Aspie Get-Togethers

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I'm curious, what happens when a group of aspies get together for a social gathering? I know that at least some of you have taken part in social events with other WP members; so what's it like? Are people able to socialize in their special aspie way, or do they avoid each other? Seriously, I'm curious to know what happens, because it must be a rare thing to have more than a few naturally socially ambivalent aspies all in one place, talking with each other, rather than a lone aspie trying to navigate a typical social situation.

From my experiance, all the aspies there are just normal people. They are chatting and socializing. I haven't seen any aspie there who was very autistic. We have one who rocks through out the whole gathering and she only had one episode there and another member had to remove her from the room until she was calmed down. All of us are high functioning. There about about three there who live in a group home. The stimming there looks normal to me. Now at the next group, I might surprise everyone with A league of Their Own and bye bye Benny & Joon. But I am doing a crossover between those two. One of the groups does show and tell.

I have been at some of the gatherings, there were 2 auties; A severely autistic girl and a boy who appeared like a happy 6-year old, and 3 aspies; Me and two other aspies, I and one of the other aspie talked and laughed in a somewhat neurotypical way while the two auties didn't get so much contact with each other. But one of the aspies behaved like a tightminded jack*ss who have low self-esteem. He never liked us, so he kept thinking he was superior to us while he didn't even look at us in our eyes while throwing brain-damaged, ugly insults, so we ignored him.

Only aspie gathering I've been to was the weekend one in Avignon in May, with 8 of us; ManErg, Morgana, KenG, Seashell, Englishlulu, Darth Maxeius, and Raggle Taggle.

A couple of us were really quiet, a few of us very talkative, others talkative about certain things. Four of us had either food intolerances ( gluten in two cases ), or special diets ( two vegetarian ), and some of us took downtime at points, ( went back to the hotel or went off on their own for a bit ). All of us had "special interests", which some of us talked about more than others. Sometimes we would all sit there not speaking for several minutes, just looking/spacing out, but it felt wonderfully ok! Four of us stayed out till late for a street party in an old quarter of Avignon with music, the other four of us went home to bed, ( it was too noisy and/or crowded for us ). A couple of us were very fussy about where we sat or ate, others didn't mind. we all seemed to be pretty organised, but then simply the fact of meeting that far away from home, for three nights or more, meant whoever came along had to be to a certain extent. It was fun!

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PS. Oh! And Autscape, of course, near London, in August!

About 70 of us ( almost all of us on the spectrum ) in one place for four days/three nights, with presentations and workshops and meals together and a music night, etc. That was weird!

Total mixture again. But more impersonal, more difficult to connect with others, except during my cigarette breaks, the famous smoker effect! Little clan of us used to end up in the same places and chat while smoking.

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We meet at C.A.R.D. the first Wednesday of every month. The meetings are pretty lively and most of the Aspies there are pretty social. Most of the people are pretty talkative and seem to relax around those of their kind. At the last meeting, we had 10 people there 8 Aspies, 1 Autie (me), and 1 NT. The facilitator who started the group is an Aspie himself.

We talk about many things including school, music, each one's interests, I look forward to each meeting.

There was a group of aspies who were meeting up sometimes at my venue, only, I guess my venue proved to be too distracting for meetings...we would also sometimes meet up for outings....and a lot of the aspies would show up for our Sunday cookouts...so those kinda turned into impromptu aspie meetings and also the aspies who mostly knew each other from AS groups and WP got to intermingle with our spectrumy friends who don't really identify with the "Autistic Community" persay....and just incidentally happen to be neuro-eccentric...in our crowd of regulars, there happen to be quite a few...and a friend of ours who is an aspie would bring his HFA son out..It all died down after a while, but it was fun while it lasted....Sometimes it could be a little bit stressful for me because I was obligated to be a bit more social that I would have been otherwise, in my attempts to host them...
I think that several members of that group still meet up, but I am never able to attend due to schedule conflicts....and I have hangups about going outside my comfort zone too much...I had a meltdown after attending an Aspie meeting that took place at a church in a nearby suburb one time...

I noticed that we are all different...there is lots of talking and laughing and joking...
I noticed there is not an array of high-functioning and low functioning, but rather sideways-functioning...and we all have different sets of strengths and weaknesses and are totally unique from one-another...

That was weird, I had a thought about that earlier about an aspie gathering... From where i'am, they already do gatherings, there's even a club for aspies I always wanted to join that and meet some more aspie friends

Apparently there's alot of fun there.... I could even imagine all the WP members having a little gathering, that would really be my dream

i am currently living in an aspie get together haha.

I have enough get togethers as it is

Hear hear!!

Highly recommened it be pretty interesting if there was an aspie version of big brother? :D:D I'd join that

any meet ups in Chicago

I have never attended a get-together with other WPers, but I have been to meetings of a Dutch autism forum. On the meetings I attended, we went for a walk in a city (usually meeting at the train station and going from there) and hung out some at a cafe. Whether tehre was socialization or not depended on the individual, but I think relative to NT get-togethers there was cosniderably less interaction. I always went together with my boyfriend s when we were bored we coudl socialize with each other. I personally didn't really like the meetings I went to, but heard from my boyfriend that some meetings he attended before we were dating, had been fun.