is it Asperger's or just being plain weird?

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I have been having a hard time knowing if something about me that's weird is because I have Asperger's or because I'm just plain weird. Especially when I read about other people with it on this site. Here are a few of things about me that are weird and I don't know if it's because I have AS or not:
- Ever since I was a teen, there have been shows I like to watch on TV alone, usually cartoons and stuff, but if someone else is in the same room with me I get extremely uncomfortable and may turn the TV off. I used to watch cartoons with the sound down as low as possible so other people in the house couldn't hear it, and if I'm visiting a place where they have the TV on it will often make me uncomfortable and distracted, especially if it's cartoons or a TV scene that I find disturbing (like graphic violence) or a really stupid commercial. The same is also true for certain songs that may be playing while I'm in a car or at a party. It just makes me feel really antsy.

-I really, REALLY hate drugs and alcohol. I was never even temped to smoke even though other kids at school made sure I got plenty of it second-hand. It makes me furious the way alcoholism and getting high is so glorified in society, movies and TV, it makes me sad that most violent crimes are committed while people are drunk or stoned, and it makes me feel like an alien that I am so against tainting my body with toxic substances. Why are all the things so "popular" in the world so disgusting and stupid?

-I played with baby dolls a lot when I was a little girl. I played with them as a teenager even though my mother thought it was stupid. But I have never had babies of my own, have no desire whatsoever to have a baby, and I am not really fond of babies because of all the not-cute things they do. I heard some fear-mongering nonsense that playing with baby dolls will make girls think having babies is "fun", and encourages teen pregnancy. I think that's stupid, most kids know it's just pretend. I don't think it's fair that if adults to carry a doll or stuffed animal around with them they get locked up but it's acceptable to carry a barfing, bawling real baby around.

-I hate swearing and hearing people swear all the time. I think it's disgusting and hate it when they say stupid things like "it's only words". But the words are so ugly! My tolerance for swearing was at its lowest when I was a teenager!! ! The stage of life when other teens think (wrongly) it makes them look tough and grown-up! I have learned to tolerate it a bit more over the years so I wouldn't go insane, but I still hate when people use the f-word every two seconds.
If I have one of my ear infections, I sometimes jokingly blame it on hearing profanity, or say I need to wash my ears out.

So what do you think? Is it Asperger's or is it just part of my personality? Does anyone else have the same quirks?

I am actually quite similar to much of that---but I don't know if it is unique to the spectrum or not. It could just be personality quirks; I am really not sure.

I too often prefer to watch certain shows alone because my sensory issues are extreme, and I miss a lot with people moving or talking in the background. (That one probably is related to autism for me).

I've never been drunk, never smoked even a puff of a cigarette, and never even seen drugs before. I never had any desire to do that kind of thing.

I also hate swearing.

I had a few dolls when I was younger, but was more into stuffed animals. Just to hold--I never played with anything anyway.

More like personality.


I don't like drugs either nor alcohol. I think it's not a smart thing to do.

Some things I don't like seeing on TV with other people in the room like Autism.

I played with my dolls too (Barbie dolls) until I was 15. Sure I wanted to have kids but I wasn't ready to be a mother even though there were other girls getting pregnant in my school. It made me want to have one too but I wasn't ready for one. Playing with dolls sure didn't make me want to go out and get knocked up so I can be a young mother. My mother told me what would happen if I got pregnant and what I would have to do and told me it would cost me my trip to Europe. I do not see how can lot of teens not be this smart after their mothers talk to them about teen pregnancy. I was told that lot of teens are not this smart even after you have explained to them what would happen if they got pregnant. I mean jeez do they not have the same cognitive ability as adults to understand? Why did I have the cognitive ability to understand and normal teens don't? Makes me feel so superior to them.

Excessive swearing bothers me. I am so happy that public places don't allow it. It just makes me uncomfortable when I hear too much of it. The first thing I think is they are angry people even if they aren't sounding angry. But swear words are supposed to express how frustrated you are so if you use those words too much, it indicates you have anger problems because you get mad too easily. I also don't see what's so mature about using them. To me they are just lazy words and those people are too lazy to express themselves right without having to use those words. But maybe they are just too angry so they use them a lot so they make me uncomfortable. Using them sometimes is fine so it doesn't bother me. But if someone uses a swear word in every sentence or every few sentences, then I don't like it.

I don't recall any personal quirks regarding the television, except that when I was a kid (in the 60s), televisions used to have a little device at the back of the picture tube, inside the cabinet that housed the screen, called an exciter. Theses exciters emitted a tiny, ultra-high pitched squealing noise that was supposedly above the range of human hearing, but I could hear it loud and clear even from the other end of the house. If someone turned on the TV, even with the volume all the way down, I knew immediately because of that tiny squealing noise.

