10 things you need to know about Aspergers

I have Aspergers, though really Aspergers has me. It's a kind of family heirloom. At least four successive generations in the family have Aspergers in them, and the smart money is on Hepworths having had Aspergers since we first started to bang rocks together and ruin our nails.

Wait... this isn't one of the things you need to know about Aspergers, but at least you know that this is an inside view.

Aspergers doesn't really exist as a term any more. It has just been subsumed into Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). That's OK. It was never the title and status that got me hooked. 

There is a lovely scene in Snowcake which makes me laugh every time I see it. Sigourney Weaver's character has ASD and Alan Rickman's character is doing his best to be understanding:

          AR: You are so unreasonable !
          SG: I have autism.
          AR: It's the same thing.

Anyway, here's my list, and that's all it is: just my list.

1  All ASD people are different. From each other, not just from neuro-typical people. ASD affects us all in different ways, though some things are common to most.

2  We tend to dislike authority, and have trouble recognising it at all. If we can't see a reason for something, it isn't going to happen. Explaining helps.

3  We get stuck in phases of behaviour, phases of eating. Don't worry if nothing but egg sandwiches doesn't look like a balanced diet to you. It will work out over time. 

4  When we seem odd, it's because we are. We are differently wired, and don't tune in to things that seem obvious to you. But we often pick up things that you don't notice, too, and this often gives us a different slant, a left-field perspective. 

5  Understanding is not the same as feeling. We often know that we are loved, but do not easily feel loved. We have difficulties with friends, too, and sometimes wonder what friends are. We tend to have one intense friendship at a time in a sort of social version of serial monogamy. 

6  We know lots of words, and often have terrible memories that don't let us forget anything. This doesn't make us smart. It makes us verbose and sometimes it's hard to shake free of the past. 

7  We get intensely interested in the weirdest things, and then move on to the next weird thing. Medieval scarf joints, how cisterns work, the sex life of trees, coins, Boticelli's brush strokes, how the Egyptians built the pyramids. You name it, we can get interested in it. An ASD alert is that we will talk at someone forever when we have an chance to air the current special interest. We do not notice that people have had enough unless they actually fall asleep, when we might wake them gently before continuing. 

8  We may not like being touched, especially when it is a surprise. Always approach from the front ! 

9  We might have a heightened sense, like great hearing, or maybe smells are really intense. Very bright lights might be disturbing. If we are behaving oddly, something like this could be responsible for starting us off. Social situations always make us jumpy and tense and we find ways to avoid crowds if we can. Crowds are anything more than 2 in our book.

10 It's not all bad news. We can be difficult, but we tend to be loyal, hard-working, and we stick at things long after anyone with common sense has given up and gone home for tea. We don't mind repetitious tasks and don't get bored with them. We also tend to have an inconvenient drive to be truthful, even when that is annoying. For everyone. Never ask an ASD person if your bum looks big in this if you would really prefer it not to.