she said to stay on track, but it wouldn't have stopped me , when she'd been done, from thinking...where is the punchline?
it's like a knock knock joke: knock knock! who's there? banana.
If you don't know those jokes and don't think of asking "banana who?" you'll be like "banana?? what a ridiculous punchline!!"
Maybe there's a part of the joke we're missing.
Like, there might have been a question for you to ask, that would have triggered the funny part, but it never occured to you.

it doesn't sound like a joke to me. it seems like she was trying to show off or make you think she was 'cool' or 'badass' because she told off a police officer and didn't get in trouble. some stories don't really have a punchline or a big 'point'. it's the story itself that is meant to reveal something about the persons personality or lifestyle. the fact that she was telling off a police officer who was probably trying to keep her safe or steer her away from trouble shows me she's probably not the kind of person worth hanging around with unless you are looking for a drinking buddy or are sort of a low-life. that's what i got from it anyways.

I think that means you're potentially a good writer and a good artist!

For that is a very good descriptive detail on her part. It's kind of a peg point or a turn point in the plot. And it also kind of gives an emotional texture to the beginning of the story.

Maybe she told the story because it was out of character for her.

And then I ask, Why did the police officer walk away? Maybe because he didn't right then and there that it wasn't worth doing a big heavy-duty arrest. But it don't always work out that way. In general, arguing with a police officer is a losing proposition.

@ ediself: This was definitely no joke, but a story. My friend visited me, which I hadnt seen for a month and we were just happy to see each other, so we talked. The story was long and I think you are right about the important part of the story being the "conversation" with the police, but I think all the other parts of the story just popped into her mind before she could come to er point, because I know this from myself. You are right about the big missing part, because she was talking fast and I was stuck on different parts of the story, trying to figure what this was about. I lost track all the time because I had a picture and then realized that she was talking about something completely different. This has led me into social anxiety before, and thats why I want to figure out how to follow through all the information without loosing track.

@ missykrissy: I think you got the point exactly. My guesses for the point of the story are: how cool she deals with the police and how stupid the police is. I hang around with anybody who has a positive mind, and what is wrong with having a drinking buddy?

@ AardvarkGoodSwimmer: Thank you, just sad I cant show you what I had in my had
Maybe I was stuck on the spitting part because she didnt give it enough attention. It was like she didnt know what she was saying because she continiued talking so fast and there were no sign that she found that part any interesting at all.
She didnt know why the police walked away and the point of this story is slightly different to the stories I tell.

I have the idea that NTs have a different emotional state, because I think she put all her attention to the fact that the city was not big, and wasnt aware of the effect the spitting part had on me. Also that I dont notice the change of theme, is interesting, because that never happens when talking to aspies, and the aspies I know can also talk fast and build in a lot of literarily means, but I never loose track. Before I can continiue speaking if I would have used the spit part myself (and talking to aspies), I would probably put in a joke that I spit a lot on my house or something like that, before continiuing; or just recognize the picture in some way or other.

The point of the story is also much about her personality and that is something I show in a different way. If I know I deal with a spesific problem in a good way, I tell it as a fact and not as a story like this. I cant tell a story with this point. I dont like the feeling I would get from bragging and I also dont think it is interesting for anybody. I just dont think that high of myself and I dont have the urge to teach other people about my personality.

Maybe I went too far when I said that all of my issues can be related to the different emotional state, because Im back again to the awareness of oneself and everything else. I think the emotions between me and an NT are different, but I cant believe that this has led me to be so conscious.

In the middle of the story yesterday, I thought everything people say about aspies being slow processing must be true. I cant follow the story: I must be slow processing. What I guess now, is that the unsynchronized awareness and emotional needs is the cause of the confusion.

I have always been aware that peoples reasons for their behavior and points of their stories are different from mine, but now I finally think I know what the difference is. And I finally dont have any doubt that I have AS.

Only thing that could tilt my conviction would be if no other aspie can relate.

