(Irritable muttering)
This entry started out as a comment on a Cracked article on 6 Simple Things Too Many People Don't Know How To Do. The things are: Swimming, Parallel Parking, Googling Efficiently, Riding A Bike, Driving a Manual Transmission and Exiting a Conversation Gracefully. It's being posted here because I've seen the trolls in the Cracked comment threads and would rather hang around here.
Gosh. I can only manage 5/6 of being an adequate modern human.
Swimming is difficult, I never managed it.
I did manage to learn to ride a bike, complete with difficulties going in a straight line, difficulties balancing, and difficulties being in the road. I went on with it until told not to. Then I learned to ride a trike, which meant my balance was a lot better--until I broke a bone falling off it, because I couldn't compensate for momentary losses of balance.
Driving takes away the balance problems and adds an entirely new set of problems. I gave up on it in my teens because I'd given it a couple of years without getting any better, so there was no sense in throwing more money at it (perfectly sensible). I could drive in a straight line for up to fifteen minutes while concentrating on that. My peripheral vision and driving in a straight line while doing anything else, were rubbish. I'd managed to get about on foot by walking, only slowly, and staying on the pavement. Driving doesn't let a person choose their pace, and requires exact position.
"Exiting a conversation gracefully?" Fuck you, madam. Aspie types like me are usually working at the A-level end of the social curriculum: Basic Eye-Contact, Reciprocal Conversation and Social Code Decryption. The more empathic women here can (and are expected to) facilitate for other people, which is degree- or PHD level. With the best will in the world I can't get there from here. I'd rather work nearer my own level than trying to aim spectacularly high.
I spend ages thinking of myself as only minimally disabled, and then I get reminded by something like this that there are these life skills I don't have.
The only one I've got is efficient Googling. I am geeky, and have been known to complain about the Google UI for string literals: if using text completion, it swallows the initial " you just typed in showing you were actually looking for a string literal and does an AND search instead. Which is less useful.
In order not to get drowned or eaten by a bear (can't remember how that comes into the article) have decided to live on Google.
At least I have a warm cat on my lap.
Gosh. I can only manage 5/6 of being an adequate modern human.
Swimming is difficult, I never managed it.
I did manage to learn to ride a bike, complete with difficulties going in a straight line, difficulties balancing, and difficulties being in the road. I went on with it until told not to. Then I learned to ride a trike, which meant my balance was a lot better--until I broke a bone falling off it, because I couldn't compensate for momentary losses of balance.
Driving takes away the balance problems and adds an entirely new set of problems. I gave up on it in my teens because I'd given it a couple of years without getting any better, so there was no sense in throwing more money at it (perfectly sensible). I could drive in a straight line for up to fifteen minutes while concentrating on that. My peripheral vision and driving in a straight line while doing anything else, were rubbish. I'd managed to get about on foot by walking, only slowly, and staying on the pavement. Driving doesn't let a person choose their pace, and requires exact position.
"Exiting a conversation gracefully?" Fuck you, madam. Aspie types like me are usually working at the A-level end of the social curriculum: Basic Eye-Contact, Reciprocal Conversation and Social Code Decryption. The more empathic women here can (and are expected to) facilitate for other people, which is degree- or PHD level. With the best will in the world I can't get there from here. I'd rather work nearer my own level than trying to aim spectacularly high.
I spend ages thinking of myself as only minimally disabled, and then I get reminded by something like this that there are these life skills I don't have.
The only one I've got is efficient Googling. I am geeky, and have been known to complain about the Google UI for string literals: if using text completion, it swallows the initial " you just typed in showing you were actually looking for a string literal and does an AND search instead. Which is less useful.
In order not to get drowned or eaten by a bear (can't remember how that comes into the article) have decided to live on Google.
At least I have a warm cat on my lap.