Two funny things that happened to me.
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I shared a link to a friend about an event based on their hobby. They said “See you at 9am”. We then spent a strange hour texting back and forth, trying to clear up the “mixed messages” that I am not attending the event.
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At a co-working space, a guy spends 10 minutes talking about a YouTube video he saw. He then proceeds to go to the white board, and in detail, write the ENTIRE URL of the YouTube video, and whatever extra stuff. I’m talking about a 60 character link, handwritten, and requested everyone watch it themselves, so there’s no confusion.
Gotta love it.
You only ever had two funny things happen to you?
My goodness how do you stay sane?
(It honestly took me a few seconds to realize you were not being literal. I hope.)
Thank you for articulating my thoughts and feelings. Story of my life, that. Also: “I’m neurotypical, so I will take what you said, twist in into something you never said or even thought and happily proceed to respond to that twisted thing and not what you literally said. That’s how normal people behave, yes”
Probably. Never thought about it this way, but it does make sense of many things I saw no reason in before
Once I realized it, I stopped being surprised at the state of the world. I cannot treat NT people the same way I can be with ND people. They less honest, and more flexible in their morals when it suits them.
I swear I need to get a body cam so that when my wife says, “I told you that already” I can go back through the footage to find out for sure.
It’s true though.
And us NT folks can benefit from learning how to do it.
It is refreshing to talk to someone ND, because of it. Once I got into the habit of not defaulting to assuming the person has an acquired understanding of social norms, I started just gently talking to NT people that didn’t “guess” the typical norms and mores. When I do that in the same relaxed and casual way I do with ND people, it almost always ends up way better than just saying nothing, and a shit ton better than assuming the worst and behaving the same in response.
I think this is why I love the Netherlands so much. People are just direct! Not once have I thought people were rude. If this is an issue for you, I would definitely recommend a place like Amsterdam.
And omg the trams…
