Margaret Jean
Asperger Me!
Monthly Archives: February 2015
Adult Aspies and Social situations, Aspies in the Workplace., Aspies Socialization, behaviours, UNFORGIVING
Aspies and Small Talk: Think Communication Bytes.
What is the main characteristic of small talk?
It’s SMALL. Bytes of conversation as opposed to megabytes or gigabytes.
Keeping it short and impersonal can be challenging when you’re longing to express thoughts and ideas you have harboured inside yourself for so long that they are bursting to come out. But you must manage your conversations, especially when you are first meeting someone.
Remember: Bytes. Little. Little bits of conversation.
When you are first introduced to someone? This is not the time to tell them about your fascination with engineering systems, national infrastructure or energetic reactions. Save those conversations for networking meetings or gatherings of people with similar interests.
Socially? Small talk is for when you first meet someone. It’s a time to establish a safe conversational zone for both you and the person who is the object of your conversation.
Topics? The weather. Recent outings or vacations. Current events. Popular movies.
If the other person takes you deeper into their personal life, political or religious persuasion, fine, let them go on.
But rein yourself in. Keep your conversation pleasant, interested and attentive. Excuse yourself politely if you feel you must escape them.
Please remember, Aspies–it’s called SMALL talk.
Yours Truly,
Margaret Jean.
Asperger Me
I was born with Asperger’s so I had markedly different ideas and behaviours from the average girl, and definitely from my mother and father.
In my book, Unforgiving, Memoir of an Asperger’s Teen, I talk a lot about the lack of relationship between myself and my parents. That sense of disconnection, the feeling that I was some sort of interloper.
At the time, in my teens, I thought Mom’s ideal daughter would have enjoyed sewing, crocheting, baking bread with her, and sharing her enthusiasm for Woman’s Day magazine. I was into classical music, movies like Lawrence of Arabia, poetry, Shakespeare and boys.
Was I right about Mom? I’m not so sure.
My mother’s house was always dusty, rather untidy. She went out to work, you see, when few mothers did, straining in the steaming heat of the Empress Laundry or cleaning low-rent motel rooms.
Once you’ve been out to work, you’ll never want to stay home again, she told me in a rare moment of mother-daughter confidence.
And of course the housework had to be done by someone. And as the eldest daughter by nearly eight years, naturally that lot fell to me and to my grandmother. I talk about that in Unforgiving, too. About how I just took these duties for granted.
What did Mom want? Just a daughter who didn’t talk so loud? Who didn’t speak out of turn? Who could get a job and keep it?
The truth is, I will never know. Relationships are complicated.
Deeper into my adulthood, Mom and I came a little closer. When she got Alzheimer’s? After Dad died she came to live with us.
Goodnight, Mom, she’d say as I tucked her into bed.
She had forgotten I was her daughter. All she knew was that I was someone who lovingly tucked her in at night.
Maybe that’s all we needed to know about each other.
Yours truly,
Margaret Jean
Adult Aspies and Social situations, An Asperger Day, Aspies and families, Aspies parenting, Aspies Socialization
Margaret Jean 