I thought everybody could hear it, but I mentioned it in a roomful of friends years later and they all looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. Only one of the half dozen people in the room knew what I was talking about and he was an electronics buff, so he explained to me about the exciter. Years later, when I learned about my Autism and read in the DSM the remark "May see lights and hear sounds that others do not", I thought they were talking about hallucinations or something, until I remembered the exciter incident.

Now, with HD TVs, I can't stand it when somebody stares into the camera. Its a sort of intrusive forced eye contact and I hate it. Some late night talk show hosts do it during their monologues a lot.

Very few violent crimes are committed by people using marijuana, as it tends to make users mentally lethargic and slows the motor skills to a crawl. In others words, stoners are generally too lazy to expend the energy to get up and hurt someone. If they do, there's usually a mixture of other chemicals involved, these days, usually Meth, which is very, very bad medicine.

I love children and raised three, two steps and one of my own, who just had her first. Kids are cool, though they can be taxing, especially if they get too stimulated and noisy. I love reading to a child who likes books, and teaching them to read.

Personally, I swear like a sailor. I love swears, and I'm always delighted to learn a new one, especially if its particularly colorful or amusing. I remember the first time I heard someone say "F*ck you and the horse you rode in on!" I thought that was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.

I find in writing fiction, when you have a character who is partially defined by his or her swearing, sometimes I have to make up profanities that don't really exist to avoid beating the same ones to death by overuse. I like the rhythm of "Jesus H Motherf*cking Christ on a Popsicle stick!" but I've only seen it in a Stephen King novel, never actually heard anyone say it out loud (other than myself).

All that said, keep in mind that AS is a neurological disorder. What that means is, your brain is quite literally wired to an alternate schematic than (nearly) everybody else. You're seeing the whole world through a lens that is (compared to the norm) warped, like a funhouse mirror. If you react in ways that seem odd to the NT types around you, its because you're seeing and experiencing a slightly different reality than they are. They may give you a hard time for it (and they will), but it just makes you unique. All Aspergians have similar glitches in our wiring, but we don't all respond to them in exactly the same way. So the answer to your question is - yes and no - your specific individual quirks may not be quirks shared by every Aspie in the world, but they most certainly are because of your AS. Everything you do is at least indirectly affected by your warped lens, no getting around that. As you make your way through life, you'll learn better and better ways of coping with that handicap, but the AS lens will always be a fact of life. They don't make glasses or contacts for it yet.

The drugs and alcohol part is different for me because I tend to self-medicate. I swear too much. I do feel uncomfortable watching some things on TV and in movies around certain people that I have no problem watching alone. Like sex scenes, sad scenes and those animal cruelty commercials with the lonely-looking animals and a sad song in the background. I've had stuffed animals to cuddle up to until I was 16.

I don't think those are symtoms of AS...just personality and personal preferances.


And I am certianly not going to tell you you should drink or smoke or anything, however I have to disagree with the most violent crimes being commited by people who are stoned. Cannabis does not usually make people violent, alcohol on the other hand certainly can contribute to violence because it impairs the frontal lobe of the brain which is the part responsible for allowing one to think things through...so a drunk person might get angry, not think it through rationally and do something stupid.

Yes, I had the TV thing just last night, I was watching cartoons and my dad comes in and all of a sudden they weren't funny or watchable anymore. It's like a childhood vice, and when someone catches you at it it reminds you that it's kind of childish or something maybe..... Hmm....

SWEARING ROCKS. They ARE just words. I know what you mean about them being bad words, there are certain swear words I don't like because of how they sound, but the mainstream curse words are AWESOME. They add emphasis and emotion to what I say, for an Aspie who lacks the ability to convey emotion and such in a conventional way, swear words are a blessing. Though on the net using caps for emphasis does sort of work too. That's my take anyway.

I used to hate drugs, and then as soon as you do drugs you realize why you shouldn't hate drugs. Hedonism is a beautiful thing in a world of misery and sacrifice. Everyone should be allowed to feel good, and if they can't feel good naturally and they don't abuse drugs, they should be allowed to do them if they want. Personal choice and free will and all that. I do hate tobacco and alcohol though, those are the drugs that are ACTUALLY bad for you, on the same level as heroin from an addictive standpoint apparently.

