Aspies For Freedom

This is a thread where you can tell us about amusing things which happened when you were younger, which make you laugh when you think back to them, especially if they're linked to AS traits.

To start off - when I was about 10 years old, I was sitting in class, when I could hear a girl on another table behind me joking that I fancied someone.  (It wasn't true, I knew she was just saying it to tease me, in a joking way).  Anyway, I felt really embarrassed by what she said.  I had my ruler in my hand, and I started to bend it in order to take my mind off the embarrassment.

Then suddenly...SNAP!  The ruler broke because I bent it too far.  As I was looking at the broken halves, my learning support assistant came over, and asked how on earth I had managed to break the ruler.  I told her that I did it because I was embarrassed at what the girl was saying, and she laughed and said, "Oh, you can't go round smashing things whenever you feel embarrassed!".  That made me laugh even more.

By the way, it was my own ruler and not the school's, so I wasn't in trouble or anything.

When I was 5 I independently invented a jumper with a different colour when turned inside-out.
I started by putting a jumper on inside-out, then put on another jumper the correct way, and when both were taken off at the same time, turning the whole thing inside-out would produce the pattern/colour of the other jumper.

'Nuff indeed.

When I was really little -- about four -- I wanted to know what it would be like if I couldn't see. So I closed my eyes, ran around my grandma's back yard and fell head first into the fish pond.

I've just remembered another story from my childhood.  When I was about 7 years old at primary school, this woman from the local authority used to come in for an hour each week to see me (I'm not exactly sure what her position was, but she must have been some kind of educational support worker).  She used to take me into a separate room where I could talk to her about how I'm getting on at school and she would try to help me become more confident.  She would also bring in some games and toys.

In the first session, she brought along this big dolls' house.  It was wrapped in a massive piece of bubblewrap.  And during the whole session, I hardly paid any attention to the dolls' house (I never liked make-believe play).  I spent all the time playing with the bubblewrap instead!  I stood on it, jumped up and down to see how many bubbles I could burst.  I was having a lot of fun with that, and at the end of the session, the woman said to me that she was surprised that I hardly touched the dolls' house, and that next week she would just bring in the bubblewrap on its own, seeing as I enjoyed that more.
And that's exactly what she did.  The following week she brought in the bubblewrap all on its own!

It makes me laugh when I think about it now!

Well..... I was in Sunday school, it must 1st or 2nd grade. We were discussing Genesis. And, of course, I was the kid who had to say, "Well, what about the dinosaurs?". My teacher froze, "Er...", then I continued, "Here is my theory...". I think the theory I gave was something like reincarnation, I was aware that my idea didn't work with the seven day thing, but I was too young to come to the conclusion of atheism.

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I asked my sister what caused thunder.  She told me that thunder is caused by clouds banging together!!  The scary thing is, I actually believed her for several years!!  It was only when we studied weather in science that I realised her explanation didn't make sense.

Another story:  When I was about 14, my Dad bought our first Windows computer with AOLinternet connection.  In those days, with AOL you could have up to 5 separate screen-names per account.  When I was in a chatroom one day, I saw that someone had the screenname Sweetie.  I decided that I liked the sound of that name because it reminded me of sweets/candy, so I set myself up the screenname Sweetee.  I didn't realise that the name has a second meaning!  Everytime I logged on, I was bombarded with instant messages from strange boys/men wanting to chat to me.  My Dad asked me why I had chosen the screenname Sweetee, and I said it was because I like sweets!  In the end, I had to block all incoming instant messages, because I didn't want to have to change my screenname.

We don't use AOL anymore though.  Once I reached the age of 17 or 18, I began to find the whole thing rather irritating.

I remember being at a car boot sale when I saw this amazing thing! It was a wooden square block that got a bit smaller towards the top. It was green with carves in it, a bit like a circuit board. Amazed, I asked, "What does it do?", and the man at the stall replied, "It doesn't do anything, it's just an ornament". And I was like WTF? It looks really cool but it doesn't do anything? He said, "It just sits there and looks nice".

At primary school we were going to have test. I hadn't prepeared very much for the test and I almost didn't really know what the test was all about. One of the questions were something like this:

Do you know what an adjective is?

And then I got a genious idea, write just what someone who knew the answer would have written, make a white lie. So I wrote:




...




"Yes"

And I honestly did, I was just uncertain if had mixed it up with nouns, but I couldn't really explain anything with my bad social skills at that time, especially not on paper.

This kind of reminds me about a time when I had a French test at high school.  I was always in the top set for French, but one week when I was about 13 years old my family and I went on holiday during term time, which meant that I missed a couple of French lessons.

Anyway, on my first day back at school after my holiday, we had a French test where we had to translate the names of articles of clothing from English into French.  Due to the fact that I had been on holiday, I had no idea that we would even be having a test, and I had missed the lessons where the teacher taught the class about clothing.

So I just had to muddle through the test as best as I could.  I had no idea about the answers to most of the questions, so I made up French-sounding words for the items of clothing.  For example, for "a jumper" I put "une jumpere" with an accent on top of the 1st e for extra effect!!   I knew it would be totally wrong, but I thought it was better than putting nothing at all.

I got a really low score, about 3 out of 10, which was amongst the worst in the class, but the teacher must have realised I was away the previous week.

I just thought of another one today!  This happened when I was about 10 years old, during the school holidays.  My Mum took me out with a couple of school-friends.  They were my best friends at primary school.  We went to a local cafeteria for something to eat.  

