Known Unknowns, Unknown Unknowns and the Engineering Method

A known unknown, in engineering jargon, is something you know you don't know. For example, I know that I need to improve my social skills. I know that I can't tell if someone is mad at me or just happened to slam the door shut because they're in a rush. (I usually assume they're mad at me.) I know that I don't know where the boundary between honesty and tattling lies (it moves around a lot). I know that I don't know when to speak and when to shut up.

This is bad enough, but what about the unknown unknowns? These are, quite simply, the things that you don't know you don't know. Either you think you know them (but don't), or you've never thought about them (and therefore never realized you don't know about them). In engineering, these are the unexpected factors you never even considered, like a meteorite falling on your computer, or ants nesting inside. (Now that I've thought of these, however; they are no longer unknown unknowns, but known unknowns.) The goal is to identify the unknown unknowns, turning them into known unknowns, and eventually known knowns.

These unknowns, and the engineering method, are my latest attempt at quantifying, analyzing, and, eventually, solving some of the social tangle. "Proper" social interaction, is a slippery, fluid, subjective thing, a set of rules constantly rewriting themselves, an intricate web through which others dance and I stumble. And no wonder: I like concrete things; right or wrong, black or white. A computer program won't suddenly decide to do something else when you run it. A calculator doesn't give you different answers every Tuesday. A person says one thing and means another, wishes they had said a third, and is thought to have said a fourth!

The engineering design method is simple, concrete, and logical. You begin by identifying the problem. Today's problem: apparently I don't look people in the eyes enough, and may offend them.

The second step is to brainstorm possible solutions to the problem. Maybe I could wear sunglasses! I could get my mom to alert me when I don't look at people so I remember to do it. I could alert myself, or wear a rubber band as a reminder. I could try to explain why I don't look at people so they won't be offended. Maybe nobody will notice, and it's not a problem after all!

Next, weed out the impractical ideas. Almost all of these are impractical except reminding myself to do it, though sunglasses would probably work outside.

Then think of some ways to implement the idea. I could wear a rubber band, like I said, or write a note on my hand. I could somehow train myself to remember every time I see someone. (Too bad there isn't an app for this.) An app! I should get a proximity sensor and have it beep when someone stands close by for a certain amount of time, like they would if talking with me.

Most of these solutions are impractical, including, unfortunately, the sensor. The best solution is for me to remember on my own, but that is also the hardest to implement, so I'll work on written reminders.

We have now arrived at a solution! All that remains is implementation, testing, and revision. How many other social problems can be solved this way?

A New Word!

Autism is an umbrella term. It encompasses Einstein (suspected to have had Aspergers' syndrome), me, classically autistic children who can't speak at all, and everything in between. How can one word do so much? It can't. In meaning so many things, it has been stretched too thin and now means almost nothing! 

 I don't want to call myself autistic. Not because I don't want to be labeled (I like labels,) but because I want to be labeled accurately and precisely. And it seems wrong when the same label applies to severely autistic kids who need so much more help than I do–as if I'll dilute the word's power by stretching its meaning so far. I also don't want a long phrase, or anything with overtly negative connotations.  I want a word that means high-functioning autism or Aspergers' syndrome only, but in fewer words and without the negative connotations of autism and syndrome.

The words I want don't yet exist. So I set out to find some myself:
Mentally Different
This one fits two of the three criteria: it's not too long, and it carries no negative connotation. I've used it before, but there's one major problem: inexactness. What, exactly, is mentally different? It could be anything, not just high-functioning autism! Time to try again…
Aspie
I didn't make this one up, which is good because I don't like it much. It sounds silly, and while it's short, its root is Aspergers' syndrome, which definitely has a negative connotation. (I don't like having a syndrome. It sounds dreadful!)
Neuroatypical
Not too long, not too silly…this one is turning out well. It's not very exact, but since autistic people call "normal" people neurotypical, it's more "connected" to autism than "mentally different" is. Then I looked it up…and found out that according to Urban Dictionary (a notoriously unreliable source), it means someone with autism or a whole host of other disorders; schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dyslexia, et cetera. Another inexact term!
Nonallistic
The negative of allistic, which is a synonym for neurotypical– someone not on the autism spectrum. If allistic means not autistic, nonallistic must mean autistic. And since we already have autistic to refer to the severe forms, I claim nonallistic for my side of the spectrum; the high-functioning autistics. (I made it up, so I get to decide what it means.)

