Foot in MOUTH faux pas's

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Golly I have made so many faux pas's today! I'm quite alert too which is odd. The first one was talking about the local football team and how crap/hilarious they are outside in my sisters garden. She was errr mortified the manager is her next door neighbour and he was sat outside sunbathing. Oops it was a light hearted comment that went horribly wrong. Then there were a few others where I revealed a secret, then I got some information wrong. I am a verbal klutz!!

I have not made a single verbal mistake this afternoon. That is because I am home by myself.

So you're either ignoring yourself, very tolerant of the things you say around yourself, or else you are PERFECT!

That wasn't a faux pas was it?

Well yes, I have become very tolerant of myself.

I would say, "foot in mouth disease," is one of the worst aspects of my AS. I am not a dumb person, but I do something dumb all the time.

I made a faux pas the other day, bumped into an old friend who had a little boy with her, well she looked kind of plump so i assumed she was having another baby, so i asked her when the baby was due, she said with a look of horror on her face I'm not pregnant! OOPS.

Nowadays I hardly make any verbal faux pas anymore. I used to make 1 every word I uttered. But today I censor myself and before I say anything I ask myself:

Is it interesting?
Is it the truth?
Is it intelligent?
Is it deep?

If I answer yes to any of the questions, then I don't say the thing I was going to say.

I've just learned to avoid saying anything specific about a person I meet unless I REALLY know what I'm talking about...

Names are my biggest downfall -
-I can't remember names unless I have been interacting VERY closely with that person. There are nurses, doctors and other people that I have worked with day-in-and-day-out for five years straight, and I still don't know their names. I try, once-in-a-while to read their name tags, but I usually drop that rather quickly because I figure they see me looking at their chest.

-If someone is introduced to me I guarantee that 98% of the time I will not 'hear' their name or I forget it in a few seconds.

Faces & bodies are another area I have trouble -

-Again, if I do not have a very close association with a person I will not recognize them out of a very specific setting with very specific ingredients... work, again, for example. I see nurses who might work one department of the hospital for while and then another department some other time. This really throws me and I have found myself racking my brain about who this person is even though they seem so familiar.

-I can't tell when someone has lost weight, gained weight, changed their hair style, etc.
I'll see someone at work one day and think to myself, "Gee, is their hair different? Did it look like this yesterday when I saw them?"
Then I go ahead and try to compliment them by saying, "Did you just get your hair done? It looks really nice!", to which they almost invariably reply, "Uh, I got my hair cut a couple of months ago."

It's better for me to just address people in a generic way so I don't have to come up with their name... or a wrong name, be all smiley and nod my head a lot and act like I know who I'm talking with as well as they seem to know me, give very general comments like, "You look nice today!".

There are some people I have built better associations with and so I don't have the same faux pas, or else they know I'm a bit daft and we have a good laugh over my mistakes.

I do make faux pas. Sometimes quite often, sometimes not. I went out last night on a beer trip. All went relatively well until we were waiting to go back on the coach. I spotted this man and thought he knew someone I knew. It turns out he didn't, so I spent an embarrassing half-minute or so trying to convince him that he did know that person. And then it hit me that I was thinking of something completely different (they both like their ale though), and I went into a pub for a swift half before home. It wasn't a big deal but I do become unstuck sometimes.

I do something similar, but because of so much active thought there's a time delay in my speech.

You know people always say, "Think before you speak" but they don't mean it. They REALLY don't mean it.