Stuffed animals are awesome, they're not baby dolls, but they're close enough. I used to have a bear and a bunny and they were my only friends in elementary school. o_o Inanimate objects are much more loving than most moving creatures. And baby dolls are not for making people want to have babies, it's more like nurturing a good maternal instinct or something. Young female monkeys apparently play with dolls in a motherly way, so I guess it's a primate thing.

I have, literally, all of the same things word for word. Aside from the doll thing since I'm a guy. I started to speculate whether a lot of my so-called "quirks" are more just my personality or related to my diagnosis of aspergers since a lot of the other people with it seem to be completely different. Good to see there is at least a few that are similar.

When she was younger, Mom's language was bad enough to make drunken Russian Sailors blush . Dad would beat the living daylights out of you for even thinking of anything stupid, then make fun of you after you got your arse beat with his work belt, which had a brass buckle attached to it. Their idea of discipline was shoot first, and the hell with asking questions.

If you push me too far, I can cuss with the best of them. She would punish us by making us eat a 10oz jar of dried crushed red pepper, followed by a bar of soap.

It's not just you, though these things sound too specific to be officially called part of Asperger's.
I share half of them, and I used to meet all those aspects in the OP's list.

I feel weird when trying to watch a show, esp. with uncomfortable scenes, when someone else is around-
I just feel too self-conscious & embarrassed to be co-experiencing (witnessing/hearing) that with the person.
I'm too preoccupied with what the other person is thinking to be able to really notice my own opinion freely.

I can't stand actual children, but I still own two stuffed animals because I love them.

On the swearing & substances front-

I used to be very abstemious & offended by both these features of adult life, back when I was a kid & teenager.
However, I grew beyond those extreme reactions of intolerance
& developed enjoyment instead from their usage, so in those ways I've changed over time.
(Am not saying that's good nor bad, merely that my policies have shifted)

A lot of this is true for me too.
Except for dolls - as a kid, I disliked dolls and played only with toy animals.

I hate smoking and drugs, and never was tempted to try.
I tried alcohol when I was in my late teens, but only a little bit and didn't drink anything stronger than wine. And now I don't drink at all.

And I absolutely hate swearing. It's disgusting.

And most of the time I prefer to watch TV alone and feel uncomfortable when someone tries to join me without my invitation.

When I was living at my parents, I used to watch tv in the basement. A lot of times my brother would come down there and sleep on the other couch. I don't know why but it would really bother me and I would tell him to go sleep in his room. Usually he wouldn't LOL. I'd just keep yelling at him until he left. I would usually only watch tv until 9 oclock and then go to my room and read until I went to sleep. So I would tell him he could come back down there after I was done. I still to this day don't know why that bugged me so much.

The TV part, I have never heard anyone else say they did that before this thread so I don't know about that.

I played with dolls until I was almost 16 but I have never wanted to have kids. I love kids and I do well with them and I have nothing against other people having them but I just don't have that need to be a mother that some women have.

I don't like smoke or alcohol either. I used to not be able to tolerate smoke at all when I was little. Now I am more used to it and I tolerate it because some people who are very close to me smoke. But I have never wanted to smoke. I have never been tempted to drink either. I will have one or two sips of wine or champagne if it is served to me as part of a formal dinner and it is on the table and I will enjoy the two sips, maybe three and then I have honestly had enough. But other than the rare formal dinner, I never drink alcohol. I don't think badly of people who do or of people who smoke but I think smoking itself is disgusting and I wish the people who smoked would stop for the sake of everyone's health. But I don't not like the people just because they smoke. And I don't mind if people drink responsibly but I do not like it at all when they get out of hand.

As far as swearing, I swear occasionally but I really would prefer to not. But I don't like it when people swear super aggressively or in a way that is meant to be hurtful, that bothers me. Like if you stub your toe and say the equivalent of "oh poop" that's one thing. But if you get angry at someone and then spend thirty minutes calling her every kind of fornicating female dog then that, to me, is abusive.

I am not an expert but what you described does not sound Aspie specific to me. I think these are more your personality and many people feel the way you do.

Not sure if this is a guy equivalent, but I continued to collect things like Transformers into my 20s. I have dismantled most of my various collections just from realizing I have to much clutter.

I don't might alcohol, but I do think there is an awful drinking culture connected to it that revolves around getting drunk. I'm at the point now where I love to have just 1 tall craft beer like a stout or porter.

As for swearing, I think it's the verbal equivalent of TYPING IN ALL-CAPS. It can be used skillfully by good speakers, or if abused makes a person seem like a dumbass. In general, I think swearing is a form of grammar.

I don't know that I have Aspergers, but something seems off or eccentric about me as I don't seem to ever get a typical social life going. I do think the awful economy has made it even harder as I'm an unemployed college student.