I've always been a very clumsy eater, particularly when I was younger, and at most mealtimes I spilt food down my chest.  At the cafeteria, I kept spilling food down my clothes even worse than usual.  I was laughing and my friends were laughing too.  My Mum then said, "Shall we buy her a bib?".  At first I thought she was joking.  She often used to say that.   But this time she wasn't joking at all.  She took us all to a kids' clothes shop and bought me a bib.  It was bright red, had a drip-catcher and looked really babyish - the sort of thing a 5 year old would wear.

When we got back to the cafeteria for desserts, my Mum put the bib on me, in front of my friends and the rest of the customers/staff.  I felt so embarrassed, and I started crying, begging her to let me take it off.  I can't remember much of what happened after that.

I asked my Mum about it a while ago.  She can still remember it, and she said that she did it to try and shock me into no longer spilling my food.  Until recently, I still had problems with spilling food, but luckily I was never made to wear the bib in public after the incident at the cafeteria - that was just a one off, although for a few days afterwards I did have to wear it at home when I was having dinner, but that wasn't quite so embarrassing.

When I look back at it now, it makes me laugh!

I think I have talent for drawing. I can with some time draw what I see down on paper identically when it comes to lines.

Once at primary we were going to make a doll-theatre and we were to make the dolls of thick paper and sticks. For my group's doll-theatre there were several characters, one of them was some kind of fantasy horse.

One of the group's members was really into horses, she rode horses and liked to draw them, but she was sick that day. So I went to the school's library, gathered a book about hooved animals, drew a horse and added wings to it so that it looked like a pegasus. When the girl came back some few days later and she was a little sad because I was better at drawing horses than her.

I used to be extremely hyper when I was younger. I remember when we used to go to church, and we had to go in the other section by the entrance away from the main church bit (with the people and priests), and in this section there was a speaker so you could hear the priest talking. I basically just ran around and talked as usual, every now and then my mum would tell me to stand up or bow to the prayers etc.

At each mass, someone would ring the big church bell, and this one time, I must have been about 6, I tried to ring it myself. Usually it would be tied to a hook on the wall until the right time to ring it, but I almost managed to untie it and ring it right in the middle of the priest's sermon! My mum told me, looking really worried, that if I rang it it would make God angry, so I didn't ring it.

When the people came to ring the bell at the right time, I tried to stop them because I thought it would make God angry...

I've just thought of some more stuff to add to this topic!

When I was at high school, I was a member of the school choir.  Therefore, I took part in the school concerts at the end of each term (also the school orchestra, soloists and other musicians from within the school could take part too).  There was room for about 200-250 parents and teachers to watch.

One term, these 2 really awful rock bands, made up of senior students, each performed a song in the concert.  The lead singer of one of the bands couldn't sing at all and he had a really squeaky voice.  Everyone in the choir and orchestra kept laughing and sniggering throughout the song (even when we weren't performing, we still had to sit at the front of the hall, facing the audience). I couldn't stop laughing, but when I looked at the teachers and parents in the audience, they all had really straight faces - they didn't find it funny at all.  For some reason, seeing the parents' and teachers' stern faces made me want to laugh even more.  I was worried that the teachers were going to tell us all off after the concert for laughing at the rock bands, but luckily they never did.


Another story - when I was 17 or 18, I was looking for a part-time/summer job, so I went down to my local JobCentre.  They had touchscreen computers where you can search for jobs and print out descriptions/contact details of the ones you like.  Then you had to take the printouts to an adviser who would phone the employers and ask them to mail you an application form.  

One of the jobs said "Own transport required", but I liked the sound of it, so I printed it out anyway.  The adviser looked at it and said, "Can you drive?".  I replied, "No, but maybe if it's not too far to travel I could walk?"  She then looked at me and said, "Well, it really does say you need your own transport" and before I could respond, she screwed up the printout and threw it in the bin.  She then moved on to my next printout, which luckily didn't mention anything about transport.

Being very literal, I thought that walking was indeed a method of transport, and it didn't say on the printout precisely where the job was based, so for all the adviser knew, it could have been not far from my house anyway!

I've just remembered another funny thing which happened during my childhood.  Actually, it bewildered me for most of my childhood.

Every few weeks we used to go to the local fish and chip shop for our meal.  There was a sign on the wall near the counter saying: "Credit will only be given to people over 85 years of age - if accompanied by both parents."  Above the text was a cartoon-like picture of an elderly man flanked by his shrunken even-more-elderly parents!!

Every time we visited that fish and chip shop, I always used to be confused, as I took the sign literally.  Even though I was only young, I knew that for someone to live to 85 was in itself quite an achievement as the average life expectancy was about 70-something back then.  Then I would think to myself, "But surely even if someone did live to 85, it would be extremely unlikely that both their parents would still be alive.  If they were, they would both have to be well over 100.  And men usually die younger than women, so even if the mother was still alive, it would be very unlikely the father would still be here.  So how do they expect anyone to qualify for credit?"

I asked the other people in my family what the sign meant, but they didn't seem to know either.  It wasn't until I was older (ie in my teens) that I realised the sign must be a joke and should not be taken literally.  The owners of the shop probably thought it was a funny way to say that they're not willing to provide credit to anyone.

I don't think the sign is there any more though, as the shop was taken over by a new family several years ago.  However, it still makes me laugh to think that the sign confused me for all those years!!

Has anyone else ever seen a sign like that?

Yet another thing.

When I was about 3 years old, my playgroup/nursery organised a trip to one of the local parks for all the children and their parents.  At the park there was a big paddling pool (it was built into the ground, not one of those inflatable ones).  I was sitting with my Mum by the side of the pool, when all of a sudden 3 young boys dashed across the pool, completely naked!  I'd never seen a naked boy before, so I asked my Mum "Why have they all got little sticks near their bum bums?!"  My Mum was really embarrassed and I think a lot of the other mothers laughed too.