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SpongeBobRocksMao
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17 Jan 2009, 5:52 pm

Yeah, but not as much as I used to. I'm mostly oblivious in public as that's where my AS is at its worst.


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DeLoreanDude
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18 Jan 2009, 5:41 am

I am sometimes when I am busy with my own world in my head, getting lost in my thoughts or, more recently, doing maths equations.



oblio
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18 Jan 2009, 8:27 am

certainly...., and... yet..., not quite may be


me oblio

that is, pro memoria, I owe Oblivia only

habeo, ergo sum


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AmberEyes
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27 Jan 2009, 2:33 pm

Danielismyname wrote:
Nah, I'm totally hyper-aware to my environment. I keep track of everything mentally, and I notice all of the details; all of the small details make the complete puzzle that's ever changing.


Me too. In fact I'm very good at tasks that require me to record and analyse the physical environment.

In fact, when I was younger, I used to often comment on what a nice day it was. One fine, invigorating spring day on the way to games, I got so carried away with description of the flora and fauna that one of my classmates blurted out laughing:

"Oh! Amber says the flowers are blooming and the trees are budding! Whoopee! I want to be a tree! Why does she say stuff like that?"

Apparently, the previous night's football scores had a much higher priority in my classmate's mind than the natural beauty of our football pitch.

Sometimes it's good to be oblivious to social situations, in fact in my case, it's actually saved me from a lot of unnecessary hurt and anguish.

I used to have what I thought were pleasant and informal chats with the aforementioned classmate and her gang. Once, she asked me if I knew the meaning of a word. She often said that I used a lot of "big words" when talking, so I assumed she was testing how extensive my vocabulary really was. I apologised to her and said that I didn't know the meaning of the word and I would look it up in a dictionary later. I thanked her for informing me that such a word existed. She burst out laughing.

It was only much later when I looked up the word in a dictionary, that I realised it was something unmentionable and rude. That's why I was unfamiliar with the word: it was never mentioned in my house. I realised that this girl and all her friends had deliberately intended to have fun at my expense. I thought that it was jolly ungrateful of them to have played a trick on me when they should have been grateful for my company. It was my cluelessness that had saved me from becoming upset in public.

They weren't "bad" girls as such, just very silly. They were actually pretty useless at being "bad". As a matter of fact, they always seemed to fail spectacularly at being bad, no matter how hard they tried.

The whole posse told me that they were all "hardcore" smokers and downed at least a hundred a day. I said that this wasn't possible because, I correctly observed, they'd all have been wheezing, had yellow teeth, red-rimmed eyes and would have smelt of cigarettes.

Eventually the girls confessed and said that they'd been lying to me to get me believe that they were "cool". I told them that the only thing they had gotten me to believe so far was that they were all incredibly daft. I was about to launch into a copious Biology lecture about how smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer when I was stopped by one of the girls. I told them that I accepted them as they were and that they didn't have to lie to be "cool": just be themselves.

I still laugh about it to this day. :lol:

My parents would often tell me to "Be nice to the children at school.".

They mentioned nothing to me about manipulation, teasing or coercion. They said nothing about what to do if I encountered it. They still don't, these concepts seem strange to them. So I just blithely assumed that if I was nice and considerate to other people, other people would be nice and considerate back to me. Sadly this isn't always the case.

I now realise that adults who expect all children to automatically play nicely and all join hands at school are living in "la-la land".



Last edited by AmberEyes on 27 Jan 2009, 3:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Acacia
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27 Jan 2009, 3:14 pm

AmberEyes wrote:
One fine, invigorating spring day on the way to games, I got so carried away with description of the flora and fauna that one of my classmates blurted out laughing:

"Oh! Amber says the flowers are blooming and the trees are budding! Whoopee! I want to be a tree! Why does she say stuff like that?"


In that quote, replace "Amber" with "Ian" and "She" with "He" and you've described a very common scene from my life.

I am quite oblivious to the fact that most other people don't care if the Mulberry tree is setting fruit, or if the Plumeria is just coming out of dormancy, or if the Rudbeckias are starting to send up flower stalks. I say it anyways. That happens to be what I think about.

I am oblivious to social cues, and I often don't know when to speak/stop speaking, or what to talk about. I hardly ever know where to stand in a crowded room. I am oblivious to the subtleties of emotion, and I tend to mis-read them. With people, I am clueless.

However, I am much like what Amber has said. I have an intense focus on the Natural world, and I am always paying attention to it, often to the exclusion of the social world.


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AmberEyes
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28 Jan 2009, 8:41 am

Sometimes I've been completely oblivious to other people's "disabilities".

This was especially true at school.

I'd start talking to someone who was all alone.
We'd talk and I'd just think that the person was incredibly friendly and genuinely interested in me.

I'd think that everyone else was just not being friendly towards this person by not including the person in their discussions or groups (socially or for games). I just thought that everyone else was being deliberately "stuck up" and silly by ignoring that person.

Then someone else would take me to the side and say:
"Oh didn't you know that [insert name here] has [insert "disability" or condition here]?"

Teachers would smile at me sideways and comment on how "tolerant" I was being.
But the truth was, I honestly didn't have a clue. I thought I was just being kind and friendly to another human being. I'd say something like:

"Oh I'm sorry, I honestly didn't realise. I was just y'know talking about stuff with him/her. It's no big deal really."

To be quite frankly and brutally honest, I find it kind of bizarre that "disabled people" have to either be "tolerated" or ignored.

As a result of being socially clueless, I'd actually talk to the "disabled" person on my level: I didn't talk down to him/her or ignore him/her like other people did. I honestly didn't know that I had to.

I have relatives who are "disabled" and they hate the word with a passion. They don't want to be pitied or "tolerated": they want to be treated like everybody else. I don't know, I just don't seem to notice anything "different" about people "disabled" or otherwise.

Perhaps it's because I just expect everyone to be different and unique?



AmberEyes
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28 Jan 2009, 9:46 am

For a long time, I was completely oblivious to the idea of “social awkwardness”.

The concept of “social ineptness” was never mentioned in any of my Science Text-books or anything else I’d read for that matter. I believed that everything in the world could be analysed logically and scientifically. I read those Science books like they were the gospels explaining what happened in the real world and why it happened.

I just blithely assumed that people talked to each other, asked for instructions and got on with their lives.

I thought that all I had to do in order to be liked by people was: stand up a little straighter, smile a little more, be honest and polite to people. When this didn’t work or people said that I was rude when I had genuinely meant to be helpful, I was perplexed.


Being “socially clueless” in my case, as I see it, needn’t always be a negative thing if managed properly in a supportive environment.

Advantages
-Highly aware of details and processes occurring in the natural and physical environment
-Can detect faults or flaws in systems
-Not cliquish
-Able to associate with almost anyone who’s friendly regardless of age/disability or background/social circle
-Able to help and stand up for those who are bullied or victimised
-Able to process social interactions on the macro-scale (seeing how groups of people physically interact with each other, group reactions)
-Being socially daring/innovative/challenging social boundaries without realising it
-Hyper aware of any illogical and contradicting rules of social groups and institutions
-Necessary brutal honesty
-Unaware of the "need" to be manipulative