Have you been told before that you do things awkwardly?

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I don't know about you, but even still my parents are always correcting me on small, every day tasks that other people do normally automatically. Everything from the way I hold a broom, hold a cup, fold my clothes, cut food with a knife, or even like today how I hold a slice of pizza in my hand while I'm eating it. It does make me feel kind of bad... like I'm incapable of doing anything at all besides taking up space. What feels normal to me with my own hands is awkward to NTs though, I guess. How about you guys?

Hell ya I do! I think it's an anxiety thing for me though. Like there's this weird inhibition when I'm preforming tasks but when my inhibition's are not present either because it's something I'm extremely comfortable doing or because I'm drunk or have taken something else to help my anxiety, that awkwardness seems to fade.

I get especially awkward when I'm doing something infront of an audience, a literal audience or just a small group watching what I'm doing.

Well I do look funny when I run, it looks more like a penguin waddling. And I look suspicious when I eat, which I admit is true. I don't feel comfortable eating in front of others. But I suppose we all have our quirks.

It's just that our bodies don't just serve functional utility. We're meaning-obsessed creatures. We communicate with the way we arrange things(or leave an absolute mess), and we even communicate with our bodies, our tone, our clothing, our posture, our walk, communicating everything from confidence to our candidacy as a mate, to our honesty or trustability, etc. There's that. And then, there's being thrown off by something you're not used to seeing. People don't like that.

I got a bit of criticism when I was a kid. Mum didn't like the way I cut my food up the "American" way (chop it all up first with fork in left hand and knife in right, then put down knife, transfer fork to right hand, and shovel food into mouth) instead of her preferred "British" way (keeping knife in right hand, fork in left, chopping as you go, squashing food onto back of fork with knife, transferring food to mouth). I just had trouble using the fork in my left hand to transfer the food to my mouth, plus the idea of using the back of the fork seemed irrational. It was one of those conformity issues, I doubt anybody cares any more how people eat. Anyway I just kept doing it my way. Later on during school lunches, a prefect decided to try to teach me the "correct" way, but he too gave up after a couple of attempts. I don't know why people can't mind their own damn business about harmless things like that. These days I don't think I have difficulty eating either way, though I still don't squash food onto the back of my knife because I don't see the point.

I remember both my parents laughing at me for doing some task or other the long way round when it was obvious to them that there was an easier way. I can't remember what it was, must have been something to do with executive disfunction, and they were probably right, but they'd have done better to kindly explain the better way they could see instead of just poking fun.

I found it difficult to learn how to tie my shoelaces and learn similar things that required motor skill, I was rather ham-fisted, and learning these things felt quite painful and awkward, though I have no benchmark to compare it to, so I don't know how much worse I was than the average kid.

These days you'd not probably notice anything much wrong, except perhaps when I'm learning new motor skills or operating in an unfamiliar environment. I've already learned a lot of fine motor skills and can do all sorts of clever things like playing guitars and pianos quite well, and I have a habit of staying within my limits, especially in public. So I probably come over as somebody who does things pretty elegantly and smoothly.

My previous landlord was really bad for this. It's part of the reason why I decided to move out of that a**hole's place. Good riddance.

Yes.

When I was a small child (around 6 or 7), I not only felt like an alien, but looked like one. Everything I did had a layer of clumsiness attached to it.

Yes, I was also "told" that there was something off about my motor manipulation & mannerisms in this regard - I say "told" because I was told non-verbally, where somebody would be closely watching my movements and right then and there I knew that they found something off about my actions. So, almost rhetorically yet indignantly, I would ask them point-blank, "is there something bothering you?" or "is there something you wanna tell me??" which was typically followed up by, "yes, you're not doing such-and-such task the proper way, here, let me show you" - and my retort was usually "thank you, I didn't realize there was one universal way". In a minority of cases, the person would just snicker and say "no, that's OK, keep doing what you're doing"

I should also mention that our odd motor mannerisms in situations can be predicated on lack of intuitive comprehension of the context. For instance, there have been times where in a past job in a restaurant as a line cook, somebody wanted something done quickly, and my motor mannerisms suggested a desire for precision and quality, which wasn't called for, the driving factor was TIME. I think this is because Aspies don't intuitively pick up on whether a situation calls for a quick response or a quality response, or where in between those two apparent opposites the desired response lies. In general we have difficulty balancing doing a task effectively and efficiently, ostensibly also because of lack of applied knowledge.

Another situation is when driving in stop-and-go traffic, the context calls for releasing the gas pedal, just going at a very slow speed and avoiding the brake on-and-off continuously, which is what I used to do until my wife corrected me. We were a ways before a stop sign with a long line of cars and I kept doing the on-and-off braking / gas until she corrected me and told me to just let it coast smoothly at very low speed, else it looks awkward.

Yes.

Yes. The way I brush my teeth, wash my face, wrap my self up in a towel, come down the stairs, cook, eat, do schoolwork, and even talk bothers my family.

I do everything awkwardly.

My view....it's not the means of attaining an end...it's the result (the end) itself!

Willie Mays sometimes looked awkward catching a fly ball--but we know the RESULTS, right?

I was awkward as a child, but I have learned to move efficiently over the years ( I worked as a tree surgeon for 27 years ) but I still get comments on how I walk. It make look strange to other people, but I can cover ground way better then they can. So nuts to them.

Oh, yes. I understand that awkward movements make other people feel uncomfortable, but they need to understand that pointing them out makes us "awkwardists" feel embarrassed.