I'm that bad *taking things literally*?

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I keep doing it. OVER AND OVER. Most recently-as in just now-my dad said he might go for a walk with me and my mom today and then said, "And I'll leave you guys in the dirt."

And I said, "But we're not going on any dirt."

It's weird. I'm surprised I never noticed it being this bad before. Oh well.

Anyone else have this symptom pretty badly? I've done it many times this week.

Yeah, all the time. What I do is, before saying any response, I let the received information go through some "does this statement make sense?" filter in my head. Sometimes though, figurative things like the dirt thing you mentioned can slip right through. :D
But this sanity check thing did make me able to take the literal interpretation to my advantage: I am a master at cracking puns lol.

I'm usually well aware of what the other person meant, but I act as though I thought they meant it literally, just to mess with their heads and annoy them. Just my way of punishing them for not saying what they mean and meaning what they say.

The usual sequence of events for me is that I hear what the persons says, think of the literal meaning (probably visualise it in my mind), then figure out what they actually meant. Sometimes my response comes out before I get to the last part, so I would say what you said in your example. Most of the time though, it all happens in a split second and nobody will ever know that I took it literally at first. Sometimes I'll mess with the person like Willard does, or just chuckle at my visual image of the literal meaning (because I find that kind of stuff amusing).

I do that too. Although recently, I completely misinterpreted a comment on my Facebook status from one of my dad's friends and deleted him from Facebook because of it. When I explained to my dad why, he said it was a joke and was actually very funny, and I had to re-add him and apologise which I felt really horrible about. Still don't get the joke! And last week when I was going out, my dad told me to 'bury the key' so my brother could find it an hour later when he got home. I buried it in a plant pot outside and my dad shouted at me, saying he's meant to hide it not actually bury it but for some reason, I found it funny (so did my brother) which didn't help much. My parents also do it deliberately sometimes as a way of making fun of me but they don't mean it in a a horrible way- they just find it funny. I used to get really upset about it but now it's kind of a family joke unless we're arguing.

If I hear an idiom I am familiar with or one that is obvious in meaning it is no problem. I can't figure out what "I'll leave you guys in the dirt" means. I would probably just ignore it, weather it is literal or not. Wearing one's heart on one's sleeve is another example. I've heard it enough to know it is an idiom, but I can't be bothered about it's exact meaning because it's too vague. In one ear and out the other.

I don't take things literally. When I first heard the phrase ''I'm just pulling your leg'' some years ago, I didn't look at my legs and go, ''no you're not, how can you be?'' Instead I immediately thought about it and thought inwardly, ''that must be to do with how they were talking to me, and at the moment they are teasing, so 'pulling my leg' obviously means 'I am teasing you'.'' It didn't take a second to figure that out.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the opposite, I don't always take things literally enough when they are supposed to be taken literally. Like when I first started a voluntary job a few years ago, I didn't know where it was and I was told it was literally just where I get off at the bus stop. So when I got off the bus, I thought to myself, ''hmm, it can't be literally there, what people say isn't always that simple'', so I walked half way up the road looking for the shop I was starting my volunteering at, and then I turned round and went back to the bus stop and it was literally right behind the bus stop.

I rarely take things literally, just maybe some things. The times I can remember though

I try to see everything as an obscure metaphor so I can stay on my feet. I assume that everyone is being non-literal as a counter-measure. Unless I am on WP.

Exactly that. I actually enjoy those strange little metaphoric colloquialisms, once I know what they mean, but the first time you hear one, they can stop your brain dead in its tracks as you think: WThF?

One of my favorites is "that dog don't hunt."

In its literal sense, the statement is utterly meaningless. Which dog? Hunt for what? Why doesn't it hunt? Couldn't it be trained to hunt? Why are we suddenly talking about dogs?

When it actually means: "That statement (or claim) doesn't logically add up," or "what you just said can't be accurate, because it doesn't jibe with the facts."

Being from the Southern US, there is a certain regional sense to it, but I can't rationally explain the association. I mean, in no logical way does "that dog don't hunt" mean "you're full of BS," and yet, having grown up around rural country folk - it does. It makes perfect sense. I just can't tell you WHY.

But if an NT had never heard of a phrase before and someone said one, wouldn't they take it literally at first? I remember when I was about 9 one of the teachers brought up the phrase ''it's raining cats and dogs'', and the whole class thought that phrase was hilarious and laughed. They probably knew it wasn't literally raining cats and dogs (but surely any Aspie would figure that out too, I mean we are smart enough to know that millions of cats and dogs don't fall out of the sky). I also found it funny, and some of the children imitated cat and dog noises as though they were imagining a scene of real cats and dogs falling from the sky. Some children had probably heard that phrase for the first time and might have took it a different way, like not thinking it was actually raining real cats and dogs but might of thought the teacher meant there are loads of cats and dogs outside or something.

I used to as a kid, but I'm learning not to now.

Today, I was helping Mom carrying up a box spring and she told me to drop it and I let go and the edge dropped on the stair. Mom told me she didn't mean drop it, she meant put it down. I was sore and tired because it's so heavy and she told me to drop it and did it without thinking.

I'm guilty of doing this. This is especially true when the other person is being sarcastic, even though I frequently use sarcasm myself.

As for understanding idioms and taking things literally, if it's one that I've heard before I don't have a problem. If it's one that I haven't then there's probably a 50% chance that I won't realize it was an idiom and get confused by it.