bickering with my mom and taking things literally

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my mom bought a new toaster oven and she had me take it out of the box and assemble it for her. when we put it on the counter, she got out a piece of bread and asked me "anything special?" and i thought she meant 'is there anything special you want to cook while i'm loading up the oven?' so i just replied "no" and she said "are you sure" and i was like, "yeah, i'm good" and then she laughed and said "i mean is there anything special that needs to be done before we start using it." and i was like, "oh, let me see" and then she gave me this sarcastic look and laughed at me again and said "what did you think i meant??" (and her laughter wasn't friendly, trust me on this one, she is arrogant and laughs at my mistakes all the time when she's upset)
and honestly it does make me a little bit angry when she is like this so i said
"i had no idea because i'm stupid!"
and then she told me that when i said "no" at the beginning of this conversation, i sounded 'smart alecy'.
do you guys honestly think "is there anything special" was something easy to grasp or do you think many nt's would have been confused by this as well? i probably did take it too literally...

My parents are like this too, and they always accuse me of trying to get out of work; especially work that is not really mine to do in the first place anyways.

I would have jumped to the same conclusion you did- after all, she was waving a piece of bread around .

I think sometimes relatives of people with aspergers are too quick to blame them for misunderstandings. If it were any other relative, your mum might have apologised, or at least admitted the understanding was due to her choice of words, but because you're obviously the one without a theory of mind, it's got to be your fault.

It's not. In this case, the fault is clearly hers for being vague.

I'd tell her quit lying in my face about what
I feel.

yea i wouldve jumped to the same conclusion as you too

If this is the way that I got treated
every time I was asked to help, I would
quit helping.

I would have thought the same thing!!

Actually I think the mis-interpretation was the fault of your mother, as she was horribly vague in her statement.

"Anything special" alone and even in the context of that situation does not give any hints as to what she was talking about. Anyrhing special about the toaster oven? Is it anything special in the sense that it was worth the money? Who knows.

Just because you misunderstand someone does not always mean it's your fault! NT's can have horrible communication skills too.

Anyway, I'm sorry you ended up with a mother who feels the need to act so horribly (as you describe). People who have to make others feel bad to make themselves feel better have psychological issues indeed.