grommet
Well-Known Member
Thank you, it is. Being a kid I never understood what everyone else did, so I felt dumb. I couldn't even understand things in my own family when everyone else did. Why was I so stupid, I thought.
At school the other kids had friends, I did not. I did not understand how. So I felt bad.
The teacher would make a joke and everyone laughed. What was funny, why can't I understand the joke? I am stupid. Why am I so dumb.
TV did comedies did not make sense to me but everyone else laughed so much. I hated being in the room. I worried they would see me not laughing like they were. Stupid! They understand what is funny. I could not.
In school the other kids could understand the class and do the homework. If I was asked, I could not say what the lesson we just had was about. I failed my tests. They did not.
I got older and had to go to work. Everyone at work were like the kids at school, they understood the job and what the boss said. I was lost, nothing made sense to me. But I was honest and worked hard so I was almost never fired.
A lifetime of not getting what everyone else did made me feel like an alien. And dumb.
But I met a man who talked about interstitial boundaries in steel making. I understood that perfectly. I could see the carbon atoms, half as big, fitting in between the iron atoms and now the iron atoms could not move because the gaps were filled in. It was steel now and much stronger.
I understood when someone talked about ionizing radiation. Add enough energy to atoms and some electrons would be able to leave their orbit. Not enough electrons left now and the attraction between those atoms is different now, things begin changing. In DNA this means the instructions are no longer in the right order. Instead of normal growth, tumors. This made sense.
Someone explained better sound reproduction was hearing more of the music. That meant when I was listening to a song I had never heard all the silence before the note, then build-up, I was always arriving close to the note. I was missing part of the music, it was less full, less rich and the same at the end, I had never known it went on longer, I never heard it trail off so far it felt like infinity. When I was first shown a good sound system with Klipsch Heresey speakers I heard it. It was wondrous. They were right, the music was there and I never heard it before. I hear it now, what they said. That silent beginning and beautiful trailing note.
I understood when it was explained to me the true digital does not exist. There are not zeros and ones. There is something called ringing. The ones and zeroes represented high or low voltage states so - on or off. But the real world is real. Nothing happens instantaneously. The voltage raises and lowers. Was that a 1 or 0? Guessing. Enough samples and probably right. I was learning about heuristics and algorithms.
My favorite thing to learn was complex systems. The unknowable. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this because of it). Tell people a new product is better and they bought more of it. Or maybe it was because there was a new version of the technology and this was the first product that had it and that is why people bought it. The advertising had nothing to do with it. Complex systems are wonderful.
Regression theory was super fun! I loved hearing about that. Start at the end and work back to find the pattern leading to it. You cannot. But you can make guesses, find likely patterns. I thought it was more fun when they were wrong. The Mpemba Effect. It said that hot water freezes faster than cold. It does not and physics make it obvious. Fascinating seeing how the idea spread though.
But I cannot understand social situations, riding buses and when I hear people speak it can be a wall of sounds. I cannot pick out a single word sometimes.
I think not understanding so much can make a person feel stupid when they are not dumb. But I also cannot manage daily living very well. So I feel dumb then too and that is what I wrote about.
There was a film called "Little Man Tate". The boy understood so much about art and math but he commented "Matt Montini always has someone to eat lunch with."
Autistic people growing up without a single friend, never having a girlfriend or boyfriend, knowing they will never know how to have someone to eat lunch with can make them feel .. I do not know the words but you can start to call yourself dumb or some hurtful names because you blame yourself. Why can't I do what everyone else can?
Now it is the every day stuff that reminds me and I feel dumb because my brain is good at facts but bad with boiling water, cleaning things, taking care of my clothes or understanding bills. Then it all comes together, all the bad feeling and it seem lonely and hopeless and I blame myself.
