Competent males......

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Thanks for all of the replies!! !

I know now, five years down the road, to stay away from those blue-collar type jobs that rely on social and mechanical dexterity. I am going to Law-school soon and I think(hopefully), that I will find a "better sort" of people in a skilled profession that requires a degree. In the military or industrial type jobs, You just run up against those man-monkeys or the former declining HS preps.

Unfortunately, I can not just shut myself away from the world and I still occasion to interact with those "competent" guys. I don't really feel inferior that I do not have their skillsets. Sometimes I get jealous of people who are good at masculine stuff like auto-mechanics.

My grandfather had undiagnosed AS, but he had the type of AS to where he was great with technology. His hobbies were to build television sets from scratch(in the 50's and 60's especially.) He had the ability to take about 2000 random parts and build a working television or radio. I used to joke with my dad, not without some honesty, that he was the last living American who still actually understood how a television actually worked until he died in 1998. Unfortunately, becuase of his AS, his social skills were so poor that he couldn't function if he wasn't working on his hobbies in his basement.

I guess "skilled profession" is kind of an understatement as I reexamine my hasty reply. But hopefully you know what I mean. lol

I don't know how my grandfather did it. By the time I was about 13 years old, he was completely conquered by Alzheimers so I don't really have many mature memories of him when he was functioning. He would retire to his basement after work and just do his electronics until midnight. I really don't know much about his actual work, since I am mechanically-challenged, but I think he would just take them apart and reassemble them and I am sure he could put one together from scratch. He was just really good with that kind of stuff. You probably would have alot more insight into it than I would. I don't know if he used schematics or not. After he died, I don't remember seeing any blueprints or anything. He just had about 100 old TV sets, about 100 partially assembled sets, and just boxes and boxes of parts and wires. I guess he just mixed and matched. No matter what, he was an absolute genius at technological stuff like that.

My experience has been a lot different. Not saying anybody's right or wrong, but definitely different.

I've done a lot of construction. I was never considered brilliant at it, but I did pretty good. It's mainly a matter of being logical, considering the properties of different materials and what holds them together and the forces that act on them, primarily gravity.

I usually found that if I did stuff logically on a construction site, the people I worked for were happy about it. Unlike a lot of other professions, they actually have stuff they need to get done, and anything I do is one less thing they have to worry about.

I also done been to grad school and I didn't like it much. In academia, about the only thing you have to accomplish is to create the impression you're intelligent, and I ain't too good at creating impressions.

They they talk about being liberal and open minded and accepting, but god help you if you're considered weird.

I got along better with the guys on construction sites than I did with the schoolchildren in grad school. Same reason. They actually have something to get done. Not too many of them agreed with my politics, but nobody cared too much. There was a lot less pressure to conform to political correctness.

Isn't it ironic how Marxism, supposedly a movement for the working classes, is only found on college campuses among people who have never worked a real job for years on end. I like reality just fine.

I saw a lot of real humanity among those guys in T shirts with the sleeves ripped off. I remember one day when I was torn apart. Butch dogshit the feminist had once again broken it's own laws to force my young daughter to be baptized in the mormon cult. Contrary to what butch dogshit says, fathers love their kids, even aspie fathers. I was standing on a concrete footing with my head inside a vertical Steel I beam column. I couldn't do anything, I just stood there, face to the steel.

A couple of the guys on the crew came over. "CanyonWind," the white guy said, "What's wrong?" I told them. He looked quickly around, then said, "Go hide out someplace. It's okay, we'll cover for you."

The Haitian guy nodded, "Yeah, go ahead."

I knew I needed to keep busy, so I climbed back up in the steel. I was an ironworker them. They kept checking up on me to make sure I was okay.

Those are the guys I'm supposed to feel superior to.

There's a lot of very intelligent people out there that don't have much education, and a lot of people I ran into in grad school who didn't strike me as particularly smart.

Another time I was up in the steel, working with the same Haitian guy. We were each on a parallel I beam, thirty feet apart, setting ceiling joists, thirty foot long shaped pieces of steel, spanning the gap between us. The crane sets them down in a bundle, one guy picks up each end, and together you carry it, walking along a six inch steel beam, keeping pace with each other, and set in place.

