Conversational Failures, or “an afternoon in the life of an Autistic adult”

To understand this, please first read my post titled “Words”

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I spent the afternoon with a few of my friends from undergrad, one of whom was visiting from out of the country. We were all catching up and chatting at a little coffee shop type place. We’d gotten a couple of different types of tea and were all trying the different flavors. Everyone (except me) came to the consensus that one of the flavors was really weird, but I hadn’t tried it yet. Then one of my friends began to talk about her dual majors, a rather odd combination of hard science and humanities. It was agreed by the other members of the table that it wasn’t a normal combination of courses, but that it was pretty neat.

I still hadn’t said anything, because I was busy trying the tea, which turned out to be exceptionally strange. Since my brain was still in the “this tea is really weird” conversation, I said “Wow, that is REALLY WEIRD!” Some strange looks and a friend taking offense (briefly) ensued. She said “wow, I’ve never gotten THAT response before, but at least you’re honest?”

Eventually we sorted out that I hadn’t actually meant my comment to be about her majors, that I’d completely missed that bit of the conversation (heard but not yet processed it), and that my outburst was purely to do with the strange tasting tea that I had just taken a drink of. I’m really lucky to have understanding friends who take the time to help sort out my conversational faux pas and only chuckle with me afterwards, once everything has been made clear again.

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(I promise a substantial post soon. I have a grant proposal due this week and my brain has been full of technical scientific writing, so I haven’t had time to dedicate to writing decent posts. I have several in the works, though, so they’ll be popping up soon, I hope.)