No pleasantries or grand narratives, I will now reel off data about myself. If you feel so inclined, you may offer an opinion on said data (of course you may, it's a forum...). Early childhood data is based on parental anecdotes.
* I learned to read at a very young age, before I could talk, some time around 12-18 months, perhaps. My parents would ask me to retrieve a particular audio tape from the drawer, and I always could, even if they shuffled them. Before I started kindergarten, I would lay on the floor and read the encyclopedia. Whether I could process the information or not, I have no idea. Basically, I cannot remember learning to read, or a time when I could not read.
* When I did start talking, "baby talk" was quickly dispensed of and I read real-world adult sentences before kindergarten.
* I entered kindergarten a year early, but due to emotional and social problems, was kept in kindergarten an extra year. My recollection is that I had a terrible temper and a hair-trigger for being mocked or teased.
* Fingerpainting was a bewildering experience. The instruction to "just paint whatever you want" (or essentially equivalent) left me with no clue as to what I was supposed to do. Since black was the colour of electronic appliances, roads, etc. I made it my favourite colour, and fingerpainted to fill the page with black paint until the allotted time expired. Apparently this somewhat disturbed the teacher.
* My parents noticed an odd behaviour that might be called a tic in my childhood where I would daydream and then mouth the words of my inner monologue, as if I was going to share it with the world. I found this embarrassing and have mostly learned to suppress it by now.
* I did very well academically at school in virtually all areas except anything to do with fine motor skills - art, graphics, handwriting (my insistence to my 1st grade teacher in 1989 that we soon wouldn't have to handwrite any more as computers were taking over did not get me out of it, sadly).
* Socially, at school, I always had a small number of fairly good friends, but I took a very long time to be able to distinguish gentle ribbing from grievous insults; probably mid-teens I would say, and it's still difficult to some degree.
* I was occasionally disciplined by teachers or otherwise given a "talking-to" for expressing ideas or acting in ways that were socially..less than acceptable, but that I could not be swayed from as the teachers (in one case, principal) could not present a logical argument against them. Mostly I tried to follow the rules.
* In my teens, my mother researched AS via the Internet (when AS started to gain some kind of public profile) but decided against a professional diagnosis due to the cost and the appearance of me getting by "ok" socially - which i guess was pretty much true.
* Exposure to girls initially was highly confusing and traumatic. Confusion as to what to do, trauma over not knowing what to do and being very obviously, to others, confused and uncomfortable in such situations, despite the fact that I was uninterested in 99% of girls I met. Those I was interested in were subject to rather unnerving and obsessive behaviour that could have, on occasion, been called stalking, but I was only trying to do what I thought was socially expected of me; to show interest and to be persistent.
* I did CS at university and stood out as a geek among geeks. If I found a professor who seemed switched on and teaching in an area of interest to me I would pester and drain information out of them.
* I seem to do well at work, but I often need to ask to clarify instructions quite specifically. I will correct my boss' spelling when he asks for comments on documents, which now that I think about it, may not be appreciated. I find his responses to my sarcasm often hard to read. When others use sarcasm, I can often see a possible sarcastic context for what they have said, but I often cannot be sure if this is the intended context.
* In public spaces, I tend to be confused as to where I should stand and will sometimes change position for what must seem to observes as being no apparent reason, but it will tend to be because I have found a position slightly less obstructive to others, or more "secure". I try to avoid both making eye contact and staring at my shoes by staring past people, as I have been told that when I do make I contact I tend to stare lasers through people and look terribly annoyed (like I wanted to punch someone, according to a friend who saw me in public by chance once), even though it is my normal or possibly "deep in thought" expression.
* I am very confident and much less introverted around good friends who share my interests, but even so, I can find it difficult to find my turn to talk and become very frustrated when a person I have been trying to explore an idea with or extract some information from is distracted by a conversational thread of no interest to me personally (like a newly release computer game).
* I have always been told that I startle easily.
* A couple of my friends have (possibly jokingly) suggested I must be Aspie; one has a diagnosed Aspie brother.
* Since the screening of The Big Bang Theory, I feel a touch less inclined to suppress Sheldon-like behaviour to make others feel more comfortable.
End data.
18 May 2011, 9:01 am
