This guy I know...

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I know everyone in the world has hobbies and interests. But what about someone who appears to be NT but is overboard with their interests? I know someone who is in his 60's and just a little shy and socially awkward but he says he used to be extremely shy when he was young. He doesn't have any obvious stims, unless he's hiding them. The biggest thing that jumps out at me is his extreme obsession with movies. He has over 5,000 DVD movies and has watched his favorite ones an average of 40 to 50 times each. He can recite the names of actors in movies and all kinds of facts about movies and old TV shows. He has a wonderful sense of humor and with a little polishing, he could be a professional comedian. He has you laughing constantly with his dry humor and joking around. He is very animated and he is constantly laughing and telling jokes. Most of his joking style is deadpan, but he isn't monotone or stoic in his normal speech.

To meet this man, you'd think he's an NT who is just a little quirky.... until you get to talking to him and hear about his movie collection. He does tend to talk "at you" once in awhile, but he seems to have a good amount of verbal interaction and he expresses a lot of empathy for certain people. Before retirement, he had a prestigious job title. Everyone loves this man a lot and he is well respected. He has been married twice, with a 24 year lull of being single in between the marriages. He rarely dated. He owns his own home and enjoys making improvements to his home.

I don't know how much Autism is in his family but I do know his grandson is Autistic. Although I think recently the child was downgraded to a general "PDD-NOS."

So what do you think? That movie collection/obession just screams AS to me.... Could he be AS or is it impossible since he does as well as he does?

He sounds like an older version of me.

He probably has mild AS.

^^ I believe this is indeed possible. ^^ Also, as he is perhaps an older man, he may have learned a number of social techniques.

I do believe you guys are probably right. I myself am almost 50 years old and learned the hard way on most things and have made adjustments along the way.

It's a continuum... there are a lot of people in the fuzzy in-between spot where you're not quite autistic or not quite NT, and it's nearly impossible to tell which. Cases of autism are more numerous at the NT-ish end of the spectrum, in any case; profound autism is vanishingly rare compared to barely-autistic cases of AS and PDDNOS. Which makes it all the more annoying that the autism stereotype is that of the most obvious sort of autism you could possibly have--it makes it a lot harder for those of us who can talk and take care of our own basic needs to get the idea across to somebody that yes, we actually would like a little assistance before we either go crazy or end up homeless...

It sounds like me only he has a bigger movie collection. A mild case of AS which only affects certain aspects of his life.

Vanilla_Slice