AS: Your behaviour or others' perceptions?

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So I have a question: Do you feel that Asperger's Syndrome affects others' opinions and impressions of you more than it actually does your own behaviour.
For instance, I feel that I am a fairly "normal" person. However, when others interact with me I often feel that they're getting the impression that something's wrong. I have a lot of ADD and OCD traits as well that make me appear odd or clumsy to those who don't know me well, but I often feel that if I were someone not diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome I would be more easily forgiven for absent-mindedly doing things like counting my change wrong or bumping into someone in a hallway while I wasn't paying attention.
I feel as well that I'm fairly normal at home, but my parents constantly tell me, in different words, that there is something wrong with me: to them I am someone with a "disability" before I am their son.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I got to my actual point, which is that I often feel that interactions with other people would go considerably better if they were undertaken in the same way by something others did not perceive something "wrong" or "different" with on some sort of psychic level.
So, to get to the main point of the discussion, do you feel that your Asperger's Syndrome effects others' perceptions of you a lot more than it actually does your own behaviour (if at all?)

Do others find your differences cute and endearing? Does it make you feel good to make others laugh and/or smile? Does your clumsiness ever help disarm and/or break the ice?

Are you "quirky" or are you "scary"?

I guess the point is: you can use your aspie powers for good or for evil.

Robin Williams and many other geeky, funny-types are fellow-aspies.

Both are something of disabilities in their own way. Being "quirky" means people don't take you seriously. Being "scary" means people take you seriously in the wrong way.

Yes - but "quirky" is much more marketable.

All I'm saying is maybe you should nurture the quirky side and suppress the scary side. (Unless you're the Dick Cheney or Dennis Hopper type - in which case you can make a good living from being scary.)

Let me know if you need examples of cute, successful, "quirky" types.

For me it's vice versa. Though the opinions of others affect me greatly too. But they won't see I have a HF/had a MF ASD.

Meaning my ASD affects my behaviour noticeably and some of it severely, but people have a problem acknowledging the autism. Which then results in that they really give me a hard time, are unforgiving and notice every little bit that they wouldn't bother if it appeared in other people.

What's beyond my understanding though is that they are always aware that I am 'unexplainable different and unpredictable' which often translated to 'scary' in the past and sometimes does so today still.

But even though they notice this instantly even when I think I'm doing great right now, the majority of people are very unwilling to accept that I'm not 'unexplainable different and unpredictable' (or 'scary and a psycho') but plain autistic. I don't understand why they deny that possibility when they're shaken to the core by my obvious difference, but yeah... the great mystery of my life.

The problem is just as much how people percieve me as it is how my behaviour causes them to percieve me. I am so sick of not understanding how to be normally social. It can be quite crippling at times, but I accept it as something I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. I wouldn't mind half the crap about my AS if I could at least not have the social issues.

it's both, but they notice and whether endearingly or annoyingly people seem to think of me as odd. Luckily for me all chemists are odd so they can't always blame the autistic traits

Yeah and I can call myself a programmer, and then people are like "oh, you're one of them..." And suddenly my behaviour is more acceptable to most people than saying I am autistic.