Friendship with nextdoor neighbor defines my AS

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My neightbor is my age, married, and lives in the apartment above-and-across from me. We've lived next to each other for over two years. He and his wife are shy, but seem like cool people when they open up and greet me. They and I have had brief conversations, but don't know each other's names yet, as it just never came up. They like my parrot, which I set out on a little tree outside for a few minutes every few days -- he even asked if he could take its picture.

Anyway, I can see his slight befuddlement every time we're talking and my NT-translation skills run dry. He knows I am a regular cool guy like him, but he also knows I have an oddity about my brain that shows itself at the strangest times. Like most people, he probably hasn't heard a lot about Asperger's Syndrome, but he knows I have some majorly different social senses. But we're friendly, and our association clearly highlights my AS, because he seems just like me, minus my randomly-occurring social stumblings. But, he accepts them as a mere quirk, and thinks I'm cool anyway. (NT's: take a lesson please! )

That's interesting. I enjoy talking to shy people, because they are often better listeners and they're patient with me. I'm not sure whether or not I am a complete Aspie, but compared to most people, I stumble around a lot in conversations and always seem to say the wrong thing. When A leads to the next person saying B, I always say Y or something...

Anyway, your story is interesting. Parrots are cool too.

It´s great. You can talk with him altough your social skills. Maybe other neighbor would not be friendly. You must appreciate these neighbors. Let him to know your name or you can make a formal invitation for his family. Maybe you would become friends.

I could sense, once when he, his wife and I were talking, that she was just about to invite me over sometimes, but you see, making new friends puts me very ill-at-ease, because I never know when I'm going to have an "Aspie attack" (to put it a bit more dramatically than it really is), where I spotaneously "turn ten pages" from "being on the same page with them", which confuses both them and me.

They are both very friendly towards me these days, and I'm sure I could successfully invite them over, but because of my high social anxiety, due to mental social blindness (i.e. ineptitude), I'd really rather not. I don't know how to socialize. And it makes me uncomfortable to attempt it (i.e. fail). So, I'm almost always most comfortable when keeping friends and acquaintances at a certain definite distance from myself and my world. They don't understand my world, only I do. And they don't get it when I explain it, no matter how many ways I explain and relay/relate it to them. There can be good will all around, but no clear communication between this Aspie and NTs.

Just use your skills to listen to them and you don´t have to talk about your social difficulties. Just talk about any interesting topic or you can talk about serious or funny things.