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cosmiccat
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21 May 2008, 11:58 am

When I take a person's words in a literal way and then respond accordingly it causes them to think I am being a "wise ass" and mocking them or insulting them in some way.
For example:
Recently at the supermarket the cashier said to me "It will keep going unless you put the bar down." She was referring to the divider bar that is put between orders to separate the items of one customer from those of another. Since she said "It" will keep going I took it to mean that the conveyor belt would keep going unless I put the bar down. I replied, "really? That's neat. That's really cool." She gave me a dirty look and made no more eye contact or conversation with me after that. I actually thought that a new kind of divider bar had been invented with something inside of it to stop the conveyor belt from moving and I was impressed at what I thought was a new invention in supermarket technology. Later I realized that the cashier meant that she would keep going or ringing up my items as part of the customer's in front of me. If she had said "I will keep going" I would have understood. But she said "It will keep going" and since she was not an it I got confused and jumped to conclusions and made comments that she viewed as insults or mockery.



TallyMan
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21 May 2008, 11:58 am

I tend to hear things literally initially then the interpreted meaning pops up. This means I'm always picking up and generating puns, innuendo etc. People have said I'm quick witted and funny (in a childish sort of way), but it is just because I usually see multiple meanings in what people say - whether they intend to or not.

I also "see" what people say to me a lot. If someone says they laughed their socks off a picture appears in my mind with them wearing no socks. The images can get a bit bizarre though - so if someone says they laughed their head off the immediate image is a bit gruesome.

It helps me to play some of the games on this site though such as "corrupt a wish" :lol:



Tempy
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21 May 2008, 12:34 pm

cdc2001c wrote:
My family comments all the time that I am so smart that I am dumb because I take everything that people say literally. They dont know about my AS. I have yet to tell them. But this has happened all my life. They always say that I lack common sense, because I am so "book smart"(I hate that term sounds like something off Little house on the Prarie). Anyway does this happen to alot of other people besides me.


All the friking time. My gf will say things like "why can you sput out random information about history and not follow simple instructions even when i tell you literally what to do?"

what she doesnt realize is that her left may be my right, know what I mean???



ThatRedHairedGrrl
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21 May 2008, 1:11 pm

I don't do it so often now, but I used to take things literally a lot when I was a kid - in the sense of not being able to tell if something someone said was true or not. I got a lot of flak for being 'gullible' mainly - I mean, the stuff about there being a witch living in the house on the waste ground behind our school, about how if you touch a dead bird you'll get sick and die, stuff like that. Or the time someone at a school bric-a-brac sale in the 80s sold me a postcard of Sandringham that I seriously believed had been signed by Lady Di. That kind of thing.

As for metaphors - I had a problem with 'seeing a man about a dog' (i.e. going to the bathroom, or doing anything unspecified, in my family, that you didn't want to tell a kid about, like going to the doctor's, because they just knew I'd ask what for!). Trouble was, I had a real dog thing going on about the age of 8 or so. We'd had one dog, a Border Collie, a very energetic breed, and as my parents were older than some, they decided they didn't want to walk this dog miles every day like she wanted and needed. So they got rid of her, but I still wanted another dog...and every time anyone went to 'see someone about' one, I'd get excited thinking we were going to get a puppy. Which they found hilarious, although I didn't.

I got accused of 'having no common sense', and also of 'not listening' when someone gave me one set of instructions (which I would happily follow) and then changed their mind and went off on a different tack.


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Hodor
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21 May 2008, 6:04 pm

PrisonerSix wrote:
I think another problem aspies have is grasping the rampant double standards that exist in the NT world. I've always hated double standards, and can't understand how when double standards are pointed out to NTs, they seem to see as clear as day that is what they are doing, yet do it anyway.


Yup. I've always found double standards, and the constant backstabbing and sniping that many (not all) people indulge in. When I was in the last two years of school, there would always be at least two of my friends not on speaking terms with each other, for the stupidest and most trivial reasons. Then everyone else in the group would have to pick sides. The next day, the two people who had fallen out would be best of friends, and they'd be not on speaking terms with another person. They were worse than a couple of senile old grannies fighting over a sponge cake. I always refused to join in with that, which didn't always make me too popular. :-|

Back to the main topic, I don't take things literally as much as I did. My mind used to be so literal that I thought a 'landmark' was literally a scar on the land. Now, I understand sarcasm, satire, irony and other non-literal language fairly well. I still sometimes get caught off-guard by a small comment that I interpret the wrong way, but some NT-ness does rub off on you after a while. :wink:


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