Taking things literally

I often think far too much about what people mean, or, rather, if they actually mean what they say. But the thinking, constantly being on guard demands a lot of resources from me, so I tend not to. I prefer spending my resources on something more constructively (such as research).

And then things like this happens:
The other person: 'Wow it was so great to see you, we must meet again soon, it is such a pity we never get to see each other!'
Me: 'Great, I agree, let me get my diary... what about next week Saturday?'
The other person: 'Oh I didn't bring my diary, but I'll text you as soon as I get home'
Then follows several weeks of silence
Text from me: 'Should we have coffee one day?'
More silence

And things like this:
I talk about my cooking for several people, or I bake a cake for work.
The other person: 'Oh we have this function coming up, can we hire you for the cooking?'
Me: 'I'll be delighted. I love cooking and arranging'
The other person: 'Really? Are you serious? It's a lot of work?'
Me: 'I am serious. I really do enjoy it. When is it?'
After some months:
Me: 'So, should I cook for your anniversary/birthday/...?'
The other person (looking puzzled): 'Oh I thought it was too much work, I hired someone to do it'

And things like people saying things they don't mean or things that are not true. And when I ask: why did you say that, they say: 'For fun'

But I don't get the fun. On the other hand, I also don't get jokes most of the time.

What I don't understand is:
1. Why do people say things they don't really mean?
2. How do I know, if what they say is true and I can act accordingly, or if it's not true?

Physical contact

About five years ago, I saw on facebook a group called Asperger Awareness. I had a look and one of the things they listed as an aspie trait was: Standing too close to others.

I felt a number of things: Firstly I was annoyed. Did we really become so intolerant that we assign diagnoses to people that cross the 15 cm boundary? If diagnoses are trigged by such minor details, we eventually end up in a society where nobody belongs to normality anymore... And then I was also relieved. Because I was home free. I don't stand too close to others. In fact, I think I stand too far away. As history showed, I was not home free, and now I am quite content about being an aspie. But is has taken me a while to get there. I wasn't there yet five years ago.

Proximity to others bother me. I am not talking about my family, but everybody else. If another person stands close to me, I usually take a step away. I really don't like talking to people when I can also smell them. If I have to show a colleague something on my computer, I carefully place myself away from him or her, e.g. with a chair in between. I don't like it if I accidentally touch the other person during a conversation.

Some people use physical contact as part of their communication. E.g. some colleague pats me on my shoulder while we are talking about school kids over lunch. I gathered that it was a way of telling me: I know how you feel, I feel the same way and you have a funny way of expressing your experiences. But I had major difficulties in concentrating on our conversation because her constant patting me on my shoulder distracted me. Sometimes I get used to it though.

If there is one rule of greeting and it is hugging then hugging is OK. But some people hug upon arrival one time and before farewell the next. Some people hug hello and goodbye one time and not at all the next. Nobody (I guess) hug their colleagues everytime they meet. But if the colleague had a baby, or they leave because they got another job, then you hug. Maybe. And if you don't work together anymore but meet at the zoo one day, you hug, even though you never touched the person while the two of you worked together.

I hug because social convention dictates it. I'd rather not touch at all. I am not afraid of germs or anything, I just get very self-concious and insecure. And I can see the disappointment in people's eyes when I 'forget' (I don't, I just pretend). You see, I didn't hug the colleague that had a baby. And not the ex-colleague at the zoo either.

My family and my best friends: That is different. If I feel completely comfortable with others touching is OK, and I like to hug. I still get confused about physical contact as a means of communication though. I get distracted when the person I am talking to, touches me during conversation.

This is what it's like

It is like singing in a choir, and constantly being out of tune. Sometimes to the point of singing a different song. Other times almost carrying the tune. And not knowing which is which. Either I have to be very proud of my out of tune singing, or I just shut up, pretend I am singing and knowing that I will never ever learn.

It is like being Goldielock, but never finding the right chair. There's always something wrong. Too cold, too noisy, too many people...

