Typical NT-AS confusing conversation

Does this seem familiar to AS peeps?

Conversation started today
Aspie-girl's niece
10:05am

 

Aspie-girl's niece
Thoughts? X

Aspie-girl
12:32pm
I'm not sure why you've sent me this...?

Aspie-girl's niece
6:11pm
No idea why whatsoever? I was asking your thoughts regarding this popular photo posted by B's peer?

(B is my 12 year old daughter - the girl in the picture is 16)

Aspie-girl
6:11pm
I have no thoughts.

Aspie-girl's niece
6:15pm
I cannot tell if you are being deliberately obtuse?

Aspie-girl
6:22pm
I don't know what you want me to say.
Okay - these are my thoughts. 1) this girl is several years older than B. 2) I think the picture is very pretty and quite artistic 3) I was struggling to figure out what you were objecting to, but I assume it is the fact that she is showing her bare shoulders and the tiniest amount of cleavage, and my thought there is that you yourself have shown far more revealing pictures, and so have I 4) she is not my daughter, nor is she yours, so i don't see what business it is of either of us.
And I didn't have any of those thoughts until you drew my attention to it.

Aspie-girl
6:23pm
And remember, I have AS so not so good with the non-verbal communication here. If you were getting at something else please tell me.

Aspie-girl's niece
6:42pm
Wotevs. U have just demonstrated that you knew what I was alluding to. Would have been probably easier and friendlier just to say that u weren't concerned...?

Aspie-girl
6:43pm
I thought I did.

Aspie-girl's niece
6:43pm
No.

Aspie-girl
6:43pm
But it didn't occur to me till you pointed out, and I had to think hard as to what your possible objection might have been. And I still wasnt sure I was right.
Might have been easier if you'd just said it.
So, are you actually expecting me to do anything about your concerns?

Aspie-girl's niece
6:46pm
No.

Aspie-girl
6:46pm
okay then. So why bring it up?
Remember I can't read your mind, especially over message. This tends to be the point in conversation where people start to get annoyed with me, leaving me sat here totally confused.
And they don't tend to explain themselves, so I am left none the wiser.
AS - remember.
(Later) And yet one more who doesn't explain.

Aspie-girl's niece
6:56pm
You have asked me why I brought it up and yet my intentions were clear from the outset. I simply asked you your thoughts. You provided them.

Aspie-girl
6:58pm
Honestly your intentions were not clear - you may have thought they were, but they weren't. I still don't know why you brought it up, if you didn't expect me to do anything about it.

Aspie-girl's niece
7:03pm
I just told you. I brought it up because I wanted to know what you thought. That is all. There is nothing more to be read into it. Do AS ppl often overanalyse others intentions? I was concerned. I wanted to know if you were concerned. It is the same as asking someone if they enjoy music or the taste of cake?

Aspie-girl
7:08pm
Ok - this is the convo from my POV. You sent me a random pic and asked me my thoughts. I told you I had no thoughts, which was perfectly true. You accused me of being deliberately obtuse, which often happens so I figured I was missing something. I tried to think of some thoughts for you. You did not seem happy with my thoughts. I have since spent the rest of the convo trying to figure out your original intentions, and why you are not happy.
To answer your question, I think AS people often struggle to understand what people's intentions actually ARE, especially as NT people (non-autistics) don't tend to be overt with their intentions, as they assume they are obvious, which they probably are to other NT people.
You didn't actually ask me if I was concerned, you asked me what my thoughts were, and I didn't have any. If you had said "Are you concerned about this picture," I would have answered "No." which would have sparked off a whole different conversation.

Aspie-girl's niece
7:18pm
I was not being vague when I asked for your thoughts. And I am sure that whether you have as or not you are intelligent enough to reason that I meant your considered thoughts. I am unclear why you are asking me to explain my frustrations as I don't know if you are willing or indeed able take this knowledge into account in future social encounters. Regardless I hav laid out my reasoning as best as I as an NT am able.

