So, I'm writing about the difficulties we Autistic folks have in attempting to understand the meanings of other DK Members. I have a type of Autism called Asberger's Syndrome. So does my son and very likely other family members I never met. I'm adopted and all my life I was on the outside. I never fit into society, social situations cause me anxiety and pain and I have other issues as well.
There are social situations I cannot understand unless I ask questions. I learned to read expressions from a book and I still get it wrong sometimes. My son has complete face blindness to the degree that when he watched *Buffy the Vampire Slayer,* he could only distinguish blonde Buffy from redheaded Willow by their differing hair colors. I have a bit of trouble distinguishing people as well, but my musical ear lets me use voices to distinguish between folks.
The face blindness and difficulties telling people apart feel related to the trouble I have in interpreting the written word. I don't know if problem's 2 sides of the same coin or whether it's another complete type of dysfunction, but I take everything very seriously. It's frustrating and irritating that I have to ask what someone intended because I've been doing it since I learned to talk at 6 months. I'm 68 years old, and this will continue to be a challenge until I'm dead.
Here I am, hat in hand, once again asking y'all to please think about all of us Autistic folks. We want to understand your meaning and we really do hope that you want to communicate clearly with us. The distance between us means our telepathy doesn't work well, and there's no tone of voice nor is there any body language we can see to give us hints at your meaning. Unless you use the sarcasm font, an emoticon or give me *some* hint, I'm left guessing. Sometimes I guess wrong.
When I was brand new here, I once Flagged a post that turned out to be a Mod's post. Everyone else knew it was sarcasm except for me. I got suspended for 2 days for misunderstanding.
Whevever you make a post, you know what you mean. Please help all of us to understand your meaning. Whenever I take the time & the trouble to read whatever you wrote, please don't make me guess how I'm supposed to take it. Please, do give me a hint so I don't have to guess.