nonallistic:

adj. | non-a-lis-tic | negative formation of allistic

a person with high-functioning autism or Aspergers' syndrome 

That's it! I've coined a new word! And now that I have my terminology straight, I can get on to what I meant to do before I noticed this problem, which was write about Autism Awareness Month.

More posts to follow soon!

What I See

I've been told my eyes dart around when I talk to people, never lingering on their nose or eyes or wherever you're supposed to look, but flicking up, to the side, out the window, watching passers-by, reading signs, watching out. "Look at people when they talk to you," my mother tells me. "Why do you stare out the window in the car instead of looking at me? You have to look at people."

Well, I do. They're just never the right people. Imagine you're talking to someone. You're standing in the middle of the grocery store gabbing away, having just run into some long-lost friend using the mystical power of Face Recognition. What do you see?

I won't tell you, because I don't know. But here's what I see:

There's a traffic jam in the parking lot, and several employees in bright orange vests are directing traffic. I wish I had a bright orange vest. It would be fun to direct traffic. My favorite cereal is on sale–two for one. A bag dispenser in the produce section is almost out. There's that friendly employee, restocking the chips. He's always doing that. How many chips can people eat? A cart is coming down the aisle, a flickering overhead light reflected in its metal. An angry driver leans on his horn outside. The express lane sign says "10 items or fewer", which is good because "10 items or less" is grammatically incorrect. The produce guy has a big knife for cutting the brown ends off celery. Someone's spending a fortune on groceries in lane 4. Is Mother making a disapproving face at me?

Oh, wait. I'm supposed to look at the person talking to me.

Here's what I see now:

A brown spot has taken up residence on their cheek. Am I looking in the right place? People's noses are boring. Am I staring? Is Mother still making a disapproving face? I try to remember some detail of the shape of their nose, their eyes, their chin– it slips away as soon as my eyes do. I look past them at the traffic directors. Can they tell? Probably. I pull my eyes back to their thoroughly ordinary-looking nose. The need to look around–to know exactly where I am and what surrounds me–grows until it's almost painful. I remind myself that successful engineers have good social skills. There are no spiky crushers on the grocery store ceiling. Spiky crushers do not exist, except in video games. There are other things that fall on you from the ceiling, that paranoid part of me argues, the part that tells me to get behind something when a car drives by, in case they're looking for someone to shoot at. (I really have no idea where that part came from. Nobody has ever been shot at while walking up our street.) I hear a cart creaking behind me. If I turn around to look, Mother will make a disapproving face. In the car, she'll tell me again: "You have to look at people when they talk." And I'll look out the window and admire the scenery, and watch for rogue garbage trucks*, and tell her I'll try.

And I am trying. I'm getting better at looking at people, though I don't think it's improving my face recognition skills, or providing any useful social insights. I try because I've been told that flicking your eyes around–furtive eye movement, when you want a negative connotation–makes you look dishonest. Because I want to be a spacecraft engineer, and nobody will hire someone who twists around to look behind them at every noise. Because maybe if I look at people's faces, eventually I'll start picking out the little details that apparently tell you how they're feeling. But looking at people is hard, especially when there's so many other, more interesting things to look at. So if one day you meet someone whose eyes dart around, looking everywhere but at your face, don't think "They're not paying attention." Maybe they are. Maybe you've run into someone like me, who looks at everything, not just your face.

*I have a problem with garbage trucks. When I was little my room faced an alley across our street where, every Wednesday at some ungodly hour of the morning, a huge garbage truck would come charging along, looking as if it was about to crash through my window until it turned onto the street proper. I have less of a problem with recycling and yardwaste trucks, but they're all too big and noisy.

