I'm Not Witty Enough

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People tell me I'm not "witty" enough. NTs tell me. My mom, my counselor, and many other people.

If someone is picking on me either I dont say anything or I go off and cuss them out. It's like I'm either too nice or too mean. They want me to be in the middle. They say this is why I have trouble talking to girls too because I may come off as too nice, but then again I may come off as too mean and a total angry jerk.

It's stupid. I rarely cus people out and I do it like 1 out of every 100 times I'm being teased.

Do people tell you that you are not assertive enough or then again do they tell you that you are too serious. This goes for guys and girls because we arent talking about dating, we are just talking about everyday social skills and situations. If it were dating then this would be a male problem, but this is about social skills and dealing with people so its a male and female problem.

It's like I'm either too nice when I'm teased, but if i get mad or have an aspie meltdown, I'm the angry black guy. and also I just tell things like they are if I'm mad.

I hate those stupid sayings. "I know I am, but what are you" or "I have 16 but 17 doesnt match my 8 for the 9 is the 15 17 no 5 one 2 me on 17 or 5"

and yes that 2nd quote made no sense, but that's how NTs fire back when it comes to teasing, if they ever get teased. what I say is "Shut Up, leave me alone, stop picking on me and I dont like your ass" as simple as that or I just fight them.

When i try to think aboyt stuff like this to say

-Bully "man you are a punk ahahah"
Nt response "yea 5 times your mama ten times the world or backtrack 17 nine 8 7 my mom never twisted the door nob everyone gets a turn on yours"

----------I mean I never think of responeses like that too say either because i dont know how to put them together, or i'm angry and mad.

I get racist jokes, I get girls that pick on me, and when I get mad at them im the anfry black guy, but if I dont I'm the little punk who never does anything. and i've tried telling the teachers, that doesnt work.

So basically when it comes to problems I'm either too nice or the devil. But I used to treat people how i want to be treated but now I treat people how I treat me, because the other way wasn't working.

This aspie girl online told me she had a friend who picks on her. my response was "beat her up" or "stay away from her she's not your friend"

and Nt response will be "she's your friend maybe you should listen to some of the stuff she's saying that's what friends are for"

Here's my ideal friend or the way people should be.

-You dont have to respect people, but show respect
-Treat people how you want to be treated unless/until they cross the line
-If they do cross the line, fight them or stay away from them (also tell them what they are doing that you dont like, it may work, may not)

So does anyone ever have trouble being what NTs call "witty"? you know ...too nice or too mean?

Oh kiddo, I know exactly what you're talking about. I too am not witty, and often think of comebacks to insults days, if not hours, later. As for the teasing, the one thing that really helped me was going "berserk". Scenerio: Other kids had bent bobby pins into what were called "Japanese Stingers". One kid had come up behind me and snapped it on my butt. Well, that hurt. My reaction wasn't thought out, I just reacted. I picked up a desk and threw it at him, missing him by about two feet. I yelled and did it again, missing by a much larger margin. The teacher had grabbed me and took me to the Principals office. Mind you, this was in 76, and school shootings were practically unheard of.

The Principal basically understood why I did that, but I still had to go to a counsellor.

An amazing thing happened though; I wasn't teased or picked on after that...until high school.

The best thing you can do is avoid as much as possible those who pick on you. You're smarter than that, and you don't need that kind of trouble. However, if you're attacked, defend yourself by whatever means possible.

Take care young Padawan

It's an Asperger's thing. We don't have the social antenna to tell what everyone around is feeling, so we mix up their emotions and can very easily be offensive without meaning to be. Wittiness is another factor that gets lost on us, since it involves playing the social field. It's a real pain.

There is hope, though. We may not be any good at picking up emotional 'tells' like your average person, but we have the potential to become insanely focused when we want to be with incredible attention to detail. Think of reading body language as riding a bicycle for a neurotypical, with aspies having to walk everywhere on their feet. For some reason, riding a bike just doesn't click with us. But we want to keep up, right?

So build a car and zoom right past them.

Cold and hot reading. I figured most of it out myself long before I started actually studying it, just because I wanted to understand these weird neurotypicals better. Maybe I don't automatically get the implications of a smile, but I sure can register how far you smiled and with what muscle groups. Perhaps you showed teeth, perhaps one eye squinted a little? Normal people don't usually notice these things. But an aspie can, and it's uniquely suited to our mentalities. Wittiness is then just the application of data.

Jemir...
Aspies have a hard time with instant data retrieval... there's some kind of processing problem in our brains. That's why witty, clever comebacks are hard for us.

I'd recommend and encourage you not to indulge the outbursts... temporarily they may back someone off, but in the long run being known as the angry black guy could put you in jail... someone might set you up for some bit of violence you didn't do, but you'll get the rap cause after all... you're the angry black guy and everyone can testify to that.

