I had a coworker ask me today why I’ve been so pissed off the last couple of days.
It was as if time stopped. The words just hung there in the air, like cigarette smoke on a cold day. Pissed off? What the hell was he talking about?
13 years later, or what was probably only a second and a half, I spat out something about just having a lot on my mind lately. No, not angry, just lost in thought. Preoccupied.
1. Saying that, I realized later, probably made me sound like one of those guys you watch closely, because he probably just got a dear John letter or something. Take his ammo — he’s got a lot on his mind. I suck with words. Really. Yes, there is irony in a guy writing that on his blog. But I am horrible when it comes to interacting with others verbally. Speeches? Well, other than the before-mentioned nervousness and tendency to have my heart race abnormally fast, I do just fine. But waaaaay too often, just talking one on one, especially under pressure, words fail me. You might not think it, you might not notice it, but I sure do. I suck.
2. I take too long in responding to people. I know this. I’ve had this issue for a long time, but only really zeroed in on it a couple of years ago. Sure, I can brush it off a lot of the time, saying I’m deaf (I am) or something, but I know that what I think is an OK time to think about the question posed is outside the social norms for most Americans. My brain is like a virus, and it’s off and running all the time; if I wasn’t conscious of the need to actually answer people, you could probably ask me a question and then have to wait like 5 minutes while I thought it over and came up with an answer. It’d be a good answer, just not a wait-5-minutes answer.
3. I totally suck at answering rhetorical questions. Too often I’ll just miss the whole set of indicators that a question is rhetorical. My roommate thinks it’s pretty funny, I know, because he’ll just throw a question out there, and I’ll answer it. Or try to. And no sooner do I start than I realize that, uh, no, I really wasn’t suppose to. Did Iron Man, the song, come out before Iron Man, the cartoon hero? What’s making that damn glitching sound at the beginning of this MP3 file, and how the hell do I remove it? Did I just rip my shorts in the crotch?
4. I’m an introvert. Seriously. Stop laughing. It’s true. All those Myers-Briggs type tests all come back with the same two things: I am an analyst, and I am an introvert. And being deaf, these days I literally have missed the phone ringing on my desk. I tend to crawl inside, and ignore things. Well, ignore everything. Does that make me seem mad, or angry, or upset? I hope not, but I can see how it might.
5. I love the problem, and really am interested in the problem more than I am the answer. When the answer arrives, usually the problem is over. And, well, the fun stops. I love problems. There, I said it. I love problems. When things don’t work, I get to tinker. When things don’t make sense, I get to ponder. I favor the abstract, too, because then it’s all about the logic in the answer.
6. I joke with my wife that I probably have Asperger syndrome. I know what you’re thinking — it’s not nice not joke about that. But I didn’t say that I joke about Asperger syndrome, I joke that I probably have it. But it’s only a half-joke. The more I read about it, the more I realize that it could well be used to describe me.
7. On Sunday, while sitting in a briefing (in the peanut gallery seats), I got so fed up with the bureaucracy, I decided to take on a project, with or without the support of the unit I work in. Seriously, I have probably lost my mind. I am either going to be run out of the Army, or people are going to see that I am undertaking this mother-of-all-projects, realize that it is absolutely the right thing to do, and join me as I charge at a freakin’ windmill. Right now, I have three converts — one of whom does not have a choice, because she works for me. How big is this undertaking? I could employ 40 people, all day every day, to nug through this, probably for a month solid. And then we’d spend the rest of the year changing Iraq. Yep — done lost my mind. Why have I been a bit out of it lately? I’m trying like hell to wrap my head around a set of issues, in order to get to the root of the problem, so I can then force an American Army Division to go forward and do my bidding, in support of the people and government of Iraq. Preoccupied is probably a pretty accurate description….
So, there it is. My day, and seven things related to it.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
I follow your wife’s blog and sometime back trailed you over here. It’s reassuring to find someone else (a normal else) who suspects Asperberger of themselves. LOL. It is a trait in our family that when someone asks a question, our response is a long drawn out, “Ummmmmmmmmmmmm” before actual words drop out of the mouth. On paper I can be prolifically wordy. And my mind is constantly analyzing, thinking, wondering.
January 30th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am becoming my father after all. I have also had the thought that he had Asperger’s. –MOM
January 31st, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Dude, we really are brothers from another mother. No kidding. Same Myers-Briggs, same communications issues, same bursts of compulsive idealism, same fixation on problem solving that quickly turns to boredom once I’ve proven I actually *can* do something, same place on the autism spectrum…. my 12 year old actually *DOES* have Asperger Syndrome (and Tourette Syndrome, too, which interesting depending on what the tic du jour is), and I’m pretty sure my oldest brother is an Aspie, though he’s never been diagnosed….
January 31st, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Ok, Paul — now you really are scaring me…..
But you left out sharing the same obsession with (almost) the same car!
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:02 am
I doubt it’s Asperger’s. More like an ability (a predominantly male one) to block out anything and everything that doesn’t interest you at that moment. From an article describing the differences between Asperger’s and High Functioning Autism: “Children with Asperger’s Syndrome often fail to display empathy in their behaviors. It is social interaction where these children face their deepest challenges.” As the most gregarious of your siblings and the one in our relationship who has always been the instigator of dinner parties and group outings, I’d say social interaction is hardly difficult for you.