I think I might have been wrong...

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All I'm saying is that, if giftedness is taken into consideration, what's left of AS is negligible for a diagnosis. Saying that I don't have AS and that I'm really just gifted provides for a very strong argument. It's what I've been looking for; I'm surprised because I never would have thought that I could find an alternative explanation that isn't 100% pure bull crap.

Still, I do feel that there is something more than giftedness going on. Very subtle, but something. That's what I say that I'm gifted + BAP. That covers everything, no questions about it. It makes absolutely complete logical sense from every angle imaginable. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that my judgement there is incorrect.

I may one day discover something else and change my mind, but that's just part of life.

“Be yourself and speak your mind today, though it contradict all you have said before” - Elbert Hubbard.

This discussion of giftedness vs. ASD and giftedness plus ASD reminds me of my experiences at the two ivory towers of giftedness that I have attended for school. Tower #1 for college and Tower #2 for grad school.

At Tower #2, the gifteds were mostly NTs, well-rounded, and totally unlike me. I found that most of them were very socially adept around each other, and I was very socially inept around them. Some had excellent social skills all-around, and some were master manipulators. They all enjoyed small-talking with each other. And playing mindgames with each other. And competing against each other. And frenemizing with/against each other. Many of them seemed to hate each other. I didn't know or understand what they were doing, not even when I was told about it. The social dynamics were very complicated, and it seemed to me that these gifted NTs engaged in all the classically scary NT behaviors at an even higher, more gifted level than normal NTs. How was I to join in or keep up? I couldn't, didn't, and didn't want to.

At Tower #1, the gifteds were mostly BAP and much more relatable from my perspective. Of course, I was more severe on the spectrum than most people there, but there were people who were more severe than me. At Tower #1, there was almost a complete absence of social norms. Greeting people? Huh? Small-talking? Huh? Playing mindgames? Huh? Competing against each other? Huh? Social pretense? Huh? In fact, it was the people who were the most NT or desired the most active social lives or desired girlfriends from the 3:1 male:female population who were the least happy. The most socially inept obliviously clueless nerds/geeks/dorks who only cared about school, lab, and disassembling and reassembling motorcoaches after burying roasted goat carcasses stuffed with couscous into six-foot-deep graves for others to dig up were the most happy. Everything at Tower #1, from the teaching style to the social events, seemed to have been designed by and for autistics. Or rather, that was what emerged from the BAP population. Even the regulations that were odious to us were designed with our natural tendencies in mind. For example, everyone was required to complete a certain number of units of Physical Education. Yes, P.E. was required for graduation from college. And quite a significant number of units too. I'm guessing that the idea was to get people off their asses so their muscles didn't completely atrophy in front of their computers. My favorite was "Self-Inflicted P.E." in which I exercised on my own time, recorded the exercise on a form, and turned in the form every term. The only thing missing was social interaction classes, which, in my opinion, should be added to the graduation requirements as soon as possible. I'm sure that the professors could have systemized social interaction into math for us social inepts, just like all the other subjects were systemized into math, and basically, every course I took was math disguised as Subject X, Y, or Z.