Tactical Squawking

I was preparing dinner when I heard the noise. I would write it here, but you see, it was the sort of sound it's impossible to spell. Imagine several very ill hawks attempting to sing in a choir, with a dying car engine as accompaniment. As you can imagine, it was a very disturbing noise, both due to its awfulness (is that a word?) and its unexpectedness.

The noise continued in sporadic bursts from my brother's room, where he usually sits quietly at his computer (quietly being the key word here), working on digital art or battling his friends in Team Fortress 2.

I chopped up a bell pepper. QUAAARRWWK!* went the noise, echoing down the stairs.

"What's he doing now?" my mom sighed over the carrot she was grating.

"I don't know! He's so weird!"

KRAAAAEERK! The salad spinner vibrated from the force of the sound (or maybe I'm just being melodramatic). I sliced the radishes with more violence than strictly necessary, venting my exasperation on innocent root vegetables. AEERRRK!  A timer went off, drowning out the next few screeches. Then, just when I thought he'd stopped: ZZZWEEE! EEEEAWK! QUAAAAWH!

We looked at each other, my mom and I. And even though I'm not very good with the social stuff, I knew an unspoken question hung between us. I even knew what it was: What the heck is that ungodly racket?

KKREEEEEAH! I stalked into my brother's room.

"What are you doing?" He was playing a video game; I don't know which one. It was the kind where you run around and shoot people before they shoot you; an online one, with voice-chat.

ZWAAARK! "I'm distracting the other team!" he explained, screeching again. The other players stopped, forgetting to shoot. He smashed their heads with a frying pan.

"Aren't you also distracting your own team?"

"No, they know what I'm doing."

Completely forgetting to yell at him, or even tell him to shut up, I walked into the kitchen and metaphorically died laughing, though not before explaining the awful racket was actually a form of sonic warfare. My mother was not amused, but she didn't see it the way I did: while we were downstairs thinking what is that bozo doing? he was upstairs devising an innovative new strategy.

So the moral of this story is: The mentally different do a lot of things which make absolutely no sense to neurotypicals. When someone does something weird or annoying, before you yell at them, find out their reasoning. Also, don't use voice-chat or my brother might screech in your ear.

Epilogue: It has now been a week since the invention of Tactical Squawking. It is no longer funny. In fact, it's becoming annoying. But considering that's its purpose, I'm not going to complain (though if it keeps up, I might have to change my mind).

*Would you look at that, I managed to spell it after all.

On Personal Shoppers, Disruptive Patterning, and Bad Music at the Mall

I do not like shopping. Well, that's not entirely true. I like grocery shopping, and going to the Apple store. I do not like shopping for clothes. The mall is a terrible place, mostly because all the stores seem locked in competition for the Worst and Loudest Music Award. Almost everything is hideous, and of the stuff that isn't, almost nothing fits. (I am shaped somewhat like a short, tailless Mewtwo.) My brother likes shopping even less, to the point where we have to bribe him with food to get him to cooperate. So on our latest shopping expedition (December 27th, after the crowds are gone) I became his unofficial personal shopper. My mother shops for me sometimes, but she doesn't understand my brother, who won't care if his clothes are microfiber as long as they're soft, and hates anything plaid because it's confusing to look at.* (Mother thinks plaid is cute. I disagree.) So in the interest of avoiding second and third shopping excursions, I made it my job to feel everything for softness, discourage the purchase of ugly plaid things and choose colors (red, orange, gray and navy are good.)

I am not perfect. We're going shopping again today, to return half our purchases for being "too scratchy". But interestingly enough, the things Mother picked out are going back; the shirts with scratchy seams, the shorts with a scratchy waistband she thought would be better than the thick, soft one. I really should have pointed those out and avoided a second shopping trip. Maybe I could be a personal shopper…but only for my brother, and to avoid prolonging our shopping expeditions, because I decided long ago not to work in any industry that involves long discussions with customers.

