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Whisperer
Velociraptor
Joined: Oct 14, 2007
Posts: 458
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 Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 8:03 pm Post subject: Cab driver the other day. . . |
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. . .so I'm late for work again and pick a cab instead of the subway. It's not uncommon to end up doing smalltalk with cab drivers.
This guy in his early thirties (I'd guess) appeared friendly, sober, down to earth. . .
There's a traffic jam and we exchange a few words about it. He lets me know of the traffic jam that's bound to take place during that afternoon down the same road - a workers parade I hadn't heard of.
I follow his talk with comments like "yeah, you bet! lol". . . as I know I can.
. . .until I say "Yeah, downtown at 6pm is a freaking black hole!". I little warning sign was going on and off in my mind urging me not to say that, as usual, but since I saw no logical reason to omit that statement I did anyway. . . as usual.
For some reason. . . as expected, the guy reacted like I'd said I eat human flesh for breakfast. He became terribly serious as I finished my statement - focused on a terrible invisible point slightly to his right and below his normal line of sight. He made no reply and remained terribly serious for the rest of the ride. For the next 10 minutes no one spoke a word and so it was until I got off and payed. I tried not to worry since things like this have happened before - I looked out the window with my usual stupid smirk.
I dismiss people like this guy as rather dumb since anyone at least beyond primary school knows the very basics of what a black hole supposedly is and everyone who happens to have a job in this city knows that traffic makes it very hard to quickly leave the downtown area on Friday evenings - it doesn't require any thought and even if what I said sounded lame that's no reason to abort all communications. It has happened before, however. . . It's like I threw the ball too hard or too far.
I'm just posting it 'cause it sounds like a typical aspie vs nt situation; though I still think there are nts smarter than this guy. . . I don't care much about what happened; it just called my attention - especially as I somehow knew that statement would screw it. . . |
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Kalister1
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 09, 2007
Posts: 2882
Location: California
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| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 8:39 pm Post subject: |
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I dont get it 
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sufi
Snowy Owl
Joined: Dec 16, 2007
Posts: 147
Location: mid-michigan
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| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 9:41 pm Post subject: |
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| I don't get it either - maybe the conversation stopped cause you got up-tight -- nothing wrong with what you said, and even if he did not know what a blackhole was --- so what? |
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Whisperer
Velociraptor
Joined: Oct 14, 2007
Posts: 458
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| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 10:19 pm Post subject: |
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er. . . no. . . the conversation stopped because he got uptight (as I described) and I'm only curious about the way he overreacted and how I was still getting the feeling that a statement like that had a high chance of screwing up the whole smalltalk-situation even though it didn't make logical sense.
. . .like people get weirded out if taken slightly outside certain small talk boundaries and when that is bound to happen I can sense it even if I later on blunder out of sheer impatience - but then again it's the intensity of his reaction that calls my attention and makes me wonder about that which is stereotyped as NT. |
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sinsboldly
Free Range Aspie
Joined: Nov 22, 2006
Age: 57
Posts: 7552
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 11:39 pm Post subject: Re: Cab driver the other day. . . |
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| Whisperer wrote: | . . .so I'm late for work again and pick a cab instead of the subway. It's not uncommon to end up doing smalltalk with cab drivers.
This guy in his early thirties (I'd guess) appeared friendly, sober, down to earth. . .
There's a traffic jam and we exchange a few words about it. He lets me know of the traffic jam that's bound to take place during that afternoon down the same road - a workers parade I hadn't heard of.
I follow his talk with comments like "yeah, you bet! lol". . . as I know I can.
. . .until I say "Yeah, downtown at 6pm is a freaking black hole!". I little warning sign was going on and off in my mind urging me not to say that, as usual, but since I saw no logical reason to omit that statement I did anyway. . . as usual.