Aspie-girl
7:26pm
So, basically, you were concerned by the minimal amount of skin this girl was showing, but you didn't want me to do anything about it, and you wanted to know if I was concerned also, but even if I had been concerned, you didn't expect me to do anything about it. Is that about right? Because that's all I've got from this conversation. Seems pretty pointless.
Honestly, I don't mean to offend, but I'm going to put this encounter into the big mental pile that's labelled "I don't get it."
FTR, the last conversation I had with your mother is in there also.
See, this is where having AS is a massive disadvantage. For the most part, we can appear normal, but now and again we just really don't get it. And people don't understand that we don't get it because, for the most part, we appear normal. So the assumption is that we MUST get it and we are somehow pretending not to get it. And then when you ask people to explain, they just go "Whatevs" and don't bother, because they assume that you actually do get it and are just pretending not to.
This is a problem that DH and I had a lot before I got diagnosed but thankfully he is finally understanding that if I say I don't get it, I REALLY don't get it and he has to be patient with me and explain.

Aspie-girl's Dad
7:26pm
In a nutshell and I think that K would agree with this, we were simply concerned that one of B's FB 'friends' was apparently posting a pic which was bordering on child  'soft porn'.

Aspie-girl
7:27pm
But, to what end?
And I don't see it myself. I think it is pretty.

Aspie-girl's Dad
7:30pm
Well even some of this young lady's friends thought it was a bit OTT.

Aspie-girl
7:30pm
Well I wouldn't know.

Aspie-girl's niece
7:30pm
If ud have given it ur considered thoughts once I'd asked u too and u felt the same as me I would have felt that I had done what I felt was proper and you could have acted in whatever way you saw fit. Had u thought the photo was immoral would you still be acting so nonplussed as to why I had asked you what you thought of it????

Aspie-girl
7:31pm
K - there is nothing i could have done. She is not my daughter.

Aspie-girl's niece
7:40pm
You could of course  have ascertained if B had been influenced by it by discussing it with her. If you had seen my son walking dangerously near a cliff face you'd have done the same to me. You are clever enough to realise all this.
I was just concerned about B.
I was just concerned about B.
I was just concerned about B.
Do u really still not get it???

Aspie-girl
7:43pm
No I don't. Why would this picture adversely affect B?
And she's only just come home so I haven't been able to discuss it with her, if I thought there was anything to discuss.

Aspie-girl's niece
7:50pm
Omg because it is very popular.  She wants to be popular. I respect the fact that u know her well enough to decide whether she'd copy it. I was just asking you to consider it. This is not rocket science. I am not asking you to read my mind. I was trying to be nice. Even though u say that u don't understand I've heard u say that u like to wind ppl up on the internet etc. Do this to strangers if u like, not to ppl who have good intentions.

Aspie-girl
7:53pm
Okay - you did not actually tell me you were concerned about B - you just aksed me what my thoughts were on some random picture of one of B's friends.

Aspie-girl
7:55pm
This is the first you've said about your concerns that B might try to copy her - that thought did not even cross my mind. You asked me a simple question - what my thoughts were. I answered it. Clearly your thoughts were very different, but you did not share those thoughts with me.

Aspie-girl
7:58pm
Do me a favour - read back over the conversation and look at the words you used. The actual words - because those are the only things I get. I am not privy to the thoughts behind the words. I only know what you tell me, so LOOK at what you tell me, not what you think you've told me. I'm not being deliberately obtuse.

Aspie-girl's niece
8:05pm
No you are correct. I expected a level of common sense. I expected you to use your knowledge of children to know that they copy each other. In the future it may be wiser not to waste ppls time asking why they have stopped speaking to you because its prob just that by societal norms you are being really rude to them in the words that YOU used. That is all. I said what I felt I should to help my cousin.
I don't want to continue discussing.

Aspie-girl
8:09pm
She's not a child. At her age you were with Phil and I presume doing far more than posting arty shots on fb. Your profile pic shows far more flesh than hers does . I was not rude and I did not ask anyone why they had stopped speaking to me as I was not aware anyone had stopped speaking to me. And yet again, one more person doesn't get that the problem is not with me.

