Comments on: How To Prevent The Aspie Ramble

By: janny226

janny226 — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:52:02 +0000

Good post. For along time I thought it was annoying how people say, “How are you?” when they don’t really care about an answer other than “OK” or “fine, how about you?”, then realized one day it’s more of a politeness, a throwaway interaction, than an actual question.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:00:08 +0000

Since you said not to check, I had to check! Huh…I see what you mean about the YouTube video and the paragraphs. How odd that that’s the maintenance mode plugin and yesterday there were new blog posts written since his goodbye post.

By: Clay

Clay — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:43:48 +0000

I messed up again, have to explain. There were two brief paragraphs in Zach’s note yesterday, followed by a YouTube video of Alannis Morrisette. I didn’t realize, when I made the call, that below the video, he went on and on and on. So I had read one brief paragraph before interrupting myself to say that wasn’t much more.

The blog seems to have been taken down again today, so don’t bother checking. They’re going to look into securing Social Services for him today.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:36:47 +0000

I’m not ready to be a total hermit either!

And finding a way to get someone else to engage with what you have to say is showing yourself a lot of respect.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:22:08 +0000

That sounds like an effective way to do it – in context and keeping her hooked. Your radar sounds impeccable. And again, that was a very thoughtful thing of you to do…I’m really glad he turned out to be okay, or at least relatively okay.

By: Clay

Clay — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:24:21 +0000

I left out that I explained the situation to her before I started reading the note.

By: Clay

Clay — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:22:26 +0000

As an example of my “radar”, I was asked by Hub Admin to call the Kalamazoo PD to check up on Zach, because of his latest post on aspieweb.com. So I called, and started to read his note. Halfway through, I FELT her “roll her eyes”, so I interrupted myself with, “It’s not much longer,” and finished reading it to her. Whereupon she gave me the number of the Sheriff’s office, which has a lovely labyrinth of a menu, and I got dead-ended with an office that closes at 4 PM. Grrrrr!

By: ethan davidson

ethan davidson — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:58:09 +0000

Boring is in the ears of the behearer.
Butjust because ou’ve bored somebody, dosn’t mean that they’ve written you off forever.
However, most of are not particularly good at small talk, or at least, have to work at it realy hard.
I think it’s best to put ourselves in situations where we are observed by the same people over time.
When I do, I often get remarks about how much I’ve “improved.”
This is usualy atributed to the influence of the particular group.
Sometimes this may be true, but often I think it’s just that people “get me” better over time.
Also, I get them better, and figure out how to fit in to that particular group better.
Since I’m not curently ready to be a total hermit, and still do like to associate with people, this is good.
Also, since I think that a lot of what I have to say has value, it’s good to come up with ways to get people to listen to it.
Which often means feeding it to them in smaller doses.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:14:44 +0000

Okay, so you don’t *have* to use any of the ideas if you’re comfortable…as always, they’re mere suggestions for anyone who would like to do something differently, that’s all!

By: Gavin Bollard

Gavin Bollard — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:05:06 +0000

I didn’t really see your post as saying that I need to “shut up” – but I did see it as trying to tell aspies how to behave to reduce our annoyance to our NT friends.

It’s true that we often realise the problem some hours after the conversation and it’s true that it’s better if we can salvage it but I wonder if sometimes it’s not worth the “mess” just to have a decent conversation every now and then.

The problem as I see it, is that most people are quite conservative and boring in their choice of conversation. Sure, perhaps for a moment they’re getting a bit of a taste of the boredom that they dish out to us but at the same time, the aspie is probably having them most stimulating conversation they’ve had in weeks.

If truth be told, once they start looking around anxiously, you’ve lost them. No amount of conversation changing is going to bring them back. They’ll probably never talk to you again – particularly if you hardly know them. So… should we really let them get away? If we do, we’ll find ourselves standing around with nobody to talk to (or talk at). That could be worse.

There’s some great ideas in this post – I’m just not sure how often I’ll want to use them.