Things you didn't comprehend as a child because of autism?

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Yes, that was exactly what I assumed! That was why I wanted them so much.

I´m not sure if NT children make the same mistake as I did, and are equally disappointed, as TPE2 asserts: however, my mother sure gave me hell about this, as well as the ice cream cone incident. She told me I was ridiculous for believing those ads, and taking them literally. But how was I to know?

At least, one thing is for sure....when I was young, I did not understand the whole concept of "false advertising". It really never, ever occurred to me that someone could possibly lie or mislead, just to sell products. It had to happen to me several times before I understood that. Even last year, I was too trusting in regards to a lottery (I´m embarrassed to say), so I still haven´t properly "learned my lesson", I guess.

That´s funny!

I always thought the expression "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" was weird. I always imagine a small bath of water being tossed outside, with a baby in it. I know that sounds awful and morbid, but in my mind it looks kind of funny. (As well as the "raining cats and dogs", which somebody mentioned already. The medley of various cats and dogs I see raining in my mind look pretty funny, I want to laugh sometimes).

Once, when I was about 8 or so, my family drove across country to see my relatives in Indiana, and it was the first time I saw lightning bugs as they're not in California. They kept hitting the windshield, and I said, "Why don't they just get out of the way?"

When I was six, I would always grab things off the shelf I wanted when we go shopping and mom always told me "Put it back, it's too much money."
I would look at the item and couldn't find any money. Why was money a problem? I thought my mother was crazy.

I also remember when I was in my new school, we would sometimes go past my old school I went to when I was 3-5 years old when we go somewhere and I would point it out that's where I go to school and mom would tell me I am too big for it now. I couldn't understand how could I be big for it, the teachers could fit inside. Now I know she meant I was too old to attend.


This is probably something all kids would have problems with when they are young,

I remember I would get a birthday card from my aunt and uncle from Wisconsin and they have some bills attached to it. My mother would take me to the store and I would spend it on any item I wanted but I couldn't understand why I had to give more then one paper bill the cashier.
I didn't understand items had a cost to it and you had to give that much amount to the cashier to get the item.
That's why kids get allowance. So they learn how to spend it and learn how to save for the item they want. As they get older they have to earn it by doing chores because that is how they learn if they want something, they have to earn it.

I didn't understand why when you payed for something they gave you cash back. I would always smile and say thank you, I thought they were giving me free money.

Apart from the pecking order, what you mention here was my biggest discovery in life. I'm ashamed to admit that I discovered this in my mid-forties! And I have to remind myself all the time that people are DOING something with their words, not just expressing what's in their hearts/minds. Our boss is a great example. When she says: "You look lovely today" and other compliments, you know she's about to dump extra work on you. She DOES it to get you in a positive mood for the news to come. I think not understanding this is one of the things that account for the big gap between NTs and Aspies.

My parents would scold me for not answering them, yet they would also scold me for 'talking back' to them. In order to answer without talking, I took to writing.

To this day, I can't provide a satisfactory answer to casual questions. 'How are you?' invariably leads to me describing my current task rather than my current state of mind, or whatever it is that question is meant to reveal. When I do try to describe the latter, I dig my brain for anything that might be abnormal about my current experience, such as 'My left shoulder is sore,' or 'Your voice sounds higher than usual'. I know that's not what they want, but I just can't bring myself to engage in the ritualistic exchange of automatic phrases they expect.

This is connected to why I don't drink or do any other drugs. I've observed that those who do such things, while under their influence, are only capable of such empty exchanges. They say it makes them more sociable and creative, but from what I've seen it only makes them think they're more sociable and creative. Every guy on marijuana thinks he's a genius because he's dreamed up massage parlors for pets.

My mouth popped open in surprise when I read this. And a bunch of remembered disingenuous events clicked: understanding!

You just taught me something very important!


THANK YOU!

Yeah, I thought that too. I also came up with precise meanings for words like "some"...

"a couple" = 2
"a few" = 3
"some" = 4
"several" = 5

I remember being aware that people had feelings, but I only knew some of the things that would provoke such feelings. I spent a lot of my childhood being surprised when I would say something and get reactions of anger, or have an teacher suddenly tell me I had done something gravely upsetting to someone else and I would end up in the principal's office. I just could not predict how the people around me would behave in response to each other, and in response to me. It actually made me feel quite frightened and unsafe.

