Quick question for those over 60

Post Reply New Topic

I'm sort of trying to plan out my 'vision' of my life from my forties to my sixties in terms of what changing social demography and tendencies will both allow me to do different and what they'll force me to conform to if I don't want to get wrecked. Playing with some different concepts but one observation came up that hit me as unusual.

I was considering the possibility that as I get older, especially over 50, if people see a man or woman who acts differently, particularly things like premeditated nonverbal queues or slow and precise verbiage, people might be less likely to assume that an aspie is a psychopath or something else along those lines as they do in your 20's or 30's but in their fifties or up I'm guessing they'd be more likely to assume that it was the sign of a stroke rather than something like danger or mental illness?

It's what I'd predict from modeling but I'm curious if any of you have run into that as a sort of wipe sweat off your brow 'Thank God it was just that again rather than limbic terror'. I'd rather take the medical pity assumption over the 'He's dangerous!' assumption any day of the week.

Kind of sad that we have to worry about these kinds of 'mapping patterns' for human behavior and assumptions but it's what I've been doing all my life and I want to see if I can do my best at building a map of the creepy that I'd have to deal with on my way there.

So what, exactly, is your “quick” question?

My advice? Get a dog.

Upon consideration, I’d say that when I make a faux pas of the NT sort, people are likely to see me as a batty old lady, rather than weird.

So, yes, getting older does give NTs another option. They can make the assumption your problems are due to age, rather than autism, which they would just see as weird.

I'm not in my 60s yet but I've always been viewed as eccentric and odd.
Then I actually did have a stroke (actually two).
I found people were much more accepting of me when I used a walker or cane.
When the wheelchair bus came to my door people seemed to feel sorry me instead of confused.
People weren't judging me or wondering because they had "proof" of me being disabled.

When I stopped using assistive devices and started driving again, I got more weird looks.
Invisible disabilities are very difficult to deal with.

curmudgeon