It is like being a sprinter in a marathon. You can impress at first, but sooner or later they'll find out that you can't run the whole distance.

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This is what it's like for me:

Good stuff:
I am honest. I will not cheat you, and I will do my best to help you and to make you feel comfortable.

I have a very good memory. I remember birthdays, telephone numbers, past events, how you take your coffee, and almost everything you told me (though I forget what I have told you).

I am good at concentrating. I dig into a subject until I have the information I need.

I am loyal and I don't escape, not physically and not into substances.

Not-quite-so-good stuff:
I am always cold. And when I wear woolen clothes and turn up the heater, I am fine temperaturewise but my eyes get dry and sore.

I need complete darkness before I can sleep. I wear 'night goggles' even when it is dark in the bedroom. I can't sleep - even with the goggles - if the light is on in the room.

There's a track in my mind that is always busy. I can't stop thinking, and I can't control the thoughts. That is also why I can't sleep. It is also the reason of many conflicts, because it is not nice, calm and harmonious thoughts. The track is like a railway track next to the real railway track. When the train manages to switch tracks (I don't know how), it runs on the 'thought-track' and it can't get back to the real railway track. The thought-track often leads to aggression, temper tantrums, and regular meltdowns. I wish it was not like that. I wish I knew how to control the train.

I am gullible and I am extremely bad at lying. Very often I don't catch jokes or I catch them too late.

Crowds exhaust me. Sometimes I get social anxiety but most often I am just very self-conscious. I don't mind crowds of strangers though. They don't expect anything from me.

I lose things out of my hands. When that happens, I cry and scold myself.

I don't know what to do with other people's feelings. I have empathy but I don't know how to show it.

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This is what I do to make me feel better:

Being at home.

Structuring and planning (calendar, to-do lists).

Knowing what is going to happen.

Baking.

Cooking.

Running.

Sleeping on my stomach.

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This is what others can do to make me feel better:

Don't surprise me.

Inform me, structure things, be predictable

Don't write between the lines (I might read it but you never know)

Be honest.

If you want me to do something (or don't something), please tell me.

Talking about feelings and other sensitive issues is probably not such a good idea. I am much better in writing. Writing also prevent most tantrums. So if there's something sensitive you want to tell me, it's fine by me to e-mail or facebook-chat about it.

If you think that I go too much on and on about nutrition or a smartphone app, just ask me to stop :)

Algorithms

There is no such thing as random. There is always an algorithm. Perhaps it is so complicated that it appears random, but I know that there must be an algorithm somewhere.

In the gym, I usually do my cardio exercise on the step master. I recently discovered that one of the exercises you can choose is called 'around the world'. The impact varies according to mountains and sights in the continents I 'visit'. E.g. going through Sahara is low impact, while the Eiffel Tower is one narrow peak with high impact. Now I am trying to deduce the algorithm...

• There are six continents: South America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceana. 
• The workout does not always start in South America but could start anywhere on the list. The order of continents remains the same.
• A 25 minute workout and a 30 minute workout visit three continents. 9 minutes in the first, 10 minutes in the second and the remainder in the third.
• A 53 minute workout (which I did today) visit all six continents, 4'20'' in the first, and ten minutes in the others except of course for the last one, which lasts a little less.
• Thus below a threshold this workout visits only a subset of continents, and above the threshold all six. 

Next step is of course to deduce the threshold. Maybe there is more than one threshold, the likely thing is that 50-60 minutes equals 6 continents, 40-50 equals 5, etc. So what's with the 9-10-11 minutes versus the something-10-10-10-10-something? I got to go on the step master till I've figured it out!

OK computer algorithms are easy because I know that they are there. Other algorithms are much more difficult. (Heaven forbid that they simply don't exist)

First time you meet a person, you shake hands. At some stage, if you see the person often or become close, you stop touching and just say hello when you meet. Then at some stage you may become so close that you hug the person when you meet. This algorithm I've learned. I've also learned that sometimes you don't hug a person that you've hugged before because you saw him or her recently. But sometimes it becomes more complicated than that. Maybe you hug upon arrival but not when you leave. Or the other way around. Or both. Or neither, even though you didn't see these hugable people for a long time. Please teach me the algorithm!

