The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

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I've once again read to the end of the pages and wanted to post simply to keep my foot in. I spent some time last night with a woman that cultivates my friendship because I 'know about Asperger's.' She was telling me how her granddaughter she is raising is 'so clingy lately' and she doesn't know why, "she used to be so good and I could go to the store for a half hour, but now. .she doens't want to be left alone in the house and I just don't know why. . . "

I remind her of the LAST time I was over there, their mouse traps had caught a mouse and the poor little thing was squirming in the trap. My friend was very uncomfortable and told her grand daughter (who is AS, remember my story of the colorblind test? it's that girl and grandma) "that's OK, honey," and then said to me in perfect seriousness "it will die in about twenty minutes, don't you think?" The girl was horrified and frankly so was I. I had such a rush of what I WANTED to say to her on SO many levels about the situation I was caught with it all in my throat and just went into action instead.

I ran the sink full of water, picked up the mouse in the trap and mercifully drowned the mouse to put it out of it's misery, then flushed it down the john, while the woman fluttered around making suggestions and telling the girl she was 'over reacting'.

I reminded the woman of that incident and she went on to tell me a friend of hers had been sitting in a big overstuffed chair and reached under the cushion to get the remote and came up with a dead mouse in the cushions. The little girl freaked, and my friend is laughingly telling me that she asks the little girl now to 'go get bla bla bla over by the 'mouse' chair, and wonderingly told me that the girl 'won't even sit there anymore'. When I pointed out that the girl was clingy and scared because the warm loving home she lived in was a terrifying scary place to her after the mouse infestation (they said they killed about 17 mice in their traps, but it was no 'infestation!') and the finding the dead dessicated mouse in the living room chair cushions had pushed her over the edge. ( That actually took some convincing for this woman, by the way because it was 'weeks ago! and they 'hadn't had a dead mouse for over two weeks.' )

I told her to engineer a 'get the living room all tidied up' day where the girl was involved in moving the furniture around, cleaning out behind the cushions, getting the scene all reset as a clean and wholesome environment that she could trust again, and perhaps the girl would be less 'clingy and anxious.' I had to harp on this for a while because she really didn't 'get' why all of that would help (i.e. saw no connection between one situation and the other)

Now I work around lots of folks that I have nothing in common with other than we all breathe and we all need the job. I hear that communicating with anyone twenty IQ points above you or below you causes all sorts of communication frustrations, you can imagine when the gap widens by 40 or even 60 points.

I visited again last night and I brought over a book called "All Cats Have Asperger's" It was the absolute best thing I could ever have done, not just for the girl, but for her grandmother and grandmother's new husband 'Grandfather.' It is simple, illustrated and will give them all a fighting chance to have a bit of understanding in that family.

that's me. . an insensitive Aspie, no empathy nor theory of mind . . skipping through the world tossing popcorn and pearls with the same abandon.


I love you all, cause there is no 'communications gap' when we chat with each other here on the ol' WP. We are the fortunate ones, guys, never never forget that.

Merle

Pant, pant, pant... phew!! !

I hate it when, for some reason that I have yet to fathom, I stop getting any nice "Watched topic" emails.

Admittedly, I was a bit busy yesterday... and for some reason it didn't register with me that the Ex-Cafe was being a bit quite. Of course, it wasn't. Merely seven pages to catch up.

Who accused me of being a gentleman, then? Own up.

Welcome to the waffle, Lucy1. You may only speak when spoken to... or at any other time... in fact, whenever the fancy takes you.

I think I said hello Mescalero, but for good measure, just in case I didn't... Hello Mescalero. I suspect Gromit has a very valid point - the Aspies that can stand other Aspie/Auties are the ones you'll see here. Exactly what proportion that constitutes is open to question.

And... distracted again - to looking at this laptop that I've just installed 64Studio on. Looaadds of audio/visual stuff. Just looking at how Rosegarden auto-generates sheet music from a midi file. I really don't have a clue what I'm doing. No change there. (grin)

[quote
Is that Lord Kitchener in your avatar? I just saw a picture of him, and there is a lot of resemblance, unless I am misled by a coincidence of mustache and uniform.[/quote]

It's[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uzZNWu9LNc[/youtube]
General Melchett, from Blackadder Goes Forth. I believe he was a composite character, Kitchener being one and General Haig another.