Common Myths about AS

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I must confess that I am among the few of us who are passively guilty in propagating this stereotype. (We're only actually "guilty" of possessing the stereotyped characteristic.) I happen to thoroughly know my train line's timetables and route maps. This is not a particular special interest, done to occupy and relax the mind. It is a simple outgrowth from everyday living. I, and others I know, travel by train to appointments and what-not. So we occasionally need to know when we have to leave to get somewhere. Being drawn to tables of numbers, I'll look it up. I'll look at the options surrounding the target time. By the third look-up, I have remembered most of the table. After a while, people ask and I know straight away, so it raises their expectations. Every six months, the tables change, and the process repeats. And people start to ttake note that this person, who incidentally happens to be the only autistic person they know personally, knows the train timetables by heart.

In truth, I don't think the few people that are even aware of this feature of mine see it as a stereotype at all. They just know I have a good memory for numbers. But many stereotypes grow out of their holding true for a small percentage of the stereotyped group. From there the unusual characteristic is extrapolated to the entire group. "I know X. She is autistic. She knows the train timetables. Everyone else I know is not autistic. Everyone else I know does not know the train timetables. Therefore, autistic people must know train timetables." Some people follow this flawed logic. Others don't, but hear the conclusions of those who do, and being only momentarily interested in the topic, absorb the stereotype and move on.

And to all of you who have been stereotyped with this particular characteristic because people like me exist and get noticed, you do have my apologies.

another ramble concerning the empathy topic...again...

Sympathy: If I were able to sympathise with people automatically this would make everything a lot easier!

My fiance recently told me that he had been enlisted into National Service for his homeland which he has not seen for over a decade. I knew that this was a very bad thing but I struggled for days to feel stressed about it. I remember one night that I lay in bed repeating to myself "national service, national service" to try and trigger the right sympathetic reaction.

I confess most of my memories of sympathy as in "feeling sorry for something because something horrible has happened to them" were of pet fish or cats. When it comes to humans I do know I have to feel something, so I try really hard to get there, but I don't have many memories of it because it wasn't really a natural reaction.

Empathy, by your definition, doesn't come easily to me either. However, sort of echoing Callista, I have a sort of learnt empathy whereby I take those problems on as literally my own problems, and thus instinctively react to them. Not sure if this is NT.

When my friend's teacher died, I couldn't stop crying, even when he was not crying, and even though I did not know his teacher very well. I may anguish for days over a misfortune that happened to someone very distant from me, even someone I don't even know, and may cry or get distressed thinking about it. I have cried over imaginary characters in my head that didn't even have especially sad stories.

So emotions? Definitely, sometimes too much.
Empathy and sympathy? Probably deficient, but being HF or whatever, I'm pretty good at generating substitutes.

I don't actively memorise anything, but I have all the lines of all buses I ever took in my town in my head because I just know how the streets meet and everything. Information like that just gets stuck in my mind.

I pretend to not know though, because many people react as if you're not supposed to know about these things.

So far I only had people saying something like 'oh, you're so hf AS, you wouldn't memorise schedules or anything'.

Kind of like being hit with the stereotype that if you are hf you don't do things like that.

Well, MY problem is that I memorize such things only to the level that I need them at. For example, I could go to a lot of stores, but could never tell you the address, and maybe not even the street. I could tell you how to get to an isle, and the order of items, but not give you its number or letter. Even with my relative perfunctory knowledge of such items, some people seem to be amazed at what I know. My parents/acquaintences sometimes call me for research, even TODAY!

BTW if you know the info, and have the mental ability to act on it, etc... , WHO CARES what other people think about your diligence? They should be JEALOUS!

It is AMAZING! I try to learn some things, and they are so relatively hard. Yet I could STILL describe the area that I was at for 13 months about 10 years ago with great detail, and even tell you how to get to a nice barbershop that is fairly well hidden from a hotel 2 blocks away without really ever crossing a street, or going outside. I could tell you about some places I only noted in passing. A few years ago I was in newark new jersey for a few months, and could give you some info about that place. I also know a barber THERE! Interestingly, BOTH appeared to be italian, and liked frank sinatra! I could describe a LOT of places I have been at, right down to a place that I was last at when I was about 2.

When I tried to get diagnosed, the psychologist told me about the thing with being able to remember a bus timetable in one's head and said "that's real Asperger". (At that point he wasn't sure I had it). I can't remember timetables in my head, but maybe I should have asked him, "does it count if I can remember the Hymn Book in my head??" (I can't really that either, but I do remember a lot of hymns and other songs by heart; it's easy for me to learn poetic texts by heart. And people always get so 'impressed' that I can remember eg. a Christmas carol that I've sung / heard many times every single year, when they themselves need to look in the songbook even though they are older than me and thus should have heard them more times and therefore remember them better... ... should I then say that it's 'impressive' that they don't remember? )

'Aspies have no creativity.' and 'Aspies have no sense of humour.' are anything but the truth.

The NTs who say we have no sense of humour maybe just say it because they don't understand our sense of humour (too advanced??).