Doesn't seem a difficult story to me, though it's no doubt a lot easier for me now, because I've got the time to ponder it, and because the preamble warned me to focus on the tale, and because I'm comfy and relaxed, not walled up alive with another human in realtime.

So what was special about her experience, that made her select it for sharing? I guess she went through a bit of fear when the cop called her out, then she managed to blow him off, so she'd maybe have felt relieved and reassured of her strength, and she found it funny the way he just gave up and left without a further word, which does look like it must have been a slightly humiliating climbdown for him.

It's not much good as a profound, gripping story, the feelings and dangers involved were proabably all pretty finite, but it makes a reasonably attractive bit of chit-chat, and you never know, the concept of being able to defend herself might be an important element of her hopes and fears.

If I'd been on form and it had been me listening, I might have responded by laughing with her (policemen are often the butt end of popular humour, and I can share that sometimes), and maybe added something like "poor lad, he'll have trouble writing that one up." Or on a bad day, I'd have missed it completely until it was too late to do any good.

Anyway, I could be way off target......I suppose you could ask her, but that might come over as a bit over-analytical.

I always seem to find myself just looking for one point, but I have a high regard for the richness of multi-faceted stuff.......sometimes an accent charms me and helps me focus on what it's saying, other times a nuance might distract me from the material. Anything that makes me warm to the speaker helps, unless it seems sexual. I'll sometimes get hung up on an early idea in their stuff, and lose focus on the rest.....it would be better if I learned to interrupt and get things clear before letting them move on, but in spite of practice, I still find interrupting very difficult. I think it helps to just try to relax and not worry about missing stuff.

nothing if that is what you are looking for. personally i try to avoid people who drink and act disrespectfully to others but some people enjoy that whole scene. drinking buddies are great to get drunk with. i used to have a lot of them.

Yeah, this story was just boring and mundane! I would have started thinkig about what groceries I was gonna buy later that night about halfway through.

I can listen to stories with lots of details if they have a point. Some NTs can tell good stories, but I do find my attention is captured by the speaker's tone of voice. Certain people have a very cool way of enunciating and phrasing. Most do not. I personally am an animated speaker and use lots of hand gestures and my voice goes up and down a lot. It's easier for me to pay attention to other people like this.

@ ToughDiamond: You dont have difficulties following NT stories?

My anxieties are caused by this: when people are talking and I cant understand what they say, and exactly that happened with the story yesterday. The worst moments Im one step behind when people are speaking because the theme has changed, so Im constantly trying to hold on to the new facts, which then change and then people laugh and then something is supplied to the story and it changes again ... Sometimes I have had the feeling that people do it on purpose as a conspiration against me, thats when I start panic, because their talking could mean that they are fooling me, which I know is not true. But the confusion makes me feel handicapped. It happens maybe once per month.

A friend of mine made an experiment with me: He started with saying he has got 2 choices, A: start talking or B: sing a song, then he choosed A and said he walk to the city and there he sees a house, now he's got 2 choices, A: go into the house or B: call a friend.... he had another 2 choices for everything. He spoke with a relative monotone voice and the story took about 10 minutes. I understood nothing, nada, rien, zero... It was extremely fascinating. He just talked and talked a lot of BS and he could have gone on for ever. I have tried this myself -NOT POSSIBLE with that speed.

"The unsynchronized awareness and emotional needs is the cause of the confusion."

-> Because NTs dont care so much as me about the effect of every single thing they say.
They are not affected by all the stuff. And they are not aware of the effect of all the stuff. So what are they affected by, and what are they aware of?

Yes, but by telling it to me, she plants an image of herself in my brain. That is something that NTs find very important -> this is one emotional difference to me. It seems I dont have the urge to teach people about my personality in that way. I dont like to come across as different things, but I dont concentrate on keeping up an image. This is the whole SHOW.

