So I’m autistic, closer to 40 than 30, randomly ended up in a conversation with an apartment neighbor.
She’s an approximately 50 yo mom, we somehow ended up talking about autism, how yes sometimes it can be closer to the stereotype of basically catatonic and nearly totally dysfunctional, but other times it can work in all these different ways, etc etc.
During this conversation, her autistic kid happens to walk by, and the mom says to her something like “child! this is ‘myactualname’, look at him!”
… and then me, ~40, her kid, ~20, both just did the deadpan / completely neutral stare at each other, both equally surprised yet compliant with this command, for about 15 seconds, untill i lost the staring contest / realized i had no idea how to gracefully ‘social’ my way out of the deadlock stare so i just made a joke relevant to the conversation i’d been having with the mom to try to give the kid an escape mechanism.
Myself being autistic, all that I gleaned from this was that yes, both I and this nice lady’s kid are indeed autistic.
So I’m autistic, closer to 40 than 30, randomly ended up in a conversation with an apartment neighbor.
She’s an approximately 50 yo mom, we somehow ended up talking about autism, how yes sometimes it can be closer to the stereotype of basically catatonic and nearly totally dysfunctional, but other times it can work in all these different ways, etc etc.
During this conversation, her autistic kid happens to walk by, and the mom says to her something like “child! this is ‘myactualname’, look at him!”
… and then me, ~40, her kid, ~20, both just did the deadpan / completely neutral stare at each other, both equally surprised yet compliant with this command, for about 15 seconds, untill i lost the staring contest / realized i had no idea how to gracefully ‘social’ my way out of the deadlock stare so i just made a joke relevant to the conversation i’d been having with the mom to try to give the kid an escape mechanism.
Myself being autistic, all that I gleaned from this was that yes, both I and this nice lady’s kid are indeed autistic.
Sweet of the mom to introduce her daughter to the like-minded neighbor.
Yes i thought so too, though it was rather abrupt and startling for myself and I imagine the kid as well.
But also it did work, and it wasn’t some kind of long duration ‘you must now socialize with this person’ type of thing.