For some reason. . . as expected, the guy reacted like I'd said I eat human flesh for breakfast. He became terribly serious as I finished my statement - focused on a terrible invisible point slightly to his right and below his normal line of sight. He made no reply and remained terribly serious for the rest of the ride. For the next 10 minutes no one spoke a word and so it was until I got off and payed. I tried not to worry since things like this have happened before - I looked out the window with my usual stupid smirk.
I'm just posting it 'cause it sounds like a typical aspie vs nt situation; though I still think there are nts smarter than this guy. . . I don't care much about what happened; it just called my attention - especially as I somehow knew that statement would screw it. . . |
Before you dismiss this guy as being too dumb to know what a 'Black Hole' was, you might want to brush up on other meanings of a Black Hole, and realize that a lot of phrases have more than one meaning. Matter of fact, until you mentioned what YOU meant by Stephen Hawking's sort of Black Hole, I thought you were talking about the OTHER black hole.
(If you think he thought about you like you ate human flesh you might be right.)
The Black Hole of Calcutta was a small dungeon where troops of the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, held British prisoners of war after the capture of Fort William on June 20, 1756. John Zephaniah Holwell claimed that following the fall of the Fort, British and Anglo-Indian soldiers and civilians were held overnight in conditions so cramped that a large proportion of those held died from suffocation, heat exhaustion and crushing. He claimed that 123 prisoners died out of 146 prisoners held.
Doubt has been cast on both the numbers alleged and on whether the incident happened at all and some modern historians have suggested the incident was fabricated by Holwell as a piece of propaganda to blacken the image of Siraj. Either way the story was the Abu Grahb of it's day.
Merle |
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Whisperer
Velociraptor
Joined: Oct 14, 2007
Posts: 458
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 12:06 am Post subject: Re: Cab driver the other day. . . |
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| sinsboldly wrote: | | Before you dismiss this guy as being too dumb to know what a 'Black Hole' was, you might want to brush up on other meanings of a Black Hole, and realize that a lot of phrases have more than one meaning. |
Sorry, did I do something to you in the past? Something nasty? Why do you have to forcibly assume I'm judging this guy for his knowledge when I'm saying I'm focused on his reaction and I even posted AGAIN to clarify that? . . .you just thought it was the right moment to throw this strawman my way and hope to involve others? can't you do this kind of thing at a NT forum? is it easier here?
In any case, the geographical location where this incident took place makes it very unlikely for a random person to have that historical fact in mind - and even if he did he could have just taken the conversation in another direction. |
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pakled
"Bless his Heart"
Joined: Nov 13, 2007
Age: 50
Posts: 2743
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 12:55 am Post subject: |
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| could be anything; he could be black, he could live downtown, could just be a stranger fella... |
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Whisperer
Velociraptor
Joined: Oct 14, 2007
Posts: 458
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 12:57 am Post subject: |
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No black people here either.  . . .but yeah you are right, maybe he was just strange and I'm overanalyzing things. |
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sinsboldly
Free Range Aspie
Joined: Nov 22, 2006
Age: 57
Posts: 7552
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 1:09 am Post subject: Re: Cab driver the other day. . . |
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| Whisperer wrote: | | sinsboldly wrote: | | Before you dismiss this guy as being too dumb to know what a 'Black Hole' was, you might want to brush up on other meanings of a Black Hole, and realize that a lot of phrases have more than one meaning. |
Sorry, did I do something to you in the past? Something nasty? Why do you have to forcibly assume I'm judging this guy for his knowledge when I'm saying I'm focused on his reaction and I even posted AGAIN to clarify that? . . .you just thought it was the right moment to throw this strawman my way and hope to involve others? can't you do this kind of thing at a NT forum? is it easier here?
