Prepare to enter the wild and wooly world of an adult with Aspergers Syndrome, a form of autism characterized by intellignce, quirks, social difficulties and downright strange and oddish behaviours.

People with Aspergers generally are high functioning in everyday life but have great difficulty connecting with others due to the inability to read faces, body language and subtle verbal clues. They also tend to take words literally and have a hard time multi-tasking.

Oversensitivity to touch (clothing has to be soft and often the tags removed), light (do not leave home without the sunglasses), sound (loud noises and noisey places are avoided), taste (many Aspies have quite a limited diet and are frequently very picky eaters) and smells makes the everyday existence more of a challenge.

Fasten your seatbelts and come on in...
To find out more about what Aspergers is..please check out my earliest blog entries

Saturday, October 3, 2015

I hate giving and receiving gifts

Gift giving is overrated, highly stressful, embarrassing and something to be avoided whenever possible. It is a social custom that stymies and bothers me.
First off, the social protocols are not well defined. Who receives a gift, subject matter and price range is highly individualized. Determining what an individual perceives of as a "wanted gift" is akin to rolling the dice and hoping for the best.
I have given gifts that caused another to do the prefunctionary mumbled, "thank you", where upon said gift vanishes into obscurity in a closet, drawer, trash or local thrift store.
The amount of thought, I put into selecting a gift, has proven to be time consuming and pretty much useless. I can't count how many gifts live in this house that were never wanted or appreciated....so, I stopped giving gifts. Problem solved.
Then, but of course, I'm met with the childlike disappointment of others who feel...less important or valued because I failed to buy the right number and type of gifts indicated by some obscure mental tally in their head.
Gift giving is not a simple, easy thing.
Receiving gifts is mostly an on-the-spot exercise in how quickly I can pretend to be grateful whilst processing the meaning of the gift; it's intent and the prefunctionary, oh my gosh, did I give a gift of equal value? I feel my reactions are watched acutely, which is horrid anyway. I'm trying to figure out how the gift giver would like me to react....and then, depending on the item, after a few days processing, I figure out whether I like it, will ever use it, want to keep it or throw it out.
It's simply too much thinking and figuring out. It is big stress with huge uncertainty on both sides. My blood pressure rises just writing about it and I feel I need a stiff drink and a toke.
Autism and gift giving...I don't wanna