That awkward moment when...

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That awkward moment when everyone around you starts talking about autism, complete with generalizations such as "people with autism are great at math," and they don't realize that you are autistic.

Yeah. So, someone in my class did a project on autism(which wasn't as accurate as it could have been, but I managed to not blurt out any corrections), and afterward everyone started talking about autism, autistic people they had contact with at some point, different levels of severity, etc. It was one of the weirdest moments in recent memory. I did finally say "well, I have asperger's... So this is awkward..." and then the discussion kind of died down. I don't really know why it was so awkward.. But it was. It's like hey, here I am, one of those alien people you are talking about walking amongst you.

If it were me I wouldn't have been able to say anything, so I'm rather impressed by your awkward moment...

So am I! Go you!

Lol I had a few where people were describing very strange people as aspergers.

Directly to me.

Well, i'm not very shy about talking in class, at least not these days (as a kid i didn't talk in class). Sometimes i probably even talk a little too much and can blurt things out at times. Before class started(the teacher was a little late) i was telling everyone else in some facts about snakes and answering their snake questions, plus i don't make a point to keep my ASD a secret or anything, so i wasn't really that uncomfortable saying that i have AS. The whole situation of the group of people around me talking about something that i have and they don't, especially when they generalize and get some things a little bit wrong, just feels somehow weird, though.

I would have been unable to resist correcting eberry misconception and making myself persona non grata.

op: yeah that is awkward but i thinkn their silence indicates they felt awkward too so nice work. i've had it happen to me more than once and i suspect it will many a time again because i'm doing education and everytime special ed comes up autism is the only thing anybody mentions. there are no other neurological disorders and no other disabilities worth mentioning and auties always end up in special ed. last lesson was particularly bad. somebody thought it worth mentioning that autistic kids were autistic for life(not sure if she meant it in a neutral or bad way. probably not good.) and another followed that up with how sad that was but i'm not sure if he meant it is sad the education system was failing us or that we have it for life. i'm giving them the benifit of the doubt.

that about sums it up. it's so awkward being the only autistic kid in a class full of teachers. if the special ed course we have to take is a pity fest i'll vomit.

It makes me glad I wasn't diagnosed with all my stuff (see my signature) when I took my college psychology class. I would have had a hey-day.

I did have an interesting time when my biology teacher went on a tangent about vaccines. She had us write a response paper for the semester.

So, I did mine on Asperger's. She thought I was "very high functioning" and was surprised. That's funny, right?

situations like those are why I dont tell anyone