Trouble with simple instructions?

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I was thinking back to last year when I was in eighth grade. I had a teacher who asked me to get paper for his printer from the back of the room. It was a science classroom, so there were lab tables in the back. I began searching under all the lab tables, but I couldn't find it. He told me "no, it's in the WAY back" so I went in the glassware storage room and kept searching. My teacher said "That's the glassware storage! Why would paper be in there!" I got nervous and blerted out "Well, what if it's in a glass box?" to which he just rolled his eyes, got up, went to the back of the room, and got the paper himself. A few people chuckled quietly in their desks and what not.

So I was wondering, does anyone else get confused when given simple instructions? If so, share an experience.

Oh yes, absolutely. I don't know how many times I've been told to go get something, and I spend the next two minutes looking for it.

Yes I do. I actually expect the item be right in front of me so I wouldn't even think to look under stuff or in other rooms. Just expect to see it in my eye sight. I would also ask where in the back. My mom told me everyone has this problem. Like if she told me her hair brush is in the bedroom. I wouldn't know where at. I know it's in the bedroom but i wouldn't know where and she told me everyone has that problem. The other person just isn't being very specific so you need to ask where. So it looks like to me the teacher wasn't specific so he assumed you would know where the paper is at simply because you have been in his classroom. So you would have noticed the paper there before he assumed. The students could have been chuckling because of the teacher's attitude, not because of you.

Yeah. It used to be really bad, particularly if the instructions were written. I've started breaking it down into a number of tangible, physical steps that I can refer to mechanically when I have to follow instructions and it's getting better.

For example someone says "find the paper in the backroom".

I would say to myself:
"I am going to get up, and I am going to walk from here into the backroom. I am going to walk to the left, and look on the leftmost table. If it isn't there, I will go right, and look on the rightmost table..."

And so on and so forth, basically internally narrating each step, forcing myself to associate it with a physical action (because I can't seem to know what to do intuitively). I know it sounds crazy and weird, and I figured my "mental paralysis" might have been a result of some kind of undiagnosed mental illness. My mind is usually pretty scrambled and I have a hard time comprehending information from the outside world at times, so I have to do what I have to do.

Going to fetch something when you know where it is isn't a problem, but if I need to be instructed on how to find something, I'm clueless. Even when it comes to finding something in the refrigerator.

Ha! There were a number of times my professors kept telling not to be too smart :p So I avoid offering help if I can...

Experience: Sorry but this is long
my professor once asked me to copy some words onto another paper because they were facing the wrong direction and I did it the right way but then someone else came in and managed to confuse me to do it the other way round.. anyway finally the end result I was too obtuse to see I did it right had this other person not messed my work up.. I go back to the professor and he tells me "it was my mistake to ask you... why were not paying attention?"... And I say "sorry it won't happen again I am not very well today and tears started rolling down my eyes" ... He started panicking and said "please don't cry I was already having a bad day... that's why I yelled"... After which he sort of speaks to me like I am an alien... He repeats instructions over and over again!

Yeah its happened to me before...its not that I don't understand the directions more like I get with whatever the task its itself.

I don't know if I have trouble with instructions per se but I do have an annoying habit of trying to clarify directions to an - annoying - degree. Maybe its a defense mechanism? I dunno...

"Go get the paper in the back of the room'.
"Any particular paper?" *with much sarcasm*
"The page I just printed..."
*if the printer is not within sight* "And you hide the printer where?"

I also talk myself through things - out loud usually. I play it off as humor but I do actually need to do it to keep things straight sometimes. "If I were a printer in the back of the room, where would I hide?"

RonWren---I am 46 years old and I still don't follow simple directions well. I think we on the autism spectrum often think things too complicated sometimes. I try to visualize images of the directions to help. That can help. But today I went to a nearby school to research some yearbooks. The office lady showed me to the library---very simple---just walk straight down the hall to the doors on the left just before the exit doors. Ok---not so bad---but I got lost leaving the library to go back to the office. I finally exited through the exit and walked around the building until I found my car.

I think a lot of people giving the directions are partly at fault, but possibly other people pick up something intuitively in those directions better or just ask one right question.

Like one time delivering to a company I was asked to open a large bay garage door which is something I normally never do. I shove on it and nothing. Then the guy sitting on a forklift points and says release the latch.

Maybe at this point other people get this more quickly, but I stepped back and looked at the entire door trying to find the latch. I don't know why he couldn't be more specific and say bottom left. Also he was pointing towards it but I'm couldn't tell where exactly.

It also didn't help that I didn't personally think it was part of my job to deal with any part of the unloading process while this guy was sitting there on his forklift. It's his company and their equipment. In half the time he could have opened the door himself.