Adventures in small talk.

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Oh well. There's a bright side, at least you don't have to bother with small talk anymore if you don't want to. I find small talk agonising.

lol at the butter story, that happens to me. I have trouble finding comfortable items of clothing so when I find something that's ok I stock up against loss and wear. I bought three identical items, and the saleslady behind the one serving me said, "Wow, she loves them that much!" I just smiled tightly and said "yep" because I couldn't decide if she was being sarcastic or what? And I didn't want to launch into a lengthy explanation.

I am interested in this Sheldon expression, what does it look like? Because I can see myself using it a lot if I knew

has anyone coined the term "nanochat" yet? i just thought of that term when i saw the thread title.

maybe they all were at "that time of the month" (as they say).

i have read a few times that womens menstrual cycles tend to synchronize when they are always with each other.

once when i worked 9-5 in an office in north sydney, there was a girl who i got on well with because she was different. she was seen as a "bad/uncouth girl" by others.
i liked to talk to her because she had no principles and i commented to her that i would like to know the dates (just one for each) of the cycles of the women in the office so i could write a small program that would alert me as to their probable affability on any given day.
this girl was so much fun and she was eager to get the info for me. she spent lots of time being very slick and devious in her chats with the women and she came back to me when she found that someone was in a "cycle". i entered the data and i had a spreadsheet of data that generated cyclic lines in different colors that represented the different womens names. i did not get all the data, but enough to make things more predictable with a few women.

then a young guy came to work with us and he was also very interesting and i showed him my graphs and he went hysterical and said i should print them and put them on one of my whiteboards, but with no names. like have the color dots with words next to them like "caution required" or "beware" etc for each new day.
he said it would be so funny to see the women come into my office and not know that i have a graph of their menstrual cycles on one of my whiteboards.

i thought this was funny too and i did it. after a a few weeks, my main boss judy eventually got curious about that whiteboard and asked me to explain the graphs and what i was trying to assess.

uh oh!

i could not think of anything to say about it. (she was on it)............

sorry i have become verbose and my main point was that maybe the girls were not feeling very pleasant or approachable at that time for you.

It's from a TV show called The Big Bang Theory. A character on the show named Sheldon is a dead-on caricature of an Aspie. In one episode, when told he has to pretend to be happy for another friend, he does this:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/v ... 424242.jpg

I don't really know if I look that crazy when I smile, but that's how I feel when I do it. It is very unnatural to me.

Well did you ever consider that women may have other reasons for being annoyed or preoccupied? Sorry, not impressed by that story.




Ha ha ha! That is classic. I feel the same way as you do. But when I plaster on that manic fake feeling smile because I'm nervous, it looks normal and pleasant! I know because I've turned to a reflective surface right after doing it. And people don't seem to find anything wrong with it..

Yeah, my wife insists that I don't look like a freak when I smile, but it sure feels that way in my head. The show, though, is really great. It's by far the best portrayal of an Aspie I've seen so far, and it wasn't even intentional, according to the writers. Since the first season, I've noticed, Sheldon developed an interest in trains that I am fairly certain wasn't mentioned in the first season. I think all of the support and feedback they got from the Asperger's community prompted them to take a look at the diagnostic criteria for A.S., which I've noticed always mentions trains as an example of an Aspie obsession.

That so weird because I'm not into model trains and hate being on real ones! But Sheldon is excellent.
I just don't get it though... when I'm musing, people ask what's wrong or assume I'm plotting something. When I crack a "Why So Serious?" smile, I get a positive reaction!

Anyway, it's ok Sicklee. Maybe the woman still felt shaken up after her accident and didn't want to revisit the topic? Or they don't enjoy small talk themselves, or are really busy? Probably nothing personal. People have bad days and then tomorrow they're better.

No, she's spoken to other people about it. She was downright rude to me. I'm sure she wouldn't pull that s**t on anyone else, but I'm a freak, so the normal rules don't apply.

The menstrual cycles thing is damn right. I work with lots of women and their behaviour is 'erratic' so to speak. Jekyll and Hydes, the lot of them.

If lot of people are goo at small talk, then why would my mother tell me lot of people aren't good at it?


Perhaps she sucks at it herself so she assumes lot of people do?

Maybe if I understood the purpose of small talk I would be better at it. I just don't understand, though. As far as I can tell, it consists of two or more people taking turns forcing themselves to express brief opinions or observations on subjects that none of the involved parties care about. Pointless.

I think it's a casual starting-to-get-to-know-someone thing. When you don't know that much about someone, you don't want to get into deep conversations about things that are very emotionally charged or personal.. so you talk about lighter topics. For someone who is good at it, it's a light social contact with limited opportunity for conflict, meant to be a bit humorous or entertaining, and to start to establish some common areas of interest. It lets you know who you're likely to like or dislike without anything intense. Then people you enjoy talking to, you talk to more, and people you don't, you don't go deeper with, without getting to a point of massively disliking each other. That way you can establish who you just don't have anything in common with and still be able to interact with them casually, work with them, stuff like that. Small talk lets you know who you might want to get to know better and who you don't so much. I think. Personally, I suck at it, but that's my theory.

^ That's the best explanation I've heard, Maggiedoll!

And Sicklee- do these women know you feel that way about them? Because that might contribute.

As a so-called NT, I'd like to try to answer this question.

First, I want to say there's no single appropriate response. There are only a multitude of possible responses. Your wife's suggestion was fine. Your response was too.

Now, to your question. Just because we're NT doesn't necessarily make us any less weird than the next person. I have said lots of odd and stupid things to people in my life, despite or perhaps because of my high IQ and education. We're all thinking as we go through the day. We're operating on two levels, the level of what's going on outside us and the level of what's going on inside us.

I can be going along on a train of thought inside my head, and then react to something on the outside in a way that is influenced by what's inside. If I'm feeling particularly humorous, or remembering something funny someone said, I'm likely to try and make a joke, and sometimes I'll do that without paying close enough attention to the person I'm speaking to. In effect, it's a Theory of Mind deficiency, which can happen sometimes even to NTs. We are only guessing what's on someone else's mind based on what we see, and sometimes we guess wrong.

So my hypothesis (or my best guess) is that the cashier was trying to make a joke with you. Obviously, she didn't think you bought all that butter just to eat it all with a spoon. She saw you as being cool-looking and didn't know you were autistic. At the same time, she was feeling humorous. She imagined you sitting down and eating all that butter yourself, and the thought made her smile. Maybe she thought you were cute and wanted to share the joke with you, so she spoke ironically, as if she thought you were buying the butter all for yourself. Then, as soon as she saw you didn't respond to it the way she had hoped (by laughing or making a witty response), she probably felt a little bad, and felt she had been rude to you.

Just a thought.

P.S., I totally agree with Maggiedoll's explanation of small talk.

I agree. I think it might be a generational problem. There are just some people I've met where I'll ask them about something they said they're interested in (like art), and they'll just give me a short answer. Half the time, I don't know how to reply back because the answer I got felt so decisive and like it was the end of the conversation. Anyone know what I mean?

I remeber reading a sociological article once suggesting that the ubiquity of texting and instant messenger conversations could lead to people struggling with small talk and other real world engagements.

good point about asking questions that don't require a yes or no answer. I think it gives the impression that your not making a effort with the person.