Strange and funny things you've done as a child

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We all know that AS and ASD can lead to some pretty severe social difficulties as a child. However, I'd like this thread to focus on some of the more lighthearted aspects of that - were there any times as a child where your ASD tendencies (literalness, not reading body language, verbosity, etc.) led to a humorous situation?

When I was in preschool, at around the age of four, the girls on my playground started telling me that I had cooties. Not knowing what that was, I responded with what I thought was a perfectly normal reaction - looking it up in an encyclopedia. Upon discovering that they weren't in there, I concluded (correctly) that they didn't exist.

Long story short, the next time they said I had cooties, I was ready - I had the "C" volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica with me. I didn't realize how funny it must have been at the time, but me as a four-year-old waving an encyclopedia at a group of children and screaming "COOTIES DON'T EVEN EXIST! YOU'RE ALL SO STUUUUUPID!" has to be one of the most amusing images of myself as a child that I can possibly remember.

Well, the encyclopedia doesn't have info on EVERYTHING! A NUMBER of people have told me COOTIES DO exist! It is supposedly a slang term for lice. GIRLS are more likely to have them, due to being more likely to have long hair that is not washed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooties

For the record, I NEVER had them, and don't think I ever went to school with anyone that did.

When I would go to the public pool,I would spend my whole time fishing insects out of the water and putting them on the side of the pool to dry out.Sometime in early grade school(1st-3rd),I would carry roadkill(mostly squirels)out of the road and dig a grave for them in the woods and make a little cross for them out of sticks bond with grass.I found a dead bee in second grade and disected it in class to see what the stinger looked like.I tried to catch a praying mantis to keep as a pet and when it turned it's head and looked into my eyes I got so scared I dropped the glass jar.(Bit of an insect obsession as a kid )

An older boy(also when I was in grade school)stole my hat and I called him an a**hole.All night,whenever the phone rang,I was terrified it was his parents calling to tell my parents what I had said.I eventually got out of bed,crying my eyes out,and confessed to my mother that I had said a bad word.

As far as "socail interactions"...the only way I knew that I had done or said something wrong is that I would get a "look" that I didnt understand(happened a lot)but I dont know what I said that was "funny" because it wasn't funny to me.

I've just checked the meaning of this term. I've never heard such a word before. Personally, I also never had lice (3 years ago I met one woman who's a nurse who explained to me that having thin hairs - like mine - seems to be pretty good protection from lice because they can't climb them this way).

And here I must tell you a story my mother told me many years ago (and even now she successfully entertains others with it - they almost pee listening to it ). But when it happened my mother was the last person to laugh It happened when I was a kid, I was 7, 8 years old. In that time there was a girl in my class who came from a poor family - not pathological one but her parents used to be quite a poor, not very educated people, parents to a numerous group of children. One day our school nurse checked our heads and that girl I'm writing about, Dominika, received a short note for her parents with an information: "Your child has insects in her hair".

A bit later there was a meeting of parents with our head master in our school and my mother was present. As same as Dominika's dad .He came close to the teacher and asked her aloud: "Dominika got such a note" - here he showed it to the gathered - "and there's written that she's having insects. But what is it? My wife and I have no idea what this word means and I've came here to ask"

All gathered mums and dads were taking more or less successful attempts so as not to start to giggle but my mother didn't belong to this smiling gathering. Dominika, who had to repeat the first grade with us and even then she was the student who used to get the weakest marks, shared one desk with me - the best student (probably the teacher hoped I'd help her in case of some problems). Mom was scared that my long hair (it wasn't cut off until our first communion) could become a battlefield between a horde of blood thirsty lice and herself But as I said, I was always lucky enough not to be infected with cooties

Last edited by Irulan on 27 Nov 2007, 2:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have heard that, in the US at least, children get sent HOME if they have lice, and that such people are AVOIDED elsewhere. Why did they put her with YOU!?

And how could they be so bad off, even if uneducated? You would think that knowledge of domestic insects would be one of the first things poor people would learn, due to infestation, infection, and affect on crops and livestock.

It happened about 15 years ago so details of this case remain a secret for me. I have no idea after all those years if she was sent home, probably not. I guess that they thought it would be too much effort to ask her parents (or somebody of her numerous older siblings learning in our school) to take her home, anyway in that time there weren't phones in each house, for example we didn't have one and I suppose that family, not belonging to the wealthiest couldn't afford to maintain a phone (there were about 7-9 kids in that family so they couldn't afford to satisfy all needs - something like the Weasley family but in contrast to them, my schoolmate's family members weren't so nice; they all were famous for very poor grades, lack of intellectual ambitions and laziness - Dominika had to repeat also the last, eight grade because she had left too much hours in school and had 1's - the poorest marks here - almost from everything). Probably the nurse and our head master didn't want Dominika to be ashamed of her little problem. As far I know, nobody were infected by her, fortunately.