There's a business idea in here somewhere. Specially trained personal shoppers to buy clothes for the autistic and otherwise mall-averse? Good idea, but it sounds a bit expensive. A store specializing entirely in soft and fluffy things? That might already exist. A quiet mall with soundproofing instead of speakers? Now there's a good idea. If anyone reading this is a mall manager, consider that free business advice.

*Plaid, checks, some stripes and other black-and-white patterns can range from confusing to painful to look at. I consider them disruptive patterns, like the stripes of a zebra which confuse lions trying to pick one zebra out of a herd.

404 Server Error

404 server error: The file or directory you requested could not be found. It may have been moved or deleted.
    I've been practicing my computer voice, and I must say it's improved a lot. I've learned to slow at the end – de - let - ed…– and to add rANdom pitCH chANgeS in the middle of words. Of course, I'm also practicing my r's…see, it's educational! And useful! And…
"STOP PERSEVERATING!!" My dad does not appreciate this new skill. He's irritated; why, exactly, I have no idea. So I switch to my other favorite error, which may or may not exist:
Error: An error occurred, but the error message could not be retrieved due to another error.
    Cue endless repetitions as I figure out which syllables to incorrectly emphasize; where to change pitch; where to slow down. My mother thinks it's cute – not me, but the actual error, which I found on the Internet. My dad thinks I should stop perseverating. I think it's educational.
    First of all, computers are very precise in their language, so I'm learning to enunciate. I'm adding emphasis to my words – true, it's in the wrong places – but that's easy to fix. I've been told I speak in a monotone, so this might be useful.
Second, I've learned most of the 400 and 500 series of server errors, and what causes some of them. 500– internal server error. 402– payment required 405– method not allowed. Which leads me to methods, and servers, and now I'm distracted…again!
Third, and most importantly, I'm learning to listen. Apparently neurotypicals can pick up on all kinds of things from the way people talk. I don't think I can, but maybe I just need to listen. I listen very carefully to GLaDOS and Siri (who, incidentally, is also a bit evil) and our GPS, not to discern some extra meaning from their words, but to mimic them. Not quite the same, I know, but isn't that the first step? If I don't learn this, I'll never get the rest.
See, Daddy? Now, let's hope he's stopped complaining…
404 sERver errOr: The fiLe or direcTORy yoU requESted couLD not bE FOund. IT may haVe BEen mOved oR de-le - ted…
"STOP IT! NO  MORE PERSEVERATING!"

Autism Awareness Month–A Week of Thinking Logically

Happy Autism Awareness Month, everyone! By the end of April, I hope you will be more aware of the mentally different people you may encounter in life. (And yes, I know it's now almost the middle of April, but I had a permissions problem and couldn't log in to post for a while.)
First, let's think about logic. The first thing that comes to my mind is a computer. Computers seem very smart, but are actually very stupid. They can add a thousand numbers in a second, remember a terabyte of data (provided a large enough hard drive), and calculate the fastest route between your house and the grocery store. However, a computer cannot infer meaning from context, compose a well-written sentence or understand an idiom. If a programmer leaves out a comma, the compiler will probably throw a fit over "invalid syntax". But if I wrte lik dis, u stll undrstand!
Now, some autistic people can remember thousands of bits of meaningless data, or square any number in their head. I am not one of them; those people are called savants and are extremely rare. I do, however, think somewhat like a computer. To me, the sentence "Go do your work" is very different from "Go do your schoolwork", though my mother insists they both mean the latter. Upon hearing the former, I started tidying my room, and was scolded for not doing my math.
I don't say "Stay there," I say "Stay within a 5-foot radius of your current location" (this is particularly useful for brothers, who tend to wander off to the video game aisle at Target).
When people ask how my day was, I have to stop and remember; they don't actually want to hear all about it. I prefer concrete language, and well-defined terms; say what you mean. A good test is to ask yourself: "If I ran this through Google Translate, would it still mean what I want it to?"
Neurotypicals, your assignment this week is to think logically. Don't assume anything. You will find a lot of unknowns, but that's to be expected. And remember, you can pretend to be a computer, but a computer can't pretend to be you! (at least, not yet…)

The Mentally Different

I am not "special needs". I am mentally different.

