Meeting other people with aspergers

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I've always had this fantasy about a community of aspergers people. A group of aspies that gathered together and formed their own town similar to how the mormons started. While I'm sure no such place exists, I'm curious as to how you guys go about meeting other aspires. I've never met someone who ever openly admitted having aspergers to me. Currently I'm a senior at a rather large university in a rather small town. I don't have many friends or even acquaintances here (on some level I prefer it this way). It would be nice to meet some other people with my condition though. How do you guys do it?

A lot of the volunteer work I do is assisting and tutoring special needs kids, and there are quite a few autistics at my school. I've met five people with AS in real life, two of which I've tutored on a subject they're not good at.

Many aspergers have meet ups. If you're in canada in one of the big cities you can probably find one.

Aspergers society probably has contacts with people in other countries as well where you can find people to meet other aspies.

http://www.aspergers.ca/

Cool site! Is there anything similar to that for the Northeast US?

I have met several other individuals with Asperger's. It's rather hard to lump them all into one group. Those with Asperger's often have different interests and agendas, and are just inherently different people. They don't make automatic friends.

That being said, those with Aspergers do have an easier time relating to each other, IMO. They realize they can't follow social conventions for interaction, and so just ignore them when they are amongst each other. They are also far more direct.

Amazingly, I found an advertisement on Craigslist that was posted by a woman looking to start an "aspie women" group with her daughter in law and another woman they know. I responded and now our first meeting is in a week with the 4 of us. I think we're eventually going to post it on meetup.com. I had to really dig deep to find another person in the area that was interested in this though.

I've only knowingly met one other autistic person. I didn't realize then because I was too busy freaking out about his unannounced visit. My mom told me he had classic autism after he left, when she was giving me his email address that she forced out of him, because we had to make great autistic buddies. I've met a few others who I suspected, but they never told me, I never asked, and I never talked to any of them much.

I don't know how you'd go about it intentionally, besides support groups.

Silicone Valley?
New jersey?

I've met one diagnosed Aspie. He's a client where I work and while he was in the office behind where I sit, he announced to my co-worker that he was diagnosed as a child as having Asperger's. He explained to my co-worker that it is a form of autism, but that he has worked hard to make the best of it and has had a variety of jobs, INCLUDING SALES. He also proudly mentioned that he is a born-again Christian.

I didn't so much introduce myself; instead I went to him and asked him questions about AS and diagnosis. He's quite a bit younger than me and has the benefit of childhood diagnosis. He strongly suggested that I not only talk to a psychologist, but a neuropsychologist specifically.

Although we ARE quite different from each other, we seem to GET each other. I understand that some of the movements he makes are his form of stimming. And when he sees me standing outside against the wall in the quiet area that faces the highway, he understands that I've had all the human interaction I can stand and need time alone to survive the rest of my time at work.

"Recharging the ol' batteries, eh," he asks. I nod affirmatively. "That's a good thing," he says.

He recently told me that he's trying to start a chapter of the National Association of Mental Illness and that he hoped, as a professional person where I work, that I would be an advocate for them. I have asked him if he is classifying AS as a mental illness. I think that is A BIT MISGUIDED as I understand that Autism is a neurological disorder. I think he would do better to start an AS group. He might be doing more harm than good with NAMI.