Dear People Who Are In The Elevator With Me

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They do that too. I hate them.

Dear dad,

While you dont normally annoy me, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND JESUS CHRIST, please Im eating my oatmeal so stop waiving that stupid dead fish corpse around like a xbox controller being wielded by some aggravated nerd playing halo with too much soda! Really I didnt cook this much oatmeal only to loose my appetite, so at 9:30 when you just get done cleaning the kitchen yes I will walk in there like any other room and grab a snack and you'll just sit there fine and dandy.

Love,

Nate.

Dear Relatives,

Just a short note to let you know that I don't hate you. I have even forgiven you for having turned me away when I was homeless, jobless, and just needed a warm, safe place to sleep. My wife and I live very well on our own. While it would be nice to see you again, please understand that all those stories about me that you love to repeat every time we're together are embarassing and hurtful to me, and are the main reason that I'm reluctant to be around you.

It's been 32 years since I was a teenager, and even longer since I was a child. While I am the same person, I no longer have the same hopes, fears, and motivations as I did back then. Maybe if you tried to get to know me as I've become, instead of pretending that I'm still the same awkward, naive kid in the mis-matched clothes trying to learn how the real world works by watching black-and-white movies on TV, you would come to appreciate me as an individual, instead of a sepia-toned memory.

And stop telling me, "You sound just like your father" whenever I confidently express an opinion or relate a fact. He may have been a mean, nasty, drunken old man, but he was MY mean, nasty, drunken Old Man, and I resent the demeaning attitude you express whenever you point out the similarities we share. I have opinions, and I know things. If you don't want to hear what I have to say, then maybe it's best that we spend another 20 years apart; maybe by then we will all be too old to care what anyone else thinks. Let's hope that it doesn't come to that.

Yes, I miss you too.

Love,

Fnord

Dear people who I'm working with,

Sorry about constantly sounding like an arrogant dick when babbling about the importance of bands that you've never heard of. I really don't mean to sound so condescending.

It's not just my father who has a habit of doing this, then?

Dear fellow commuters

Just because we happen to take the same bus each day does not automatically make us best friends and give you carte blanche to strike up involved and intrusive conversations with me. I barely register you beyond recognizing you to look at (and then only after I've seen you several dozen times); please leave me alone.

I do this a lot...like "Twilight stole Muse, which is really, really influential but why this song not this one..."
And then I'm like "So yesterday I was listening to RedLight's Crash System Control, which you should listen to because"

Dear Employees at Bed Bath and Beyond:

Please stop lurking around behind shelves and stuff so that you can pop up from behind me, with a game-show-host smile, and say, "Finding everything okay???" every two minutes.

If I need help finding a specific item, I will either ask for help, or decide that I don't need the item. When you sneak around like that and then pop out at me, it creeps me out, and makes me want to leave the store before I've had a chance to look around. Your store is full of so many useless, silly things, but it's the only place in town that sells a few things that I actually need. I need to be left alone so I can filter out all the unnecessary stuff.

Dear Nosy Neighbor,

I don't like you. I don't like the fact that you have to be in everyone's business all of the time, and I think that it's plainly obvious that when you try to have conversations with me as I walk from my car to my front door that I'm trying to blow you off as quickly as possible. Stop bothering me. You have nothing to say that could possibly interest me, and I don't understand why you need to find out about everything going on in the life of everyone in the neighborhood then broadcast it to everyone you run into. I hate gossip.

Yeah, I tend to do similar things then go on a monologue about the significance of a few genres, most specifically post-punk, lo-fi and post-rock. I've gone on uninterrupted for over a half of an hour recently. It's good if the person's interested in it, but otherwise it's kind of weird when afterwards I realize that they don't care and are now looking at me like I have eight heads.

Dear Lady At The Vitamin Store,

Please don't try to assess me immediately when I walk in-- I don't need you telling me I have an odd posture or walk a certain way. It's none of your concern why I was prescribed a certain vitamin. And, please, please, DO NOT TOUCH ME. Please don't grab my face to look into my eyes. It's none of your business if beneath my eye or whatever is whatever color so you can try to sell me some other kind of vitamin. I'm sorry I backed away from you and left the store (only to stand out in the cold in the parking lot while you stayed in the store with my mother trying to sell her some other type of vitamin we didn't need).

Did this actually happen? Did the lady in the vitamin store actually grab your face to look into your eye? I'm horrified! I must live a sheltered life, because I rarely seen anything as blatantly inappropriate as that. That's downright creepy. That's even worse that those horrible guys that someone else wrote about, who pounce on you and try to scratch your scalp with one of the nasty massager things.

Yes, it really did happen. She grabbed my face to try to look into my eyes or under my eyelid or something. I was horrified and I didn't know what to do. I just kind of backed away from her and nearly backed into a shelf. I stayed around a bit but then I couldn't handle it and had to leave the store. You couldn't pay me to go into that place again.

Dear clercks at grosseries, supermarkets and fast food places!

Stop asking me where I am from! Yes, I have a damn accent. Stop asking me about my historic motherland. That is none of your business! It's hard for me to maintain this ''usefull" short talk with you no matter whaterver function in the society this damn short talk plays. I am damn tired to tell where I am from to everyone I meet. I live in the US and the rest is none of your business. I feel stupid when I have to suppot this silly ''short and nicy talk" game. Please, don't drag me into that.

Dear bus travellers and city train travellers! stop yelling when you are talking to each other! Stop yelling into your cell phones! I damn don't care whoever you marry or divorce and how nice your kids are and how stupid your co-workers are. If you talk to each other DO IT FOR EACH OTHER. Don't make a performance for the rest of the buss travellers. Don't pretend that your stupid talk damn important to the rest of the world.

Your customer, co-traveller.

Why is it that so many people can be so totally oblivious to the fact that someone obviously isn't interested in talking to them? I thought we were the ones who were supposed to miss social cues...

Maybe the, 'Everybody likes to chat!!' idea is so deeply entrenched in their brains that they just can't bring themselves to believe it when they meet somebody who doesn't and think they must be mistaken in what they see.

Yeah, that's kind of funny... I've experienced that too, even if I keep on looking down in my paper, and thus intend to signify that I want to read it and maybe wait for the talk till later - people keep on talking. Or when I'm obviously trying to leave, they keep on talking.
Yes, there's a thing there about the social cues... and reading body language... if they are so good at it, why don't they do it in those situations?
Maybe because of the "everyone likes to chat" idea... and "therefore there are nobody who doesn't, because I and all I know like it!"
Who was talking about theory of mind??
Maybe we have found the answer to the question whether there is such a thing as "lowfunctioning neurotypicalism": A lowfunctioning NT is on who can only use his / her highlycelebrated empathy / theory of mind towards people who are like him/herself - but towards others s/he lacks those things just as much as they say we aspies do.
A lowfunctioning NT is also one who almost thinks that the social rules are something that you must follow. whatever the cost may be, lest the social cues be disturbed... but they expect aspies to be willing to be "disturbed" (maybe to a high degree) every time they (we) have to struggle to adapt.
Don't know if it makes sense. Just a silly idea or row of thoughts.

What I find almost frightening about the majority of NTs is how their determination to adhere to the social 'norms' is so strong that they will do it not only when it's obviously causing somebody else discomfort, but even when it causes discomfort to themselves.