The Haitian guy wanted us to carry two at a time. I was the older guy, and one at a time sounded like plenty to me. "You're getting too ambitious," I shouted across to him, "You're gonna end up like Macbeth."

The other guys thought it was funny. They remembered Macbeth from high school.

Nobody at grad school would have found it funny, since it came from the weird guy who doesn't act right.

CanyonWind:

I am very happy that you used the term "LOGICALLY" when you discussed your experiences in working construction. That was something I had almost forgotten about and I had put in the back of my head. But you brought up something very important. A hallmark of my AS, and I feel that many will agree with me, is a near absence of prosaic logic and common sense. Lack of common sense, probably above anything else is responsible for my failures in the working world.

What is common sense? Common sense is the ability to make everyday decisions based on cultural standards and interpersonal assumptions. Since a person like myself with AS has trouble reading faces and imagining what others might be thinking, my ability to react and think logically is inhibited. I can't make a Logical, common sense decision because I don't really know what the basic standards for anything are and I don't know how my decision will be received or work out. I can't make a logical assumption because I have no social baseline with which to work with. The basic social rules are not there to carry out split-second, functional decision making.

I can come to a rational decision if I have time to reflect on the options, but that takes too long for the concerns of employers. I couldn't do anything "logically" at work because I was already confused as to what my bosses really want. It was sort of like working a job in a foreign country where I only knew a few words of the language but I was being yelled at because I was unable to follow directions. The orders and instructions made no sense because my brain could not process.

If those guys you asked for help with the mower really thought badly of you, they are full of themselves.

Here in New Zealand, whenever I had to mow a lawn, I regularly ran out of fuel or oil. When I asked for help, you know how people reacted? Like it was nothing. Just top up the fuel / oil and finish mowing.

I only found out what '2 stroke' is a couple of weeks ago, and I've heard that phrase for years. I'm mower shopping and the saleswoman explained it to me in about 10 words... eureka! she was great. It's like cars, they need oil and fuel.

I'm fairly hopeless with machines, I just don't speak that language, but at my age, I've had to try and learn a few things. Still haven't bought the mower yet but I know which one I want, a honda self propelled.

Sounds like you need to get out of the male dominated jobs and do something where there's more women, usually arts/white collar/nursing that type of thing.

So much for the 'male brain' theory of autism, I've always had doubts about that.

I suspect I'd be a dreadful mechanic but if you wanted a good source of manliness that I found manageble... I used to make models, world war two ones. Technical yet violent and with a twist of history! Few thing appeal like a big beefy mechanical masterpeice that is, say, a Russian T-34 tank. Alas, it won't get you a girlfriend but it satisfied something in me.

Brusilov,

I just wanted to say that no matter your problems in real life, you have a great writing talent. Your posts about your personal problems are among the best written and funniest and truthful I have ever read on this or any other forum. It may not be the kind of writing that will get you a job writing but it is the kind that people relate to and laugh very hard about. Even the title of this thread, competent males, is friggin hilarious when understood in the context of the post. You must have a good personality that has what is takes to be a good happy person somewhere in you.

I can relate to much of what you wrote.

I'm not super mechanical, and I am very slow and lack hand eye coordination. But I can get some jobs done... if I am shown a detailed manual.

I'm much more a theory person, how's and why's. My theory can sometimes compensate for skill... but not always. I have a long learning curve, but once I get something... I'll get it better and more extensively than most.

I'm really down on the concept of working hard for more money. It's really quite pointless... you only need a few modest things to live... and those things can be had without that much money. Everything else is just fluff. But to be considered 'worthwhile' you have to work more and longer and harder and faster than others to get compensated... but to what end... to afford a fancier car to drive to work in? To buy more products that you don't have the time to enjoy.

My favorite past times is studying and thinking and lately creating music... all things that just need basically need time. Music requires some purchases, but it's modest in terms of the output and joy I get out of it. Plus in the end I've created something I can call my own, instead of consuming something someone else has made...

Why were you going down this career path anyways? It seems academia or something else is much more suited to your personality...