Learning how to deal with bullies and disrespecters is a SKILL that can be taught and applied successfully. These are basic life skills that will be useful to you your whole life, so please find someone to teach you... yes, Aspies need help in this regard, we need interpreters and coaches for dealing with NTs. It's not a good or bad thing, it's just a fact. If you're still in school, check with the counselors about resources available to you.

Aspies have trouble with patience... I've certainly had trouble. A lot of it is communication frustration. I find that when I hang with folks I share an interest with, and we are talking about that interest, things go well. In just a general social setting, I have a terrible time and usually end up saying something that upsets folks. My couselor has advised me to just stick with the mutual interest activities and avoid the general social for now, until my skills are better.

Also, the teen years are especially hard for Aspies... all those new hormones really overheat our already overstimulated emotional wiring. There are some specific treatments (exercise, behavioral, medications) to help soothe the overload... I'd encourage you to check into them.

I myself got very involved with horses, and I think that activity which got me out of the house and out of my head really helped me survive my teens.

Well the desk thing would work for me, because the scary black guy things will come in again. But I like all of you peoples ideas. I really like Dentu's "car" analogy.

Here's why:
When I first started taking Spanish classes I was terrible. I had a terrible Spanish, but many of the students had her prior to our new spanish teacher who is by far phenomenal, but they were flying pass me. I didnt understand. I thought it was because I was looking to deeply into why some of the sayings were backwards like...Il like cookies= The cookies like me........I couldnt focus because first of all i didnt care about spanish anyways. But I remembered how much I like latina women, how much I liked music, how much i liked getting straight A's. A applied my obsesions and my intense focuses on the grammer of Spanish and i caught on, now I'm speaking it so much that people tell me to shut up! lol. People don't understand me when I talk except my spanish teacher...that's a good thing.....But it took the understanding that I could listen to more music, talk to more people and beautiful latina women, gethired quicker than someone who knows one language, easily learn a new languege (especially the romance ones= italian, portuguese, french, spanish, and romanian), all while getting straight A's.
I focuesed my intense focus on how the grammer is used, and why. and every little tiny aspect of spanish that no one else cared about. Some things my teacher cant even answer. Listening to music helped me understand how to use the language, and my obsession lol with Latina women also helped me.

Now I'm going to spain next month. I was talking in class in spanish and another girl who's going made a comment about how terrible it is and it was the second time, and I finally cussed her out. She told the spanish teacher who's taking us to spain and that teacher knows the girl but not me because I dont have her for spanish. Now she's worried if I should go.

It's stupid she shouldnt have even told her. she also lied to her she said she was talking to the guy that I was talking in spanish to like I butted in. But she really wasnt and i asked the guy too. Me and my mother had a redicoulous meeting with the teacher and the girl and they asked me if I wanted to go over the situation again and I said no. the girl left and then the teacher went over the situation and that's where i figured out that the girl lied.
The teacher told me that the girls comment was uncalled for but mine was really uncalled for....(I had told her to shut the F up and mind her own bussiness and that I wasnt talking to her). The teacher was really reconsidering whether or not I should go on the trip.
She said the girl that I cussed out is really sweet. But she's only sweet around the teacher. She's mean and a bully. She's white I'm black

Now I'm the scary black guy who cussed out the little white girl and everyone's scared. But I'm really an aspie that was getting constantly teased by a NT bully

but she flipped the damn script.

This scenario is so familiar to me and exactly what I was talking about... now you're the scary black guy and every screw up you make will only confirm the NTs judgements.

I cannot stress how important it is for you to find someway to better deal with the communication frustration... find the middle ground between ignoring and cussing someone out.

Because if you don't, not only will you not be going to Spain [major bummer] you won't be employable no matter how brilliant you are (and your intuition about language is right on... but to use it requires face time and that requires people skills)

So get really even with the manipulative little white chick (I myself an a white chick but I can only manipulate a wrench) and best her in the world by being more smooth, more suave, way more kind than her. You may not be able to go to Spain, but at your 25th class reunion, her looks will be gone and your people skills will just have kept getting better and better and better...

President of the UN, perhaps?

If it's any help, I'm a 50 year old white woman and just a few weeks ago I had one friend ask another if I was SAFE to be around because I had a melt down in her presence... not anger, extreme grief because she asked me about something I had just lost (much like the trip to Spain, something I had really been looking forward to, working towards). In my efforts to control my extreme emotion, I frightened her... I got rigid, choked up, I'm sure I looked just weird as all get out. I didn't attack, wasn't angry, just breaking apart with grief and my body language made my friend feel threatened.

So as Aspies we freak the NTs out real bad.

So the black guy thing is on top of that... gives me shudders to think what the NTs might do to you.

Sounds like both your mom and counselor are NTs, so they are suggesting something that is not an option. You need to find someone who understands how we process in social situations and how we learn to deal with them... my therapist explains we learn roles... act a part... that we observe is successful for others. Because we store and retrieve data more like a computer, the more positive images we can put in our data banks, the more options we have. This does explain how I operate... so now I know to go looking for role models around me, in movies, visualizing how characters in my favorite books handle things...