The term "special needs" is, to me, a bit absurd. Taken literally, you could say everyone has special needs. Everyone has some kind of problem. And then there are the negative connotations. Nobody wants to be "special needs", though using the literal definition, everyone is!

The third complaint I have with this word is that it's too generic. "Special needs" lumps the blind with the deaf, with the physically disabled, the mentally disabled, and what I think of as the mentally different. "Special needs" encompasses people in wheelchairs, people with brain injuries, Einstein, sociopaths, and basically anyone who doesn't fit into the definition of normal. It's one of those umbrella terms that simultaneously means almost everything, and therefore almost nothing.

There is only one definition for mentally different.*

The mentally different (according to me), are those on the autism spectrum. Note the lack of positive or negative connotation; we're not the mentally disturbed, or gifted, just different. Everyone has "special needs", and we are no exception. But we also have special abilities. Positive and negative cancel, and we're left with a neutral term; mentally different.**

I am not disabled. I am different.

*Technically, everyone is unique and therefore mentally different (in the literal sense) but don't be a literalist; it can get annoying.

**This term applies especially to those with Asperger's Syndrome or high-functioning autism.

Programming Myself

I'm learning computer programming. So far, I know how to make a bug and three kinds of errors. The problem, I've determined, is that I'm not used to writing programs with proper syntax, meant to be understood by a real computer. Up until now, I have only made programs for myself. These take the form of scribbled flowcharts, if they're written down at all, which tell what to do in social situations. They are written in the simplified computer-language found in Scratch (game programming), or AppleScript.

I have several of these; one for starting a conversation, one for asking a store employee a question, etc… I do not carry them with me on paper, but in my mind. If I could, I would keep them on my clipboard and always have them at hand, but someone would certainly find them. At the moment I write this, nobody but me knows about my social programs, though my family will find out shortly when I post this post.

But why?

That, I'm sure, is the question every neurotypical will be asking. How can these complicated flowcharts, loops and if-else statements be the easiest way to learn?

Well, the truth is, I don't really know. Maybe it's because I think like a computer, although I'm not sure if I do. How can I know what the computer thinks? Or maybe because computer-language is the most concrete way of writing something that is not concrete at all. I asked my pragmatic therapist for some hard-and-fast rules on social interaction, but she couldn't come up with one. I couldn't either. Nothing is always appropriate (or inappropriate), but that's why I have different programs for different situations. It works most of the time, and that's better than saying whatever comes to mind, which hardly ever works. This idea is definitely a keeper.

Look behind you!

Look behind you!
Did you look? Probably not. But I did. I'm always looking behind, around, up, down; everywhere! You never know what could be sneaking up behind you. Probably nothing. But maybe…something.
I'm not paranoid, and I've never been attacked from behind. But it could happen. Of course, a piano could fall from an airplane and smash you as you walk down the street. I know it's very unlikely that a malevolent being could be sneaking up behind me…but I just checked anyway. You never know.

The world is a dangerous place; one where people can pop out and greet you unexpectedly, cars honk in your face for no apparent reason, and everything merits watching. It's unpredictable. Anything could happen. Unknown danger lurks in corners, in other people, and, yes, behind. This is the same world you neurotypicals live in, but seen from the perspective of one who is mentally different. Would I trade my perspective for yours? Maybe.

And yet, this dangerous world is usually tolerable, and, sometimes, wonderful. Places I am very familiar with are much safer (our house, the Co-op grocery store, the park where the homeschoolers' park day is)… Other places we visit less frequently are considered more hazardous, and completely unknown, new places are outright dangerous. Except for one exception: Outdoor places are always relatively safe. Yes, I know, there are wild animals and rattlesnakes, but there's something everywhere.  And even in safe places, I'm still watching. Caution is important, and being aware of my surroundings helps me notice things other people don't. My mother never notices signs that say 'Don't touch!', or 'This is not an exit' or 'Restrooms that way', but I do. Maybe I wouldn't trade after all.

