A La Aspie

What I have noticed in Ethan is that when faced with an action, he often doesn’t realize that it is a series of decisions. But I’m confounded by the possibility that I do realize that it is a series of decisions only after learning to compensate that way - whereas a neurotypical doesn’t see it as a series of decisions… only as an action.

For instance : When I go grocery shopping, I buy what’s on sale and I freeze what we don’t need right then. I’m often pulling things out of the freezer to thaw when we need something. That goes for most meat, pre cooked meals and even bread. I’ve told Ethan a million times ‘when you put the bread in the freezer, lay it flat, not on top of anything and not squished. As long as I tell him that just before he puts it into the freezer, he does it correctly - as long as nothing gets in his way of carrying that thought directly into the task. But, when the freezer is open and it comes to making the decision about how to place the bread in the freezer, he just acts and doesnt connect the knowledge that the bread needs to freeze flat with the act of putting the bread into the freezer.

He’s hearing and understanding but just not connecting.. so that means that I have to repeat complete instructions every single time I tell him to do something and dare I give too many instructions, he will forget one or two and we start all over. It makes for frustration for both of us.

Most of my repeated actions, I have a learned set of choices for and I think about each action as a choice. How do I place my hand, how do I move the object, how do I change my face? What do I know about each of these subtle choices from past experience? He seems to be faced with the same necessity without the years of learning the behavior.

I’ve always known that I have scripts. For instance :

“Hi, how are you?” smile, tilt head, shrug, smile again because you didn’t make eye contact and you need to let them know you dont hate them “Ok, you?”

When I encounter someone I don’t know or a situation that is unfamiliar, I revert back to the scripts I know and try to make them fit. Often they don’t entirely fit and so I spend a few minutes after the fact kicking myself and creating a new script.

But I think what I didnt realize about myself is that when making decisions, I have the same inability to apply knowledge on the fly and just move with the situation. I’m constantly calculating with every decision, manually, everything I know right then.

It’s made me great at instant recall of a whole lot of information at once. Perhaps that explains the ‘walking encyclopedia’ effect of Asperger’s Syndrome. Perhaps that’s a coping mechanism for simply not carrying information forward like a neurotypical does. When teaching a class, someone asks a question and a glut of information spills out. When working in a professional environment, someone brings up a past issue and out spills the entire history and analysis.

But… not being able to simply apply information on the fly puts me, again, at a disability. I carry a horrendous amount of information in my head at any given time, causing stress and overload. I’m not able to make a decision over the phone when dealing with bills or home related accounts. I need to think, process and then decide.

I make really solid, careful decisions when I have the chance to do so. But when faced with a situation that requires quick thinking, or when gradually making decisions I dont realize I’m making with subtle words and actions, I often find myself in situations I did not anticipate.

Thus is life, I suppose.

Also may have been crossposted to my Asperger's Syndrome blog on Trusera.com, a site where people show health related stories. Check it out!