In any case, the geographical location where this incident took place makes it very unlikely for a random person to have that historical fact in mind - and even if he did he could have just taken the conversation in another direction. |
holy crap, you really over react, don't you!
chill brother - when you calm down we can chat, maybe but until then "Peace"
Merle |
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ghostofzoelund
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: Mar 18, 2008
Posts: 34
Location: New York, NY
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| Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 4:04 am Post subject: |
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| I think I know what you mean...sometimes if I'm chatting with someone I'll say something a little too loudly or whatever while trying to be jovial or something and it comes out weird...kind of a conversation-killer...usually I try to mimic the tone of whoever I'm talking to to make things easier for me, but it doesn't always work...I'm guessing that maybe it wasn't your actual comment but the tone of voice you used? Either way, one of the annoying things about trying to communicate with NT's... |
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Whisperer
Velociraptor
Joined: Oct 14, 2007
Posts: 458
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| Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 11:18 am Post subject: |
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| That could be a reason. I let my voice become a tad loud which is something I restrain most of the time. It was a very short statement but for a second it felt like I was rambling on my own. |
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yesplease
Velociraptor
Joined: Dec 29, 2006
Age: 102
Posts: 414
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| Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:51 am Post subject: |
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| I'm going w/ how you said it as opposed to what you said. He could've been put off by how nervous you may have seemed. IME NT's are uncanny in terms of detecting your mood if they're attentive. |
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hartzofspace
Red Dragon
Joined: Apr 15, 2005
Posts: 3637
Location: In the basement, with the 'nomalies
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| Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:13 am Post subject: |
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I have had that happen to me, where I think the conversation is going so well, and I make a remark or a joke, and the conversation grinds to a dead halt. After much analyzing, I will try to figure out if the conversation died a natural death (something I can never detect,) or like you suspected, the person was not familiar with whatever term I used, or didn't expect me to be familiar with it, or maybe they were feeling awkward, and over analyzing themselves! Yeah, it can drive you crazy!
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kclark
Velociraptor
Joined: May 11, 2007
Age: 27
Posts: 460
Location: NE Illinois
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| Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:58 am Post subject: |
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It sounds like the guy was confused and didn't understand what you meant and didn't know how to respond, which confused you so you didn't respond. That resulted in no further communication as both sides were confused.
Maybe an attempt at explaining what you meant by your comment could have helped smooth things over a bit.
Saying in a light tone, "So many people get sucked into the downtown area at this time and can't get out. It is like a black hole, nothing escapes." Maybe add a little grin.
It is kind of an odd statement to make and not one that you would expect to come up in a typical conversation with a stranger, but I liked the comment and found it a unique descriptor of the current event. |
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poopylungstuffing
Bohemian Cave dweller
Joined: Mar 09, 2007
Age: 33
Posts: 3883
Location: not otherwise specified
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| Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:27 am Post subject: |
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i hate when that happens...and it happens to me alot. I love the people who will rush away from me mid-conversation...wha'd I say?
I try to remain sane, reasonable, and decent...but my standards of what that is must be different, and having no real perception of the point of view of the person i am talking to...it is way easy to make faux pas without even trying...
I think there was nothing wrong with the black hole comment...whether interpreted as the space black hole or the Calcutta black hole....I think it was a clever analogy and most people would not have gotten uptight about it. Perhaps the cab driver experiences rapid mood swings...and it had nothing to do directly with your comment..
The other night I went to a party, and there was a gent there who said he had just gotten back from Puerto Vallarta (an oceanic resort town in Mexico)....I had been there years ago and had a less-than satisfactory experience...having little money in this expensive city...with a wild-and-crazy friend who was quite squanderish....Anywhoo...um...I joked that we had the nickname for the place....Pinche Vallarta....eeek....awful faux pas.....as he loves the fancy resorts and goes there every year with his children and is all about it. Luckily he was a polite man, and seemed at least somewhat forgiving and i tried to recover myself from the dumb comment by explaining that I had been there years ago, when it was not so fancy..and we were kinda ripped off...which could happen to any tourist anywhere in Mexico.
..And don't get me started on Cab Drivers...some of them are friendly and decent..or seem to be on the surface.....some of them are downright scary, and I am scared to be in the car with them...
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