On a scale of 1 to 10, how good at masking are you?

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Somewhere in the middle: 4-7.

Right now, I am at the stage of life where a person like me is considered 'eccentric', and not 'weird' or 'creepy'.

As a bonus, living in a culture other than the one I was born into means that what Americans might consider odd speech or behavior, Filipinos usually consider as just "the way Americans are".

I feel more accepted here than I ever did back home.

You probably smiled because ...you were glad to see her so that you could...tell someone about how you had been crying all day.

Not necessarily "masking".

At my best, probably 7-8. When I'm tired, sick, or overestimated, this could drop to 5, 4, or even lower.

At my age and situation, I do not need to do much masking for some of the reasons Fnord explained, so these skills have probably degraded. I would have given myself an 8 and it likely would have been an overestimate.

I think I'm the same.

I volunteer at a second hand shop and I've been told I would probably become paid staff if I could work the till. The very idea scares me and I said as much. I got strange looks and comments that it's easy, all computerised. I said it's not that, it's the customers! More strange looks. It's only a matter of time before they guess I have something diagnosable (if that's even a word).

Being as I wasn't diagnosed until age 60, I guess I am pretty good at it.

Not quite sure! If I have plenty of spoons left, usually earlier in the morning, I can often nail social situations that would otherwise make me uncomfortable. Sometimes I'll feel like a James Dean type character because I was so on.

But when the spoons start to run out...oh boy. It's like missing every quick-time event in a video game. Flailing cartoonishly like an infomercial actor.

How good am I at masking?

I have no idea. When I was diagnosed at 53, I told a co-worker. It was a big deal for me. Explained so much. He sort of tossed it off, but then he told me, "Wow, I'm sorry. I thought you already knew. I thought it was pretty obvious." He is on the spectrum as well. So there you are.

As a teenager, my mom always told me to act my age (act normal), and I was flummoxed because I only knew how to act the age I was. In a way ASD is just another label, like introvert, shy, artsy, etc. Now I know I'm not alone.

In hindsight, because I did not know I should be masking, I'd say 5.

Some things like making eye contact I learned in school for class presentations. I absolutely hated class presentations. I cannot present anything if there is more than one person. My brain shuts down. Lots of anxiety. I knew that wasn't normal.

When I got a dorm room in college, it was on the special needs floor. I had no idea why. Sharing a dorm room was very difficult.