Ending e-mails is a similar story. The Danish greetings are different from the English greetings, of course, but the idea would be more or less the same: From 'sincerely' over 'best regards' and no greeting - just the name, to 'with love' (in Danish the abbreviated form is rather common) or maybe 'hugs', there is a development of increasing proximity. But what does it mean when a colleague writes 'with love' one week and simply 'regards' the next? When a friend moves from 'hugs' to 'with love' to 'best regards'? When a person I never met before ends their e-mail 'with love'? THAT algorithm is not installed on my computer! I've got my own but I am not sure it works to the purpose. To colleagues I write 'best regards', to friends 'with love', except for the selected few that receive 'hugs' from me. My algorithm works, most of the time, but it feels like speaking very broken French to French-speaking people. The risk of making mistakes, also offensive mistakes, is rather high, and there is nothing I can do, because nobody taught me the algorithm.

Knowing the rules

Some three years ago, Denmark hosted the global climate summit COP15. It ended up a failure, not least due to the Danish prime Minister, who, as a host, had to lead the final meetings. The rest of the worlds may have forgotten, while a lot of Danes still remember (with embarrasment) our tired and angry prime Minister shouting at Obama et al: 'I don't know your rules!'

I count myself among those being embarrassed about that incident, and I was never particularly fond of that (now former) prime Minister. However, I find his quote rather useful for numerous other occasions.

When I was a child my parents never told me the rules of social conduct. Maybe they tried but I didn't listen. Or maybe they didn't find it necessary. I was, after all, a quiet and well-behaved child. Also, due to my mother being the way she is (strong Asperger features though never recognised), my parents never had a noticable social life, where my social abilities (or lack thereof) could be tested. Thus they never realised I had the need for knowing the rules or they never knew the rules themselves, or at least my mother didn't.

My grandmother read a weekly magazine targeted at elderly women and housewifes. I always read it when I visited my grandparents. Among the subjects covered by this magazine was an agony column about very day-to-day issues. A woman wrote a letter asking which set of cutlery she should use first when she was at a fancy dinner party where there was more than one set of cutlery laid out. The agony woman answered to the question but also stated that when in doubt at a dinner party, check out what the hostess is doing, and copy her. Now that advise was very useful to me, it applies in a lot of settings and not only fancy dinner parties. Hence: rule #1: do what the hostess/ the others are doing.

I invented rule #2 myself - but Einstein has been quoted for something similar: when in doubt: shut up. Due to rule #2, I never said a word during my first 'adult' job, which I had for about 14 months. After I had worked there for almost a year I tried to say something during lunch, but my collegaues had become so used to me saying nothing that they didn't notice.

I just have to tell something else about the magazine my grandmother was reading. It was, in fact, a rather boring magazine, but I tend to collect useless information and the magazine must have had some appeal to me. The magazine contained a number of cartoons, some of which being vaguely funny. The one I remember was never funny, only puzzling. It was about a newly wed woman and her husband. The 'fun' part was about the husband being helpless and stupid about household chores. The wife is looking for the oven cleaner, and her husband seems to not know what an oven cleaner is. She is shocked, because that means that the oven has not been cleaned for A YEAR! Oh my. From this I learned: 1. There is something called 'oven cleaner' 2. Ovens should be cleaned, more often than once a year. Hey, nobody told me!

The other day, my husband and I were discussing gender differences in 'getting laid'-behaviour. He claimed that women can just come onto men while men has to be more subtle, invite for dinner etc. I painfully recalled those incidents in my youth when I was trying to 'come onto' a man but was rejected. And the men usually preferred either those very 'easy' women, or those playing hard to get. If I played hard to get, nobody noticed me. And I wasn't a subject of interest in the 'easy' category either. I never understood why women who were worse-looking and less bright always overtook me. But now I understand. I didn't know the rules.