Some people are simply too lazy to take any effort to learn something new - for example my own mother (but we're not poor, we're such an average family like many others, speaking of income) spends all her free time watching "The bold and the beautiful" and reading her stupid love stories. She definitely isn't a highbrow. Some time ago when asked by me what her reaction would be like if she found out that our neighbor is homo sapiens, she told me seriously that she's very tolerant (what isn't true, I must add; she's very narrow minded) so she wouldn't mind at all because it would be his personal matters. Another time she told me she wouldn't like to see a doctor about whom she'd know that he's a satanist because she would be too scared he'd hit upon an idea to sacrifice her to devil (I had told her about one guy being a doctor participating in discussions on one forum for satanists and I'm talking about so called "rational satanism" not about devil worshipping). She's also sure that all psychiatrists are crazy themselves because of all those hours spent among mentally ill people And that clothes shouldn't be darned when somebody's wearing them because this way "mind may be sewn, too" I could add also many other pearls of "wisdom" by my mother. There are people who weren't blessed by having intellectual capabilities making them able to ponder the world. Just like my mother. And Dominika's parents.

I used to get ringworm all the time as a kid because I was always walking around my apartment complex petting/playing with stray cats. Well, when other kids would bother me at recess I would tell them I had ringworm and that it was contagious and I'd take my bandaid off of it and start chasing them around threatening to touch them with it. Gah, just thinking about it is making me laugh.
I would never actually touch them with it, just threaten them.

I do have a kind of amusing story that has to do with me taking something literally.
At recess once I was running around on the play ground squawking like a parrot and when it was time to go back in, me and some other girl were walking next to eachother and I told her my throat hurt(from said squawking) and she dared me to tell the teacher that I lost my voice. I took that dare.
Well, we get into class it was time to write in our little journal things. We could write whatever we wanted to tell the teacher in it and she would read it. Well I wrote "I lost my voice" in it. Well, she sent me to the nurses office. I remember being so nervous because I knew I was lying.
I got to the nurses office and she checked my throat and she asked me to say something and I mouthed to her "I can't, I lost my voice".
She goes "You can't say anything at all?" and I mouthed "No, I lost my voice".
She then informed me that when you lose your voice, you don't actually lose your voice.
I responded "Oh." and she sent me back to class.
My teacher then made a remark on the way to lunch about lying and looked directly at me. I was so embarrassed and ashamed of myself. haha

i was often tripping myself up, and one day when i was about 4/5 (?) my mother said to me "Pick your feet up!", and i picked one up, but couldn't manage the second, in fact i fell over.
This story has been repeated thousands of times in my family!
Once i put my foot in the toilet; i don't know why, and had trouble getting it out again.

not sure if this is connected to AS but...

in play school, one of the teachers asked if we knew were rain comes from, and then said "it's when the clouds cry isn't it" I believed that until I was about 12 and gave that answer when our science teacher asked if we knew where rain comes from....

When I was about 3 I was busy reading my dinosaur books (as you do), as they were my then obsession. My poor mother was most bewildered when I toddled into the living room with a book in each hand, and asked "Mummy, how do you say the name of this dinosaur properly? This book says it's pronounced like this, but then THIS book says it's pronounced like this. So which is it?" You can only imagine the look on her face as she tried to explain that she didn't really know as she's no dinosaur expert, and that people in different countries say things differently so it's probably to do with accents...! !

i had fun building marble tracks out of toilet rolls and paper towel rolls... taped em up on the wall and would build them ceiling high... had loops and places where you could place extra marbles so that the one coming down would get stuck but push another one onward... i would have these sections covered up so it looked like the marbles would just change colors.. made some pretty elaborate tracks. even made one at my daycare for other kids to play with

i was a violent kid, and fantasied about sex when i was little. i also hated cats and mexico

My most vivid memory of oddity as a child was something that I didn't perceive until my little sister came along 14 years later and was the complete and total opposite of me. My mother made beautiful Barbie clothes for me when I was little. They were fairly elaborate some of them. Anyway. I dressed all of my Barbies up and then lined them up along my bed. Just to look at. I never actually played with them. When my sister came along she totalled most of the beautiful outfits and (the horror) cut most of the Barbie's hair! She colored on the girl from Johnny West. I was horrified and smacked her silly when I discovered what she'd done. My mother always thought it was funny that I was so upset about what my sister had done.

I remember collecting the Avon dolls that had perfume in them and lining them up for hours in different ways and combinations.

I also did a weird thing with lining up Fisher Price people and the steps from the playhouse.

I wanted to be a dog when I grew up. As recorded in my 4 year old Dr. Suess When I Grow up book.

Only thing i can think of right now is that i once ran through a closed glass door, i got very annoyed that it was in the way in the first place.

"If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is, "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did.""

--Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey

Once, I was in a kids' choir (about age 4) and we had a performance. We all were told to stand on different bits of tape during the performance. I was preoccupied with standing "correctly" on the bit of tape and stood like a soldier (complete with solemn scowl) and didn't sing at all.