Refereeing

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Right now I'm being haunted by memories of my brief, to say the least, time as a referee (in association football). I was thinking how unsuitable a pursuit this is for an Aspie.

Simply passing an exam on the Laws of the Game qualifies you as a referee with your national FA, then you can progress through grades to referee higher levels of football. As well as I did in that exam, it was no substitute for the social acumen required to referee football. I refereed only one game, partly because I wasn't given any more games anyway, and partly because I knew I couldn't cope with refereeing another. I did not anticipate how difficult refereeing a match would be in practice, for someone like me who can't multitask very well. I could not even tell properly, at such a quick pace, which team was to be awarded a throw-in, free kick, corner etc. The match I did referee was, let's say, a complete farce. As well as the multitasking with everything going on at once, I also couldn't cope with players' ulterior motives, cheating etc. Let's just say I went into complete meltdown. Although even I wasn't fooled when players from one of the teams claimed they'd scored when they hadn't.

Also, I don't know why the hell I took up refereeing when a) it requires a very, very thick skin and b) like everyone starting to referee, it meant starting by refereeing games involving Boys.

I didn't know I was an Aspie then, or really knew how much of a problem I had with multitasking, short term memory etc.

How interesting then to know I know somebody who is an aspie, a lot heavyer then me who lives for the game and knows everything there is to know about the game . Gues what? He's a referee...
I'll admit that he gives a lot of cards etc, but he's doing well.

"American Football" officials have much more fun with fowls. They don't hand out cards, they get to throw flags instead. Also some of those hand signals are a real "gas" to watch or even do. My favourite ref gesture is "False start-Offense".

(hands roll over each other)
I think I might enjoy doing something like this as I could wear my whistle just like a pacifier, but I bet I wouldn't last long at the job because I get easily biased.