You bet. It's like being born into a zombie apocalypse, only the zombies are manic-depressive schizophrenics with ADHD.

I remember how many people would get furious at my use of the word 'obviously'. I eventually developed a fear of using it at all, and it was replaced by 'supposedly', then 'apparently', followed by 'evidently'.

I like the latter. The listener inevitably thinks of the word 'evidence', and they approach the situation more rationally without even realizing that I nudged them with the word. Pshaw.

Yeah, had almost the same thing about jet planes. I stood on the ground watching the long condense trails, and wondered how there could be people inside those tiny stripes. I also believed that the mountains was like razorsharp on the top, and could not quite figure out how people could go there. Think I was kind of two dimentional in my mind.

it depends on the age. it is a developmental delay, so i did evolve,
but very much slower than NT children.
i will talk about before i was 5 years old.

before i was about 3.5, i had no idea that when people spoke, they meant something.
i thought of people as animals that just made random droning sounds and grunts and shrieks etc.
i perceived humans talking like i perceived a flock of seagulls all squawking, or like the sounds of excited chimps tearing through the jungle etc.
i perceived them as just any old random animal vocalization that meant nothing more than an expression of energy like gorillas pound their chests and bellow.

so i did not perceive that people were trying to communicate with me. i thought in pictures rather than words to begin with.
i never narrated any thought to myself.
(people find it hard to imagine how i could think logically without using words in my ideas when i tell them that nowadays.)

my parents and others tried to sit me down and get me to realize they were trying to communicate with me by pulling exaggerated faces at me while they spoke.
but another thing that made it hard was that i did not perceive expressions on peoples faces to have meaning either.

to me, "expressions" were just facial muscular contortions with no meaning at all (like grimmacing baboons for example).

an example to convey what i mean may be a picture of a face of a person undergoing a massive electric shock.
there is muscular contortion because the muscles contract in response to the current. that is how i saw "smiling ".

or you may have seen pictures of peoples faces in high speed wind tests where their cheeks are blown up like balloons, and their eyes are widened, and there are ripples of flapping skin shuddering over their face. this is how i saw "surprise" etc.
i saw all facial expressions with no theory of mind.

my parents and therapists had no real anchor point to reach me.

i had an equal value in my mind for all forms of life. an ant in my mind was as important as the queen of england. i could not separate humans from other animals that also moved and acted of their own volition.

it was not nice i guess for my parents to see me look at them with the same feeling i looked at worms with.

i did construct complex things that showed i had some intelligence, but it seemed like i may be profoundly autistic before i was 3.5.

i suddenly learned to talk when i was 3.5. (i have clear memories of early childhood (they were validated when i asked people years later))

when i was approx 3.5, i pointed at an airplane (i spell it "aeroplane") while i was in the backyard, and my father made some voice sounds.

i went back to playing, and then after a while another plane went over, and i pointed again and my father made the same voice sounds.

it suddenly dawned on me that my father may have some information about the airplane. so for the first time in my life i looked at him and absorbed his sounds. (he reacted energetically to that event)
i did not know what he said, but i know at that instant i realized that "people sounds" had meaning, and they possibly already knew what i was trying to find out.
i learned to talk well within about 3 months, and by 4 years old i was reading books (non fiction).

but i still did not know what other people felt.
i just knew i could get information from them and that is all i wanted (apart from the food and shelter that i took for granted)

anyway, that is a brief general summary of the "deficits" of my time as a toddler

I'm glad I helped, Fuzzy. Funny coincidence, a few minutes ago I was researching Alberta, Canada in Wikipedia. I was telling myself how beautiful it must be to live there. Especially because I saw the lovely thread about the woman from Alberta who found her soul mate here in this very forum and now they're living together.

My parents have told me that one say they said it was "raining cats and dogs" and I asked if Lindy (my grandparents dog who had passed away recently) would come down.

My other grandparents lived on the canal, and us kids used to go swimming in it. One time, as a joke, my dad told me that there was a plug in the middle of the canal (in the deepest part) which they used to drain all the water out. For years, I believed him, and every time I went swimming, I'd swim out to the middle of the canal, and swim downwards as deep as I could go to see if I could make it to the plug.

I never reached the bottom.