Am I the strange one?

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Izaak, it's great that you've been out there in the real world! And you're missed around here, so I'm really glad to hear from you. You're one of my fav WPers!

Greentea, I think you do very well here on WP whereas, I think that my overall performance within the entire realm tends to be marginal at best but, that is because I often don't write out long,lengthy responses or post pertinent topics of which others might find interesting.Anyways, I'm trying to get better at posting here and trying to make a sincere effort and relating back unto another person whether here or offline..



ProfessorX

hello professor x. I know you addressed your post to greentea, but i would also just like to say hello and say how nice it is to see your name there. You were one of the first people on WP to welcome me here last year. I never forget random acts of politeness, good manners and kindness.
I like to see your posts.

The tour guide must act as a kind of cultural and historical and visual interpreter and a SENSORY BODYGUARD. A bit scary really - as it means one'e experience of a place becomes a concertinaed and subjective tenth hand experience. I think most people live in that realm. it is indirect, and somewheat desensitised compared to how we live.

DonkeyBuster's point about the scaffolding AND the building says it all for me. We will absorb the experience in its totality of details. Some autistics who experience in wholes will take it all in in one fell swoop (like flash counting,) and others of us will absorb all the details by way of pinpoint homing in - darting from one of these exact experiences to the next to build a complete and utterly fantastic sensory experience all our own.
I get overwhelmed because I absorb so much. But it is a wonderful way to live.

GReentea, see how your experience of where you live is so rich. You NATURALLY have a systematized way of interpreting your country that is honest, complex and that give equal weight to all the facets. I also think your experience of your country shows that kind of autistic "honesty" - we make our own views and judgments, we build our own pictures, we have novel and unique ways of looking at the word free from the prevailing belief systems, as you say. Not always. But i do think we engage more directly in a sensory and analytical and systematizing sense and less directly in a human to human sense. We are not cluttered or bogged down by the guide's subjective view of things. We want our own individual experiences. We need them like breathing.

Quoth the DSM "persistent preoccupation with parts of objects"

We are the Sensata. Those who are blessed with the gift of sense.
I don't know about the rest of you, but for me it is more about systems. I break it down, understand the components and how they fit together and build it back up, and grok the system of something as a whole. Whether it be objects or people, whether it be games or communities, concepts or philosophies, I am compelled to sensate and absorb the data, and then I go meditate and decompress all that into spacial representations, which I then through an act of willpower force into a verbal expression that approximates what goes on in my head in some comprehensible way.

I do not think you are strange. Unusual, perhaps, but not strange. And I would be inclined to listen to the tour guide, more than some, at least so far as to determine the level they were pitching their delivery at; you do not know the depth to which they know their subject until you listen to them (assuming you know enough to make that judgement in the first place, which in the case of the overwhelming majority of places, I do not; but that is an individual thing).

I find I do both, generally not volitionally though. I'll get hit with the whole spectacular huge view, then the mind will pick out some interesting detail, find the pattern (mortar patterns, stone striations, etc), skip to the next detail, new huge view... when I'm up for it, it is a real rush to just drink it in, vanish into the sensory wonder of it all.

And when I'm not up for it, I get bitchy. It's just too much and why can't people shut up, and go away and pick up their trash and stop airing such vacuous superficial opinions at such a loud volume.... yikes, I can't stand it.

I think it's a matter of going places on your own rather than with a companion or two. If you're alone you do look, if you're in company you have to play the game of being in company. Do the other 'sole' tourists hang around the tour guide and see/experience the group function rather than the sites?

I find I often lose tour groups when on tour. I dont like to follow a set path around a place when I go to it and Im always walking off by myself.

Having said that though, some tours can be enjoyable. My brother worked as a tour guide and he is really good at it. He seems to have a gift.

Exactly!

i joined my dad, younger brother and one older of two younger sisters (from dads second litter) and we went on a little bonding-trip to røros, a copper-mining town south of here, on the mountain plateau. its a world heritage site, and protected, and now survives on tourism.

we took a guided tour into the mines, and i suspect that my sister may be on the spectrum, and i noticed my brother was playing and messing around (hes 23) throwing rocks at my helmet.
my dad was carefully following the guide and watching him, like everyone else were

while me and my sister were gazing around at the walls, non stop, soaking up the textures and colors of the iron and minerals, the deep caves and basically just taking it all in

same on the way to and from there, 3 hour car ride. dad and brother talking about engines, me and sister watching out the windows, commenting cool details in nature, charming lonely farms, strange little shacks in the middle of nowhere, etc

I do the same thing as you, Greentea. I'm usually the one wandering off to look at something -- or being left behind because I'm not through looking at something -- rather than listening to the tour guide. When I do occasionally go on a tour, it's to take advantage of the travel arrangements; it's nice not having to drive in unfamiliar places.

When my daughter and I went to Paris, we wandered around on our own with maps most of the time and had a great time. My best memories: while we were on the trains, passing a group of old apartment buildings that looked like a black, white and grey quilt with strong vertical lines and the occasional red dash from the windowboxes (I should sit down and put it together some day); the feeling of the little birds' feet landing on my fingers when I fed them bits of bread in the Jardin des Tuileries and the amazement of the little French girl who was watching; pan du chocolat and fresh strawberries for dinner; the pidgeons on the slanted roof outside the window of our hotel room.

Regards,

Patricia

Postperson, the other lone ones also stay glued to the tour guide...

sorry, didn't want to butt in, but I am glad you are posting on WP. Long responses rarely are read all the way through, or are skimmed quickly. I like to make shorter resposes and stay on topic, but any way at all is good. I read your posts with interest.

Merle

Maybe they feel like it's rude not to give the tour guide attention by looking at her while she talks. I suppose if nobody in the group looked at her she would feel more uncomfortable talking. It's one of those non-verbal NT hang-ups. I can understand it a little though.

Still, as long as there's a few people occasionally looking at the tour guide it shouldn't be a problem for others to wander around soaking up the scenery. It seems pretty stupid to look at the tour guide the entire time and not even enjoy the scenery.