The Illusion of Normalcy- Part 1

"Yikes!" I announce while updating iCal. I have been looking at the events in the next two weeks, and just realized how soon my grandpa is visiting! And he's going to stay at our house…double yikes!
I look around my room. Clothing and books litter the floor. Messy, but not unusual. The door is covered in signage: "Beware of autistic person!" "No Internet memes!". Oh, dear…A large sign on the wall helps me remember to do things like shower and zip my pants. Definitely abnormal.

I walk out into the hallway. Our floor-to-ceiling mirror is decorated with lists of homophones and, in giant letters: "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US". A 1up mushroom and a Piranha Plant lurk next to a monkey sticker. I think it's interesting. Mother thinks we'd better clean it up. (She's probably right.)

I continue my tour of our house, searching for the odd and abnormal things we'll have to remove or hide. A list of fats is taped to the refrigerator–the unhealthy saturated fats are marked with a skull and crossbones.  Every bathroom mirror reads: "Public service announcement: always check the toilet for giant sewer rats!". A paper Swiss cheese on a spring is stuck to our magnet board. The door to the laundry room bears a warning: "Poisonous gases!" Everywhere there are sesquipedalian announcements about preventing ant invasions. A giant drawing of Jigglypuff is magnetized to my brother's dartboard. In several places, I have carefully written "THE CAKE IS A LIE" with a dry-erase marker, just as it appeared in Portal.
Just to clarify matters, our house is not a dump. My mother worked very hard to make it aesthetically pleasing, and kindly did not protest when I put a sign reading "LAIR" above my door, and we decorated the hallway with a life-size cardboard Mewtwo.

Before Grandpa comes, I imagine, we will go on a Weirdness Hunt, tracking down the unusual signage and wiping the mirrors clean. For a few weeks, our house will look like a normal family lives in it. Then, slowly, the weirdness will reappear. I will save the signs we remove and tape them back up after Grandpa leaves. My brother will decorate the mirror again. Maybe I'll decorate my door with Portal-style warning signs–in case you can't tell, Portal and Portal 2 is my newest temporary perseveration.

The 'Atypical Look'

Last weekend my mother decided she needed a pair of sandals to match her new purse. So she went out to the mall…and took me along. She said I needed new sandals too (and if you ask her, I also need new shirts and pants, a new pair of boots, a cute skirt…everything).
We entered through Nordstrom's, hoping to avoid the mall; but, failing to find acceptable sandals, Mother decided to look elsewhere.
Out in the mall, Mother darted off into various stores, dragging me along to point out clothes she wished I would wear. "You'd look so cute if I dressed you!" she tells me. "You should wear stuff like this!"
Why? I think. I like my clothes. They all match each other so it's easy to get dressed.
"You need to buy new shirts!" she exclaims. "Yours are all worn out!"


My mother is not a shopaholic; in fact, we rarely go shopping. She just wants me to look good. The problem: I think I look fine.
Some of my shirts are speckled with tiny holes; the result of hungry silverfish and crickets, but none have the large chocolate-smoothie stains my brother gets everywhere. And aren't worn-out pants in style? Most of my clothes are different shades of blue, but that means I don't have to worry about matching…though apparently I dress like a middle-aged office worker, all in plain shirts and navy or brown pants. It keeps things simple. Albert Einstein had 5 identical suits because he was too busy discovering relativity to think about clothes.

I know I don't dress like other teenagers, but I am completely unbothered by that fact. I prefer not to wear things like those shirts that fall off one shoulder, which reminds me of cavemen, or ripped skinny jeans. It takes a lot of thought to dress that way and I already have too much to think about. If my mother didn't remind me, I would forget to comb my hair or zip my pants. I'm like the absent-minded professor…except I'm not absent-minded. I remember everyone's phone numbers and how to spell pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which is spelled exactly how it sounds. Also, I'm not a professor.

What If?

Let's pretend, neurotypicals, that you're high-functioning autistic. How would your day change? Would you be able to work, eat lunch at a restaurant, go grocery shopping, make phone calls…or even converse with your friends? How many things did you do today that required interaction with other people?