Does this make sense to you? Does this sound right?

There's a lot of tough-guy macho jerk man images out there... are they playing in your brain? Stop watching those films and start watching for the calm, cool, collected and masterful guys...

Because my therapist gets how my brain operates, and how NTs operate she can be my translator, helping me to understand the NT secret language. Then we can go over how to respond in an appropriate way, using the techniques that get it into my data banks.

I've read that acting classes and public speaking classes can be very helpful for Aspies.

Think of it as learning another language... after all, we are from another planet!

I'm starting to think that maybe you have a hang-up about not being witty. I mean, you're great in spanish but if you're getting angry because of what someone else says, then I'm also wondering if anger management is also an issue. I too get really angry-to the point of punching a wall and compressing some metacarpals in my right hand. This ain't healthy. It almost broke up my relationship with my wife when we first started seeing each other.

Perhaps in the short term you might try a punching bag to reduce the anger. Other forms of exercise may help to reduce the anger and stress.

If you can, you might even try some of those meditation music tapes.

Most of all, ignore what others say. I know it's extremely difficult, but it is attainable. It took moi quite a few years of trial and error to find an adequate medium. I still yell at the TV when the talking heads talk nonsense about politics. The thing now is that I can decompress by divirting my attention to something else and, although at times difficult, let the stress and anger go. Sometimes it'll take a few hours, other times a few minutes.

Controlling your anger will help you to relax, and as a result, you may be able to come up with witty comebacks and become a little more sociable. This isn't something others can do for you, but you'll have to do it yourself.

And for Pete's sake, Don't go throwing desks. I had to go to counseling-and it sucked big time.

Take care

Yeah, finding a way to manage the anger more appropriately is part of this. I meditate and its helped me learn how to breath through the emotional maelstroms.

And believe me, the more you practice anger, the better you'll get at it. Spend some serious time practicing your positive qualities, the ones that will bring you what you want for your life.... patience, kindness, intelligence, imagination, joy.

But a lot of the communication frustration/anger comes from not knowing how to deal with a situation, like being interrupted by someone interjecting an off-topic stupid remark [not you, Witch, I'm thinking the young woman].

Aspies learn in concrete terms... we need actual examples, not just vague statements like 'Be more witty', or 'loosen up'.

Take this specific example of the young woman being obnoxious and role-play around it. With two other people practice various responses... they can go first, so you can see/hear some examples of what is considered a useful response. Then you go. Try some things that seem along the same line as the other's responses and get their feedback. It feels really weird, but it will work.

It gets it into our memory banks in a way we can access when we need it.

You can look at various situations that occur in your day and explore them more fully, find more satisfying ways to express yourself through this technique. And through the NT feedback, you'll be learning how they think... it's very odd.

That's why acting and public speaking classes can be very helpful; though I myself haven't worked up the nerve to take on acting, I've done the public speaking and it was very helpful. Debate clubs can also be useful, but a little tricky in that one may start debating with everyone... not appreciated, I'm sure you understand that.

when i was roped into a group of people recently (at the tavern), some fellow said that i had a "sluggish" wit.

i said that that was precisely why my audiences are always slugs.

and they (including the initial insulter) realized they were my audience at that time.

i like to have private moments of internal irony.

people are like toys in my mind.

Middle-aged white lady here who has a lot in common with Forrest Gump.

Since being different and being teased were a part of life from a young age, I did my best to concentrate and spend my time on enjoyable interests that I could do alone or join a like-minded group if I chose.

Became a distance runner in junior high school. Joined the Cross Country and Track teams to run races from the half-mile on up to three miles. Being on a team and placing second or third in a race made me "socially acceptable" and less of a target for teasing. It also got me out of having to take gym class. And kept me physically fit in a way that continues to help me as I get older.

Like you, I studied Spanish. Kept it up through college, majored in Spanish, and can now earn money translating or proofreading technical documents.

Tried joining groups over the years as an adult ... found out that some people (yes, including NTs) never mature past the junior high school "clique mentality" ... if you're different, good luck trying to fit in.

So, I decided to go out and explore nature alone with my camera. Now people call me an artist, and show some real respect. Next weekend I'll be taking one of my framed photos to an art gallery where it will be displayed in an annual exhibit which is also a competition.

I don't focus on fitting in. I focus on being the best I can be.

Hope things get better for you!

I have only ever done one thing that could be classed as "witty".
(Lots of British slang/references here)

I was sitting in an ICT class with some of my chavvy male friends. This guy was brought to the front of the class for talking. He was really obnoxious and no-one liked him. When he got to the front of the room, he was stood in front of the teacher and they both had their arms folded, facing each other. Both fat and short, too.
Out of nowhere I blurted out,
"He's gonna get MERKED!"
and made some chavvy hand gestures.
Everybody laughed and I was the hero.

But honestly, it was like a complete personality transplant. I haven't done anything particularly "witty" since.
Spontaneity is hard.