Taking things literally

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One time A friend and I were playing Go, and I was winning by a lot of points. He said, " Man, I need the instructions for the game to beat you," so I picked up the instruction book and gave it too him. After he refused it I realized he was being sarcastic and saying it as a joke.

There was another time when I read A Tale of Two Cities, and I was at the end of a chapter, and it stated that a stone marquis laid on the bed, and a knife was plunged in his chest. I actually thought it was a stone statue in the bed when it was actually the marquis dead.

I'm very good verbally, so the signs of this are so small, so few and so subtle in me that at first I thought it was an AS trait I just don't have. For example, when I was four my mother explained to me what the insect a tick is, and I said, "It's called a tick because it goes tick-tock." This was not literalism; I had understood at once that ticks don't tick, clocks do, and that the words being the same was a coincidence; I was making a pun, with social intent. Doesn't sound very aspie, does it? I've always liked, and used and understood with ease, metaphors, puns and hyperbole.

However, when I started to think about it I could see the odd indication of literalism. For example, as a young adolescent I was reading a book in which a husband finds his wife and her best friend laughing and crying in each other's arms on the porch and is not concerned, because "he had found them this way eighty-four thousand times before". I tried to figure out how many times a year this would have happened, given that the women had known each other for so-and-so many years; not until a long time afterwards did I realise that "eighty-four thousand times" was not meant to be taken literally, and when I did I was annoyed: what a tiresome inaccuracy! For quite a while in my early teens I too pictured a market when I heard 'black market', and took 'throw me the/a...' literally. When I am translating something I tend to stick very close, sometimes overly close, to the original.

Mostly, though, this characteristic only manifests itself in my being a stickler for verbal accuracy. I understand all sorts of verbal inaccuracies, I just dislike them.

Ah, hyperboles. I love them now that I know what they are.

Yesterday someone asked me if I had a "business number". I said no, since I didn't have my own business and therefore didn't have a number for that non-business. Then I asked if they meant a "work" number. Yeah.
Well geez. Of course I have the phone number for where I work.
She seemed rather exasperated with me after that...

when my dad said he was a bad father.
i took that seriously cuz i think he is.....

I remember the time when I was visiting my ex in December 2006, I tel him about I am going to Portland that month and I was thinking about taking him with but the thing is, it's the cost of gas and the fact he doesn't have money to feed himself. So we are talking about what if I brought him along and then he says I don't have to bring him. So I thought about it and decided to not bring him because he doesn't even have money to buy himself some food and it be a nuisance to be with him and him going "can we go now" just like a child.

But for some reason he thought I was bringing him after I said I was thinking about it and then he tells me I don't have to bring him so I followed those words thinking he wasn't expecting me to bring him and he won't be upset if I don't. While I was in Portland, he sends me a message through myspace asking when I am leaving for Portland and I tell him I was already here. He send me a message saying he is pissed and his two friends from Salem were expecting him and we had a deal. I told him I never made a deal and we were just talking about our fantasies about what if I brought him, I didn't think we were planning the trip because I did say I was thinking about bringing him. Then I tell him he did say I don't have to bring him. Then he called it a misunderstanding.

So why did he say "You don't have to bring me?" Was it one of those things where I was supposed to do the opposite by bringing him or was he just joking or did he not remember saying it? I will never know the answer and know if I took him literal or not.

I think this is one mistake anybody could make, but there was one evening recently my dad suggested I make some fried rice. I liked this idea, so I took out the frying pan, heated up some fat and put in some rice...all it did was absorb loads of fat and not cook at all! That's Btw, does anyone else think the title of the song 'Paintbox' is a misnomer? The lyrics are as follows:

Cauliflowers fluffy and Cabbages green,
Strawberries sweeter than any I've seen,
Beetroot purple and Onions white,
all grow steadily day and night,
the Apples are ripe,
the Plums are red,
the Broad Beans are sleeping in a blankety bed.
The Apples are white...[etc.]
Yeah!

It's always struck me as a song about fruit and vegetables, not colours and paint!

Few things that happened in my geography lesson recently
Talking about flood prevention, teacher talked about 'muddying the waters' in our essays and I asked how muddying the water would help. And 'talking from your a*se' I also commented on. My teacher has since admitted he has noticed I take things very literally throughout the 2years he has taught me my A-level.
A friend has a left hand drive Smart car (I am from UK) and she said you can swap the controls over to the right. I went to look.
I don't understand the Queen song 'Killer Queen' when they say she's 'extraordinarily nice, she's a killer queen' surely she's not nice if she's a killer?

My problem is that while I usually understand when a person is trying to be sarcastic, I just don't know what the appropriate response is. Thus, I default to the serious one and deal with the explanations later. This has resulted in countless "dud, lighten up" type comments, but I really can't help it

Ages ago someone told me:

"I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a sausage in my eye."


I said that it was nice of her to make a promise, but that I didn't really want to seal it by sticking a sausage in her eye.


I told her calmly and politely that:

A) Sticking a sausage into her eye would hurt, possibly blind her and she'd have to be taken up the hospital.

B) I was a good friend and didn't want to be horrid by blinding her.

C) I didn't want to get into trouble with the teachers or her Mum.

D) I didn't have a sausage to hand to stick in her eye anyway.
I'd eaten all my sausages for lunch.

I also told her that she was too young to die and I hope she'd live a long time before she did.


She just laughed.