Say you're going grocery shopping. You don't need a list; it's been memorized at home. As soon as you walk into the store, you notice a light is flashing on the ceiling. Someone has a cart with a squeaky wheel. The cheese bar and the cosmetic section have filled the store with a smell: half old socks, half fake roses. You start filling a basket with produce, but the onions are missing. It's alarming; you have a map of the store in your brain and you should know where everything is. An employee walks by and says "Are you looking for something?"

You are, but he popped out so suddenly you don't have any time to figure out what to say. He's halfway across the aisle before you know how to ask where the onions are. "That display, to the right." But you don't know which way right is. You'll have to go first one way, then the other.

At the checkout line, someone is right behind you. You keep twisting around to check for some unknown danger; everyone stares oddly. When the cashier asks what kind of bags you want, you announce "A light is flashing on the ceiling", before remembering it's bad to say random things.

In the parking lot, someone honks and you drop your bags in surprise. The oranges roll out and some innocent passerby stops to help, inadvertently making everything worse. You don't know what to say to him. He has a loud alarming voice. You squawk at him, flap your arms like a chicken and put your sweater over your head, where it stays until you get home, imagining that the strange man will go home for dinner and tell his wife about the mentally disturbed person at the store.

But at home, things are much better. Nobody is going to honk a car horn. You don't have to look behind you. At home is a good place to work. And once you start working, a bright blue elephant could walk by and you wouldn't notice. As an autistic, you can focus on one thing for hours at a time. If the computer crashes and you lose your progress, you can remember what you did and redo it. This is the positive side of being mentally different.

Autistic Language–Strange Words and Stranger Meanings

Chirp! Chirp! Squeak!

Every time I chirp, my mother gets frustrated and says I need to stop. "No college professor will accept a student who chirps!"

What she doesn't understand is that the word 'chirp' is just as real to me as the word 'stop' is to you. It can mean a number of different things.

Chirp! means: "I'm happy" or "I need your attention" or "I don't know what else to say". Sometimes it's an expression of distress. A very loud, screechy chirp means "Turn off the teakettle!"¹ A very, very loud, nonscreechy chirp means "I don't know how to say something and I need to write it on the laptop."² It's always clear to me what sort of chirp is meant, (they're all slightly different in intonation and pitch), but not to anyone else. I suspect they think I'm imitating a bird…

There are other words as well. The word 'cactusing' (which is not really a word) means 'to sew and leave needles and pins around'. The squeak is another sign of distress. A 'fluffy' is anything good, likable, pretty, useful, etc.

Another category of words I have are the ones I use to describe emotions. These are, unfortunately, Pokemon noises which I picked up from watching the Pokemon anime. (In case you're confused, the only word a Pokemon says is its name.³ They still manage to communicate by changing the intonation and pitch, and I find this fascinating.) 

Many autistic people have their own words for things. Some are made up, and others are regular words that have grown an extra meaning. (Some of my words are animal noises…I hiss at people who I wish would go away.)

I don't know why certain words, in addition to their regular English meanings, gain a special connotation. Some form by association. I squeak when I'm upset because my friend told me that's what rats do. Others are unclear. But however they're formed, they all mean something. Here's a sentence that at first glance is a bunch of gibberish but actually makes perfect sense. "Squeak! Who's been cactusing! There's pokys ominousing around!" Translated into Neurotypical English, that would be "Yikes! Who was sewing; there are pins everywhere!" (I should probably add that a poky is anything sharp, and to 'ominous' (a verb) means to be lurking, possibly hovering overhead. Inanimate objects can ominous only if they're hazardous such as giant scissors or a hedge lopper.)

¹Our teakettle is so loud I can't approach it to turn it off.

²Occasionally, I can't say something, usually the answer to a big, awkward question about my feelings toward something/someone. Sometimes I just can't pronounce the word I want to use. In all cases, it's easier to write.

³I would like to add that some Pokemon, such as Dialga and Palkia, make nondescript roaring sounds.