Aspie-girl's niece
8:26pm
The problem is only not with you if you don't mind dismissing ppls good intentions. That is a rude thing to do even if the literal words that you say are not. My intentions throughout were just to be a good cousin. I feel sorry that u can't appreciate that in ppl.

Aspie-girl
8:33pm
You assume that I knew what your intentions were. Honestly, I was just confused as to why you were messaging me at all, and what you wanted me to do. I wasn't dismissing you - I just didn't understand  what you meant by any of this. Getting irritated with me, or insulting my intelligence does no good. It's like getting irritated with a blind person, or implying they are stupid because they cannot see what you can see.  Now I realise you are not accustomed to dealing with someone with AS, but trust me when I say this conversation is very very familiar. Not the content, but the attitude of the NT, and the irritation, and the accusations of being deliberately obtuse, and the exasperation, and the assumption that I know exactly what you are talking about. Welcome to my world. THIS is why it is a disability.

Aspie-girl's niece
8:35pm
Nope. I'm saddened that even after I've just told u I was just trying to be nice you've not just said thanks.

Aspie-girl's Dad
8:35pm
Can we perhaps put all this down to a misunderstanding and be friends again?XX

Did you ever wonder #1

The NT world: Some information to help you live in it #4

They can try to stop you growing...

I saw a tree in the park today. I've seen it before, but not in this season. It's only a small tree. It grew in the shade of a much bigger tree. As it grew, it encountered the spreading branches of the bigger tree and could only grow so far because the branches of the bigger tree spread out too much to allow it to grow to its full potential.

In the summer time, you can hardly see the smaller tree. It's totally overwhelmed by the foliage of the bigger tree. In fact, most of the time you'd hardly notice the smaller tree was there at all.

But today I saw it in a different way. Today the smaller tree was in full spring bloom, when the bigger tree was still bare. And for the first time I realised how utterly beautiful this little tree was. It had tried its best to grow in spite of the bigger tree being in the way, and, while it might be a little stunted, it was still beautiful, and brave. It hadn't given up.

Moral: Don't let your situation in life be an excuse to fail. It doesn't matter how much they try to stop you, you can still be the best you can possibly be. And you can still be beautiful.

They can try to stop you growing...

...but they can't stop you blooming.

Different, not less

I'm stealing a Temple Grandin quote for the title of this blog post, because it is apt.

I realised today how learning I have a mental disability has made me more accepting of other people with mental disabilities, or mental differences maybe I should call them.

I had always felt exceedingly uncomfortable around people who were mentally different. All that flapping and involuntary noises and just being generally abnormal just made me feel all weird inside.

But then I learned that I have Asperger's, and I learned that a lot of what i do and what I consider perfectly normal, other people also consider weird. Things like flapping my hands when I get excited, striding along talking to myself, or talking to people who are not there (although I only do this when I'm along because, let's face it - that one IS pretty weird), not coping well with changes in plan, and almost panicking when things don't go right - all those things are not what most people do.

It really hit me today. I was walking my dog in the park and I fell in behind a couple of men. It was hard to tell from behind but one seemed to be in his late 40s and was walking calmly behind the other one, who was a good deal younger - probably late teens or early twenties. The first thing that struck me was that the younger man was touching everything. First he would stroke his hand along a park bench, then touch a tree, playing with a stray low branch, then he bent down and touched the grass. The second thing that struck me was that he was clearly mentally different - most people do not do this.

But instead of making me feel uncomfortable - it just made me think "Aw how sweet - he is clearly loving being out in the park and is experiencing everything in full measure." I mean, if it makes him HAPPY to be touching everything he sees, who am I to think it's weird?

Rules for living in an NT world #3

Rules for living in an NT world - #2

Problems of being a writer with Asperger's

Rules for living in an NT world - #1

You could just try a bit more...