A hundred moments in autism - Morning Surprise

By Terrence Oblong

Thu, 13 Mar 2025
  • 153 reads
8 comments
 

I climbed into bed with Mrs Oblong this morning and she looked at me, with a shocked expression. 

“It’s me,” I said. “Your husband.” 

“I know who you are,” she said.  

“You looked surprised to see me.” 

“It wasn’t a look of surprise, it was a look of love.” 

Autistics frequently have difficulty recognising facial expressions, but even by autistic standards, this is concerning. Does that mean that every time I’ve seen a surpised look on someone, it’s actually a look of love?  

Does it work the other way as well? ere the girlfriends who I thought were looking at me with love and affection, simply surprised at my taking my trousers off, or whatever I was doing at the time? 

Certificate 15
Biography
50 moments in autism
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by celticman on

ah, difficult one. Best keep your trousers on, or check with an apprpriate adult, before taking them off. When people sign off with a 'love' in a letter, it doesn't really mean they want to take your trousers off. 

 

Submitted by Terrence Oblong on

Thanks Celtican, another autistic flaw, taking things literally. I'll keep my trousers on when I read my correspondence in future

 

Submitted by Sooz006 on

The atypical mind is fascinating--so is the neuro-divergent mind. I don't think either can read the other and then we expand the concept to wonder, can anybody read a room or a person? 

I work with autistic children ferrying them to and from school.

 Mostly, it's varying degrees of autism and ADHD. We have one little chap (9) in an exclusive private school. It's an hour's drive and he needs constant stimulation, so we play word games. He got in the car the other day and his first words were .... 'I wish I could experience being less intelligent for an hour. It must be so difficult for the likes of you.'  I take that as a win, the kid showed rare empathy. :)

We have tons of fun, but sometimes it's bad. This week one of my eight year old's beat his mother up and we're waiting to see if she's lost an eye. She's still in hospital.  His face when he got in the bus was unnerving. He smiled, and as we set off, he giggled about it.

An interesting fact, we have 70 children on our contracts. 52 of them are Autistic and ADHD .. this may be coincidental, but only 7 of them are girls.

 

Submitted by Terrence Oblong on

Thanks Sooz

I'm not short of autistic women in my life, Mrs Oblong is ADHD/autistic, as is the work colleague I supervise, and the last six friends we've had to stay have been autistic women, so we're very much defying the odds

 

Submitted by Sooz006 on

See, that totally shoots a water pistol at my theory :) 

 

Submitted by Terrence Oblong on

Women are often diagnosed later in life, for a variety of reasons they don't 'stand out' as much as children (their special interests are more normal, they mask better, etc).  The classic case is our friend who only realised she was autistic after her son was diagnosed with autism and she noticed she had exactly the same issues as he did. 

 

Submitted by Sooz006 on

I like the title and look forward to reading more of the other 99. 

 

Submitted by Terrence Oblong on

Many thanks

There are just under 40 of these pieces so far https://www.abctales.com/collection/50-moments-autism