Aspergers: Laugh or Die Young

My goal in these future postings is not to "dis" the wonderful man that I married, but rather to talk frankly and openly about what its like being an "NT" (Neuro-typical, i.e. someone without Aspergers Syndrome) married to an "Aspie".

Some of the posts may sound critical, hurt, frustrated, joyful, confused, elated, suicidal, discombobulated.... all of these emotions characterize life with an Aspie.

But there can be a delicious element of whimsy to it as well, if you care to look.

And I, along with the creastors/writers of "The Big Bang Theory", care to look.

As an NT, I can be very relaxed about things. "Perfect" is not necessary in all things; indeed, "good enough" is a fine standard, and sometimes "ratshit" will have to do. That's life in the messy, chaotic, unpredictable world of NTs.

But Aspies require order, precision, accuracy, predictability and routine. Witness Sheldon's demonstration of these characteristics in a golden "The Big Bang Theory" moment.

My own lovely Aspie is very much like this too. One of the most amusing examples for me is the way he feeds the neighbourhood birds.

We live on 10 beautiful acres. We don't OWN them, mind you, but we do have the privilege of living on them. We share this space with lovely neighbours (our landlord and his family), two guinea pigs, two wild magpies named "Harold and Harriette" and an assortment of butcherbirds, crows, noisy miners, and parrots.

Now, the magpies, whom I am very fond of, are - like crows and other members of the family corvidae family (Currawongs, Butcherbirds etc) hunter/scavengers. They strut along the grass, heads down, looking for prey and scraps for their meals. So, when I feed them (which, admittedly, I do often) I will throw their food on the ground away from the house, scattering it so that

a) there is less interspecies warfare over the scraps,
b) it respects their natural behaviour, and
c) rats and other scavengers won't be attracted to the house itself

It can also be a bit messy, but I have never considered this an issue as the scraps are tossed in an area of the lawn no-one really traverses, and the scraps are cleaned up in relatively short order by either the birds or the neighbour's ride 'em lawn mower.

However, the other day, my Aspie stumbled onto the feeding area, and a look crossed his face such as the one I imagine crossed the faces of the journalists that first encountered The Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields, or the faces of the Americans that liberated the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.

I think my Aspie may have stepped in some chicken.

ANYWAY, to complete the picture, there is a dead tree stump roughly fifty feet from the house. My Aspie proceeded to pick up the old chicken and scraps of food and pile them neatly and methodically on top of this tree stump, with a look of complete disgust on his face. It was a curious thing to do, I thought.

What was even more amusing was today, when he chopped up some more leftovers, and proceeded to stack them neatly and in alphabetical order on the same tree stump (brusquely refusing my offer of help when I said I'd take the scraps out to the birds.)

But the thing that really maded me LOL was the look on the poor birds' faces (inasmuch as a bird's face can reflect emotion) as they slowly circled the tree stump, wondering what the heck the food was doing up there, instead of on the ground where they could eat it as nature intended.

Asergers: Laugh or Die Young.