Humiliation by technology.

Should you be press-ganged into babysitting a friend’s children, the results may be mixed.

On the plus side, you’ll thrill the kids with your highly original approach to games.

You’ll play their games their way.

Then you’ll play them in exciting new ways they never imagined.

Buoyed by their laughter, you’ll invent entirely new games, using straws, or string, or nothing but your combined imaginations.

Squeals of delight will fill the house.

Until they realise that your sole goal is their happiness, and that you’re not an authority figure.

Then they may start to manipulate you.

If you fail to respond, they may start to mock you.

If, due to your poor disciplining skills (due to no practice and fear of offending their parents) you fail to arrest this development, things may turn ugly.

If you’re very unlucky, a 12-year-old girl, done up like a Brats doll, will stand before you with a label maker.

She will turn the dial to ‘L’.

Click it.

Cut it.

Peel off the backing.

And press it onto your forehead with her right index finger.

When you ask what she has just done, she’ll say:

“That’s an ‘L’.

“For ‘Loser’.”

You’ll look at her.

And she at you.

And even though you’re 40, you’ll both know there’s not a damn thing you can or will do about it.

You will recall this humiliation for the rest of your life.

Points of difference.

You don’t see so many colouring-in books these days.

If you’re old enough, though, you may recall the pleasure of completing them.

Not all books were the same.

The designs, for instance, varied wildly – from obsessively intricate to insultingly facile.

The best fell somewhere in between.

The papers varied too. From shiny surfaces that barely took a pencil mark to blotter-style offerings that soaked each careful texta stroke far beyond its intended position.

It was rare, therefore, to get a pleasing design on practical paper.

Christmas ‘Bumper Fun Books’, by dint of their sheer size, usually carried two or three satisfying options.

With your attention to detail so keen, you naturally coloured within the lines.

Yet sometimes, engrossed in activity, an unguarded movement saw your marker slip.

This transgression marred the entire work. So much that you had to employ your black texta (the most valuable in the set, and the one most likely to fail first through overuse).

You traced the entire colouring-in design with black, making all the lines slightly wider.

At the slip-up, the line became wider still, as you covered the alien colour with pitch.

The result was not unlike a stained-glass window.

Alas, some errors were too big to mask and had to remain patent.

When you submitted a work thus flawed to your father, his judgment was revealing.

Instead of praising your industry, your palette or your almost-perfect execution, he did something else.

He started at ten, then subtracted one mark for each crossed line.

Never, in your entire childhood, did you score a perfect ten.

Though you tried and tried and tried.

It was only 40 years later, when writing a blog post to ameliorate the Great Sadness that had befallen you on waking, that you realised something.

Your father had Asperger’s too.

Nothing hooks your delicate sense of smell like these babies.

When you return home from dropping your partner at the airport, you may find evidence of their hurry to pack.

The instant you enter the house, the stench of mothballs will assail you.

The balls may be old and few.

The wardrobe (closet) door may be open mere millimetres.

It may only have been an hour since you left.

Yet for you the smell has pervaded the whole building, altering its aspect and bombarding your uber-delicate senses with torrents of data.

If you feel this way, you may consider becoming a detective – where attention to detail is a boon.

Read my lips.

Conversation can be so very difficult.

It’s especially upsetting when you try to participate fully and in good faith, only to fail utterly and incur the wrath of the other party.

Let’s say your partner informs you that their sibling’s cat is missing.

You ask if the sibling is upset.

Your partner becomes annoyed. Of course the sibling is upset!

This perplexes you, because six months ago, you heard the sibling tied their pet dog to their toddler’s tricycle because they didn’t have time to exercise either.

From this, you deduced the sibling didn’t much care for the dog.

By extrapolation, you surmised they weren’t fond of the cat either.

Your question, therefore, is logical.

Logical, perhaps. But your error lies elsewhere.

You perceived your partner’s news as an invitation to dialogue.

To participate fully and in good faith in this dialogue, you asked a question.

In reality, however, your partner merely wanted you to make the noises appropriate to such news under normal circumstances.

This is akin to small talk.

The dog, toddler and tricycle, however pertinent to your situational view, were irrelevant to the discussion.

Thus your deeper interest, though it sprang from a genuine place, was neither necessary nor welcome.

Your partner’s rebuff stings twice, because you:

1. Were trying hard to converse like a normal person.
2. Felt you were doing pretty well to recall the discussion of six months ago.

Alas, no dice. It just isn’t that simple.

This is one of the downsides of aspergers.

Your counsellor may say casual conversation can be learned.

But it certainly seems small talk is a big ask.

Read the runes (of ruin).

‘Patina of age’. 

Once you encounter this phrase, you’ll likely use it often. 

For it describes something quite fascinating. 

‘Patina’ began as a greenish film on old bronze. 

It expanded to include an oxide coating on any metal surface. 

Now it resides on 343,000* web pages of every hue. 

Wood, masonry, plaster, paint … the works. 

Images like those above and below may interest you more than most television programs. 

Studying objects with a patina of age, you’ll trace eras, incidents and processes (human-related and otherwise). 

These photos depict but a fragment of an old building, the exploration of which could occupy many happy hours. 

If you ever renovate an old, old house, you’ll get great pleasure from: 

1. peeling back the decades;
2. unearthing artifacts; and
3. imagining the lost lives of others.

Passing motorists were doubtless amused as I laboured to perfect this close-up.

* At time of writing.

100% potential. A clean slate. Nothing wrong.

Life is messy, complicated and riddled with painful errors (and fear thereof).

You may therefore feel drawn to ‘new’ things.

Scenes and objects uncorrupted and yet to fail.

Seedlings. Sunrises. Untrodden beaches. Freshly painted rooms. Unmade plastic models.

That sort of thing.

Nature, of course, is always renewing.

Observing the split of a daffodil bud.

Or the moment a puppy first opens her eyes.

Will very likely thrill you to the core.

So turn off the TV.

Leave your room.

And get amongst it!

While others hurry past, you stand in awe as the cosmos displays in microcosm.

There's cheese, cheese and then cheese. All are different.

Your sense of taste may be so acute that grated cheese is a completely different proposition to cubed or sliced.

This may simply be due to the greater surface-area-to-volume ratio.

Or perhaps you can ‘taste’ different shapes (just as some aspies ‘see’ numbers).

Either way, you have more options when there’s not much in the fridge.

Can you see the fresh green scratch?

It’s nice to watch possums scrabble among eucalypts at night.

By day, it’s satisfying to trace the oh-so-faint ‘paths’ their furry bodies smooth onto the bark.

Closer up, it’s even more satisfying to detect claw marks.

Best of all is to spot the one tiny mark that’s green.

For that mark was made just last night.

By a possum that’s probably watching you right now.

And only you and a very few others have the power to notice such things.

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Could you resist such a well-presented data source?

When you stroll in a well-run park, you may take longer than others.

This is because you like to read the signs.

Signs give information. Correctly used, information is a source of power.

With few other power sources at your disposal, you’ll naturally want to maximise the ones you have.

As you devour every word, your companion/s may either wait and fret by your side or walk on without you.

That’s fine. Just thank them for their ‘patience’ and remind them how good you feel when you learn something new.

That usually shuts them up quick smart!

Didn't think so!

This brand is easy. Others are much, much harder to calculate.

If you have two dogs of the same breed, you may feel irresistibly compelled to feed them identically.  

And I mean identically.  

This isn’t so hard with the type of dog food pictured above.  

But God help you if your partner buys granular dogfood – and you either have to count the tiny fragments or weigh the bowls.  

The dogs don’t give a damn about these taxing mental machinations.  

Nor should you.  

But sometimes, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.