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

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Odd Aspergers Trait...Laundry, Sensation


As I was doing laundry today...yeah, it can happen...I was reminded of one of the most odd, unusual traits that both my son and I share. I have never seen it written about anywhere.
I am unable to tell if the warm clothes, directly from the dryer, are actually dry. If I am pulling clothes out, I cannot distinguish if they are still wet or completely dry with my fingertips and hands. Usually, I just wait until everything cools down and they I can get a grasp on it.
One of the techniques that I learned to employ was to take an article out of the dryer and hold it to my face or cheek. For some reason, that will usually work.
I don't know how many times I had to demonstrate to Eldest how to do this as it is a rather strange way of doing laundry. I also distinctly remember how...comforting it was, to me, to see that he shared this characteristic as I thought that there was just something seriously wrong with me, in that, I could not perform this simple daily chore.
I continue to remember the look on his face...the puzzled, unsettled look..because he had to ask for help and wasn't at all comfortable to admit that he also, was very challenged.
I am only guessing that the warmth of the clothing somehow overwhelms our fingertips and all their neurotic :)nerve sensors and causes everything to feel the same. Dozens and dozens of times, throughout the years, I find clothing that I thought was completely dry hanging in the closet, only to locate a cool, damp spot when I went to put it on.
The face test...that what I call it. That is how this Aspie can get the laundry done appropriately. This is one of those very weird, odd, little things that I have learned to adapt to.