Lack of common sense.

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I understand unspoken dialogue OK, by instinct. Is it possible for an Aspie to be able to?

I was always told I lacked common sence as well but from the examples the OP gave, espically the one about the bannas, it sounds more like an issue with taking things litteraly.

Thanks to my endless and undoubtedly stupid questions, one of my college teachers came to dislike me to the point of making me suicidally afraid of having her in one of my future classes.

I'm so thankful that one of the teachers who really liked me confronted her and said how good of a student he thought I really was. She ended up about a hundred times nicer in the class that I was so scared of going to, from day one. My mind was blown...

Anyway, even now my self-esteem gets a bit low when my duncy moments happen at home. It's like I don't think enough. Which is odd, because I think a lot, probably more than my parents put together.

Honestly, you seem to be the most NT aspie I've seen on the forums, socially and cognitively speaking.

When you put it that way, it seems like it *should* be really simple. Unfortunately, my brain works in a way that's rather unusual, and what should be simple tends not to be simple at all to me.

I'm not sure how to explain this: I suppose it relates to the issue of details vs. the big picture. I recall there was this thread here a while back where this image made up of letters was shown, and it was said that spectrumites and NTs are likely to see the image differently. It was said that NTs would see the big letters first, and spectrumites would see the little letters first. I remember that I was thinking little and big letters in terms of capital and lower case letters. I was confused. All the letters stacked up together were capital letters, and I saw no lower case letters. It wasn't until I read a few more comments that I realized the capital letters I was seeing stacked up in groups *were* the little letters. The groups of letters stacked and bunched together actually formed the shapes of larger letters that I hadn't even noticed. I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself very clearly here, but I can't think of how to be any clearer. The point is, I didn't even *see* the larger letters the tiny little capital letters grouped together to form until someone explained it in a comment further down, and that's what most NTs would notice first about the image.

When entering into any situation involving other people, there are a lot of factors involved, a lot of little details: the physical environment, the individual people present, the individual tasks each of the people are involved in, the larger purpose those tasks serve, why everyone has come together, the objects in the physical environment, where they are located, which ones aren't needed for the tasks being done, which ones are needed, and how they need to be used, the time of day, what has been done, what still needs to be done, what needs to be done now, what is best saved for later, what tasks require one person, what tasks require two or more people, what tasks are a logical extension of another task already started by someone, which are actually up for grabs, the steps required for completing a task, the logical sequence for completing those steps, etc,etc, etc. It's a lot of information to take in, but for most people, it's all so automatic, they never realize how many factors are at play.

A big picture thinker is likely to walk into a situation, and instinctively reach some understanding regarding the full scope of what's playing out. When one can see the whole picture, it's much easier to see how the various details making up the big picture come into play, then automatically figure out exactly how one fits into said big picture. That most likely makes it far easier to read between the lines of what people say, and intuitively pick up on one's own role in a given task.

That's not how my mind works though. For me, the little details making up the big picture trickle in, a little at a time, and when they come together, *if* they come together, they don't form a cohesive whole -- they form a cluttered mess, and all I can do is sift through the clutter, and attempt to find some semblance of order in the chaos. It's extremely difficult, and renders *everything* in life a struggle. That's why I constantly feel like I'm putting forth far more effort than other people, yet I accomplish far less. It's a really frustrating and exhausting way to live.

In spite of the questions I raised earlier, I actually know *exactly* what it is I'm missing when I really think about it. At the time I wrote that post my frustration was temporarily blocking my mental access to that information. It's not so simple to remedy, and it may not be possible to remedy. The reality is, I'll never be able to process and implement information the way an NT does. My best bet would be to find some alternate path that works for me. Right now, I'm a long way from figuring out what works for me, and I'm thirty years old. As a result, my life is a scattered mess, and it's a scattered mess that seems to have run into a massive pile of quicksand into which it is sinking deeper with every day that passes. Most people I encounter see me as a ineffectual idiot. Nevertheless, this is the life I'm living; this is the person I am. All I can do is just keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep on putting forth my best effort, and hope to eventually find myself in a place that is less murky.

I was confused about it too because I was thinking "what little letters?" I saw all of them were capitalized and I thought those were the big letters. Then I figured out the big letters were the capital letters making the big letters. So I did see those big letters too but I saw the little letters also so it's hard to tell what I saw first. I saw both. It's like showing me a picture of a bookshelf with stuff on it and telling me what I see first. Uh, I see everything so I don't know what I saw first. The big picture is stuff on a bookshelf and the small details is the stuff that is on the bookshelf.

Very easy for me I just don't like been told what do! F*** ***

I went to the doctor because my arms kept having a tingling sensation and so they were doing tests to see if it was caused by a neurological condition. The doctor asked me if I had strength in my arms and I thought that was a weird question to ask so I just said, "yes, I work out". He just looked at me and went back to his paper work. At some point realized what he was asking.

I'm not sure if this counts. I had to be on the phone with this lady the other day and she made a joke which I didn't mind. I didn't hear her first sentence but I figured out what she was joking about after she explained she was joking and didn't mean it literally and she said something like, "ha ha funny, so funny". Then she said, I am JOKING. I then said, "uh, uh", meaning yes, I understand she was joking. Then she raised her voice and said "OH MY GOD!". Then I got nervous and started genuinely laughing because I had an idea I definitely was supposed to be saying something else. I still kind of wonder why exactly she raised her voice and said oh my god. I didn't mind her joking I just didn't think it was that funny and was trying to focus on what she was going to actually say.

It's not just common sense...but a genuine communication deficit. Using the OPs examples, numbers 1, 2 and 3 are all to do with literal thinking in some degree. #2 is about trying to understand instructions that are too vague. #3 is about an implied meaning throughout the situation that the OP failed to pick up on.

Here's how the people involved could have explained things better:

#1 - by the instructor asking if the cloth was mostly straight.
#2 - by mom asking OP if they could pick up 2 bunches of bananas
#3 - by the teacher gesturing towards the seat and saying OP "You can move here"

This is why people have to be specific and detailed when explaining things to people on the spectrum who struggle with this...just expecting that they will pick up the hidden meanings is not going to cut it. Unfortunately, most people who try to help people on the spectrum aren't aware of this, leading to frustration and misunderstandings.

For some reason, they seem to be better at processing implied meanings for things, much in the same way they intuitively pick up social skills. When they see something being demonstrated, they will just assume that it's like that for all other situations they are in, whereas with people on the spectrum, they often don't have this inuition, so things may need to be more concrete. This is at least how I think it works.

Today, my mother told me to put plastic wrap over the honeydew melon. So I put plastic wrap over the plate of honeydew that she had cut for us to eat instead of the half of the honeydew that was supposed to go into the refrigerator.

Needless to say, she was appalled by my lack of common sense.

heres what i did during a similar situation... went picked up two bananas absent-minded and then realized they won't be enough for all of us so went back to make sure what mom wants.
Yeah I don't sit in others chairs though they mean for me to sit

I don't do this now, but I used to do this when I was 10/11, until my mum told me,"Your friend wants to know what you were doing before you were on the phone."
I answered; "Why does she care?"

Happened more when I was younger.
Still can't understand metaphor or slangs very well.

In the banana's case, in my opinion, was not your fault.

Heh. Don't worry about it. This kind of stuff happens to all of us.

The worst butt-chewing I ever got from my dad came when I was in high school & he called me on the phone (this was well before cell phones, so he called me on a landline) & asked me "Where are you?" My response was "You called me & I answered the phone, so obviously you know where I am!!" His response was not postable in polite society...

The term "common" sense is a misnomer--it most assuredly is not...