Oblivious Much?

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I am sometimes oblivious to the effect I cause on other people, even if I said something funny.

For example I love photography and I have a tube of liquid bubbles that I wanted to take pictures off (blown bubbles, not the tube) and I asked my roommates in the car “who wants to blow my bubbles?” They start to laugh. I go “What?”
Friend one: the way you said that was really funny. I can’t blow ypur bubbles in public (I found out later on in the convo he WAS jpking hoping I understood what I had said has been twisted into a dirty joke).
“I was like why not? They sell bubbles everywhere in spring. See I got them in my tube” then proceeded to wiggle the tube. Friend two almost had to park her eyes were filled with tears of laughter.
“I was like what is so FUNNY about my tube of bubbles and me wanting them blown? I cant blow them myself and take pictures?”
And a few mins after this I realized why the hysteria.

When I was in junior high a girl in my class dreaded a visit from a friend of her mother, because the last time she'd seen her, she had noticed how large she had gotten and she had congratulated her on being pregnant. She wasn't pregnant.
The real fun thing (for us!) is that that girl was as NT as they come.


Been there, done that. A lot.


I have thought about that too. I don’t notice people much, and I think of the nightmare of trying to describe someone.
“Uhm, what he looked like? Uuuuuh… I think he was dark haired? What do you mean features? Sure, he had a face, but I can’t say more than that… Height and build? Didn’t notice. Clothes? Sure, but I didn’t notice what kind. Car? Yeah, he drove, but I have no idea what type of car, One of those modern ones who all look the same. It might have been dark. Or light.”
D’oh!
Now couple that with aspie body language and I’d likely go from witness to suspect in a blink.

I saw a program once where they talked about people being unreliable witnesses and they showed an example with a class where a man entered the room during lesson and did something in the classroom, it might have been replace a light bulb, I can’t recall. Then he left. Afterwards the students were asked what he looked like, and there were varying descriptions and some hadn’t even noticed him.


I don’t notice it at all, unless I simply see someone I don’t recognize. Really. A very different haircut is enough to make me not realize that it’s someone I know. It has happened. A slightly different one, and I don’t see it. A new outfit is something I’d never notice, I don’t notice the old outfits either.

I notice stuff that threatens me acutely but often neutral stuff not, as my whole focus is taken up with monitoring what people around me are doing for signs of threat

This means I won't be listening much to what anyone with me is saying. It will always take secondary importance to other people in the vicinity who I am always wary of.

If someone talks to me for too long about something I'm not that interested in I can find my attention drifting off easily.

Also I can watch films I've seen before and it's like watching a new film as I don't remember massive sections of it. I can only assume it either made no impact on me so I didn't commit it to memory or I was too busy ruminating about something
negative to take it in the first time.

Either that or the long-term use of anti-depressants is destroying my memory