Aspies For Freedom

Somehow I like reading instruction manuals, since I was a child. I ALWAYS read them. Even if I already know how to use it. When I was a child there were times where I spent more time reading the instructions than actually playing with the toy . I also used to read products labels and sometimes memorized the ingredients.

    OK, thsi is a silly thread, but I want to know if anyone else here does this kind of things.

I am always keen to know the specifications of motor vehicles so I often read and re-read these sections of car magazines. I will also study and memorise any train or bus timetable I am given even if I never use the service.
I have been doing these things since very early childhood. I generally find how things work is more interesting than what they actually do. I am also very good at things such as assembling 'flat-pack' furniture. I can put items I have never seen together from just the instructions easily. I do not like fiction. I think reading fiction is a waste of time because I am not learning from it.

I don't have that habit with instruction manuals, but a lot of times I can't walk by signs without reading them (sometimes out loud).  Here's an example:

me:  So guess what Chelsea, I was in my painting class last week and I was doing---Interstate I-95?  Dunkin Donuts, rest stop area, next exit......Oh so anyway, my professor says to me.......

me: OK so yesterday Mom said to me---there's a bunch of chickens out there.  How did they get there?  They weren't there yesterday.  Oh so she said I should get this job painting carousel horses.......

(OK, the second example wasn't about signs)

Oh also I like to read those things that say "how our company started" on the backs of potato chip bags and stuff like that

I love reading step-by-step instructions, so one of my favourite pastimes is to search for photoshopping tutorials on deviant art and reading them. I also like to look for anime drawing tutorials on the internet, and decide of they are good or not. I've always wanted to make one of my own.

when i use the bathroom i always read off the back of the toothpaste bottle or whatever at reach.

and when i read a book i always read the last page first and skip huge chunks, yeah i dont read books nevermind...

Yes, these are tendencies that I recognise... Very much. If there's a possibility to count objects etcetera I do so. Like the amount of buttons on the remote control; amount of windows; amount of scenes in movies (I sat counting the scenes in the movie "Down by Law", by Jim Jarmu***) commercials...

I always like glancing through instruction manuals, before I do anything with the thing it came with. It makes me feel like an expert on the object before I have even touched it.

Ever since grade school I have had the habit of skipping over the dull stuff to get to the exciting passages.  Many of my grade school books were short-story anthologies which we were supposed to read all together as a class, but I was always "reading ahead" to the next story on my own, which annoyed my teachers.  These books used a different typeface for each story, which increased the temptation to skip ahead to the next story and the next...  To this day I am a terribly undisciplined reader; I barely have the patience to read one short newspaper article all the way through, much less to thoroughly read a book about one of my special interests.  This is probably the reason for my lifelong wasting of my supposed potential... *travels back in time to simpler days, dreaming of different typefaces *

Instruction manuals are cool, but I like reading the nutrition facts on food and drinks even more. I don't even count calories or any of that stuff - I just like reading the nutrition facts and ingredients on everything.

Nutrition facts are cool I like reading the percentages of proteins and vitamins.

you know what pisses me off about reading together as a class?

it's when you're smart and read ahead, and then you get called on to read, except you dont know where the spot is, and you desperatly look around for someone to help you find the spot. Except the stupid b**** next to you wont tell you, and then you get in trouble for "not paying attention" I was seriously going to punch that girl though.

I like reading local newspapers. Not where I live - the Exeter Express & Echo is only good for fish-and-chip paper IMVHO - but whenever I'm visiting another area of the UK I make a point of buying a local paper. They should be of no interest to an outsider, and yet somehow they are so fascinating.

Snap!  It's like the shape of the word will leap out and grab my attention.

I read the daftest things sometimes, like the 'why low GI is good' spiel on the side of a tin of beans.  And then other days I can hardly bother reading enough to check what sort of beans they are!

I can only follow instructions if I've physically got the object to be assembled/software program being used in front of me at that moment.  I can't read a whole set of instructions, then go and apply them.  They get jumbled up.  That gets awkward if you're three parts of the way through installing a shelf, have one hand holding it in place, one hand on the drill... and need a third hand to hold the instructions.

(Yes, occasionally I get halfway through a recipe I'm making for that night and realise it needs overnight chilling or marinating.  That's not Aspie, just plain bad organisation!)

I read the first few chapters of a book and then never read it again (I've got a huge collection of books and the chances are I'll never finish a single one). I find it hard to keep an interest for long; that's why I like encyclopedias, they're nonlinear.

My reading habits are a family joke:

"Do you think she'd like to read this?"

"Has it got words?"

Tigger_the_Wing a.k.a. the .303 bookworm.