We're having a conference today, and I'm currently on my lunch break, but had to share this little gem from this morning. I'm the A/V guy for all our conferences, which means I typically spend a fair amount of time talking to the event speakers, making arrangements for their PowerPoint presentations to go smoothly. I had a chat this morning, early, with one of our speakers as we were getting his presentation ready.
Me: Oh, you're with AHRQ?
Speaker: Yes.
Me: Do you by any chance know Rob Borotkanics? He's also with AHRQ.
Speaker: Yes, I do, I work with him from time to time.
Me: Oh, neat! He's a good friend of mine.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Me [laughing]: Oh, come on! He's not that bad. Besides, you should see him when he's not in the office.
Speaker: Oh, yes, I know. I enjoy working with Rob. He's very direct.
Me: Yes, that's for sure... [thinking of the time in college during one class when Rob loudly proclaimed that the Bible was a piece of shit].
Had to share that with everybody. *grin*
did he really say that? damn - he wuz cooler than I thought
Posted by: Shaw at June 17, 2003 01:48 PMDid people give him a hard time for saying that? Once, in an honors English class that had a focus on environmentalism (I didn't choose the class for that reason. I thought it was just an English class and the political slant got sprung on us after we'd signed up) we were having class discussion about overpopulation and I was asked what I thought about it and I said that I wasn't going to be contributing to it because I wasn't going to have children. The next thing I knew, half the class was literally screaming at me, at the top of their lungs, faces red with anger! What on earth did I do? Surely just saying that I wasn't going to have children couldn't have caused that sort of reaction!
But it did.
I don't even want to begin to think about how i would have been treated had I said that the Bible was a piece of shit!
And that was a *very* liberal university. The one I go to now is quite a bit more conservative. I don't think I'll be very quick to mention that I'm not going to have children. And I don't plan to have any vocal opinion of the Bible whatsoever. I'm just there to learn about Green's Divergence Theorem, Hypergeometric Distributions, chi-square tests, Laplace's equation, Fermat's theorems, inverse transcendental functions and so on.
Nothing controversial for me if I can avoid it.
(I say that now, but I'm signed up for American Politics and strongly considering a few other polysci and economics classes. I think I'm going to be in big trouble. *sigh*)
> did he really say that?
He sure did... it was when we were in Seminar on Religion, Literature, and Philosophy together. I remember it as though it was yesterday... it was the talk of the entire campus for about two days.
> Did people give him a hard time for saying that?
And how! Like I said, it was the talk of the campus for about two days... after he said that most of the class spent the next fifteen minutes ragging on him for that and other stuff he had said in class (e.g., "The Aeneid is boring.") He didn't care, though -- he's got a thick skin.
It's been almost ten years now since that happened, and I still razz him about it.
Rob: "You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"
Me: "Nope." *grins broadly*
You know, it's rather odd: of the two people in the conversation, the one that seems extremely NTlike is Parrish, while the speaker's sentence style & directness sounds more AS-style to me.
Posted by: Moggy at June 17, 2003 05:03 PMHmm, I didn't notice that, but you're partly right... the mask that I have to wear is pretty effective. The speaker wasn't really being very AC-ish, though.
Posted by: Zathras at June 17, 2003 05:19 PM"Hmm, I didn't notice that, but you're partly right... the mask that I have to wear is pretty effective."
That depends on what you call effective. The clipped/short sentence structure of the guy meant either he was being AC like, or he didn't like talking to you. The way it's written, it looks like you were trying to hold conversation but your NT mask was creeping the guy out as much as it does me. So it's effective in the sense that you were using NT structure, but it's ineffective as it appears you're producing the opposite result from what the mask is meant to do (that is, it made you less appealing to interact with rather than more)...
Of course, I could be wrong, I'm just going by my sentence-analysis method of understanding people.
Posted by: Moggy at June 17, 2003 05:38 PM> that is, it made you less appealing to interact with rather than more
*blinks in startlement*
Wow, I have to admit that that possibility never occured to me. I'll have to mull that over. I was just interpreting it as "normal NT banter" between two people who've just met but have a mutual friend. I never thought that something else could be at work.
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me when I find out -- yet again -- that I have so much more to learn about autism and what it means to be autistic. I need to get some more books, I think... what do you think of "Pretending to be Normal"? If the title is indicative, it would be pertinent to this kind of situation.
Posted by: Zathras at June 17, 2003 06:54 PM>> that is, it made you less appealing
>>to interact with rather than more
>Wow, I have to admit that that
>possibility never occured to me.
I have a great article from the L.A. Times about "poker face" and some research that, while not on or about aspies, seems to indicate things that put NTs off about interactions with others.
If anyone's interested in reading the article, along with a few related spectrum-folks' comments, drop me an e-mail and I'll send you a copy.
"Wow, I have to admit that that possibility never occured to me."
Well, like I said, I could be totally wrong...it should have qualified as a possibility, though, considering the immediate reaction *I* had to your NT mask a few months ago. Someone else that doesn't post here commented to me that your style was very "used car salesman"-like, which is what I was refraining from pointing out myself...
"I'll have to mull that over. I was just interpreting it as "normal NT banter" between two people who've just met but have a mutual friend. I never thought that something else could be at work."
That's part of what so-called overanalysis is good for. I know that if someone uses short clipped phrases, it usually means they don't want me there.
"I suppose it shouldn't surprise me when I find out -- yet again -- that I have so much more to learn about autism and what it means to be autistic. I need to get some more books, I think..."
I don't think the books will help, though. It's a case of my having memorized lists of NT behaviors so I could understand them to some degree. (Maybe you're starting to get a better idea of exactly how much brainpower I have to waste when I interact with others IRL... I sit there doing logical interpretation the whole time.)
"what do you think of "Pretending to be Normal"? If the title is indicative, it would be pertinent to this kind of situation."
It's a good title, but not useful for that, I think. The one that is useful (I have it open in my lap right now) is "Build Your Own Life: A Self-Help Guide For Individuals With Asperger Syndrome" by Wendy Lawson.
Posted by: Moggy at June 17, 2003 08:54 PMNow that I have entered a life of politics, I must very much make an official statement.
"I, at this moment, do not recall making any such statement."
But if I did recall such a statemenet, which I do not, I am sure that it would be extensively on grammatical and stylistic grounds; that piece of shit would have never passed the writing requirement!!!
;-)
Posted by: Wall Rat at October 19, 2003 09:45 PM