Maybe I can fix those moments of confusion by knowing that NTs dont "care" too much about what they say, so that if I start loosing the point, I know it is displaced according to myself. I say they dont "care" because they dont care about the things I care about. What they care about has often to do with image, but I cant tell if they maybe care about something more. Whatever: I think I have to force through my own way of getting it, because thats the only interesting way, even though we then will misunderstand each other both ways.




If I listen to an aspie (and also some NTs) who use a very unusual way to get to the point, the story in itself can be the funny part. This is just not the fact when listening to most NTs. It is too often not interesting to listen and no interesting point, so I save myself by having fun with other things than the NT wants to express. For the stories I try to follow and where I cant catch up, I believe that the emotional and intellectual reason for speaking is unsychronized with me, and not that Im slow processing. If I would be slow processing, how can I then have such fluent and absolutely abnormal and funny conversations with aspies?

I haven't noticed a particular difficulty. There are people in real life whose words I find difficult to follow, but only because of obvious reasons such as poor diction, scruffy syntax, unfamiliar phrases. I blank out sometimes while trying to listen, but that's not really specific to just stories, it can affect any material I'm trying to take in. I'd find it easier to listen to a friend telling a brief story than to read a couple of pages of a book, as a rule. If somebody's talking and I'm not interested in their subject, I'll usually have a lot of trouble focussing on it, but I can usually find a way in, if I can just work out why their particular story is important to them, or if I can see how listening to it is likely to tell me what kind of person they are. The OP's friend's story interested me because I thought I could see common ground between me and her - standing up to authority. If I'd only been able to see the material facts, I would have been bored, but I usually try to look for the emotional content and personality revelations behind the tale.

I would probably never have noticed if I wouldnt have as much social interaction as I have. The kinds of situations where I get anxieties happen only when more people are present and the only thing we do is joking around. At some point I dont see the connection where they could come from A to B in the conversation. And then C, D, .....Z follows with me completely not understanding anything and everybody expecting me to laugh or contribute something, until the realization that Im completely silent -> which is not usual, so people look at me with a question mark and dont have the choice but continiuing without me. Its about humor and fantasy, which I have a lot of, but which I dont understand in these moments. If I take my time to think about it afterwards, it has often to do with how cool it would be to do something or at least image stuff, which then actually can be funny.

I guess that because the people dont give the right words/phrases the right attention I loose track, like what happened in the story above. And also the everlasting image show of NTs presenting themselves to other people, Im not constantly aware of.

To be honest, I do cheat sometimes. I'll see them starting to laugh at something I didn't quite get, and I'll think of something funny and laugh at that. Luckily I've got a built-in comedy system in my head, and I tend to laugh a lot, so it's not as difficult as it may seem. Mainstreamers seem to need an awful lot of reassurance that they're worthy and interesting people, and they don't seem to care much whether it's particularly honest. I'm careful not to go too far with the BS, and I very much prefer being straight with people, but I seem to be out-voted.

Sometimes I tell that I was thinking about something completely different and therefore I didnt listen, which is the half truth. Anyway, when I joke around with aspies, NTs get silent. Some NTs have tried very hard to follow us, but they just aren't funny, so it is sometimes awkward.

I tend to tune out during long conversations and stories. Not intentionally, but if you were to later "quiz" me on the information, I'd probably not get most of the answers right.

That said, I love the stories that my mom tells. She tells stories with a level of drama and excitement that make me want to sit and listen for hours. I think part of it is just liking the sound of her voice. She's an excellent storyteller.

Whenever I try to tell a story, I forget halfway what I was trying to say and wander off topic. People keep waiting for the punchline or the moral of the story, but it never gets there. So instead, it's just "stuff that happened to me", which bores even me to death.

Haha. I've seen that before. Whenever I'm speaking with my Aspie friend and her NT dad is there, it's always like my Aspie friend and I are on a different wavelength. We go on and on about some topics... Her dad will sometimes try to join in, sometimes with hilarious results. That said, I can make conversation with him too, and then my friend gets quiet. I feel like I'm bilingual sometimes, able to speak both "languages".