Autistic Monologues and the Modern Art of Conversation
So, you know the scene, if not from recent history, then from sometime in your autistic past…a group of your co-workers are gathered in the break room discussing XY or Z. In a wide-ranging, fast-moving, laugh-filled conversation (that you have barely been able to keep up with) filled with amazingly witty repartee, the kind of conversation among a group of people that, if you nail your entry, cements your application into THE FRIEND GROUP. Girding your courage and forcing your words, you spring into action and launch into your
autistic monologue
infodump
soliloquy
and their eyes, their shining and excited and darting eyes, their eyes that were on your side at the start of your irruptive speech, all start to glaze…and then, like normal, you think
“Why, why did I think they would want to know that both touch-screen technology as well as pay-at-the-pump were “introduced” to the world at the 1982 World’s Fair?” To be fair, a couple of minutes ago, during the course of the conversation, they were talking about how cheap gas was at Sam’s Club…and then the conversation moved to self-ordering kiosks at Mcdonald's, then to self-pay at various stores and how some stores are taking the self-pay aisles out, and, and I lost track for a little bit when I thought about a kitten video I saw earlier that week (it was so cute, the kitten was trying to pounce on a, then I think the conversation had moved on to a different topic (three or four times), but when the speaking gap finally opened up enough for me to merge onto the highway, my brain was still
back
there…at the 1982 World’s Fair (you’ve got to be there)
We live in an information age. One of the bigger hallmarks of being autistic is collecting, and one of the most wonderful things to collect is information, specifically information on YOUR FAVORITE TOPICS, but most any information will do in a pinch. We love knowing things, so one could be excused for thinking that this could be a Golden Age for Autistics. We are information dragons, scouring the land looking for facts, ideas, studies, but unlike the greed of the mythical dragon, we want to share our hoard (I’ve used this image before, but I like it and am using it again), so we haunt information gathering locations…televisions, libraries, movies, books, newspapers, magazines, the internet…wherever information exists there are autistic people gathered about, recording and transcribing.
I have a piece of information you seem to be missing. You may or may not be ready to hear this information, but I’ll tell you, because knowledge is power. Ignorance is a cage. And feelings can be dealt with. I bid you good day — Hannah Gadsby
We live in an information age, and yet when I share with the assembled folk I happen to find myself among what I think is relevant information to the topic at hand, it never works. This confuses me, as I’m sure it does to all Autistics. Why? Why does it never seem to work?
It seems to me that the problem could be one of three things:
- relevance and applicability of information,
- the timing of my interjection, or
- the length of my spoken contribution.
Point one: Going back to the fictitious conversation where I did not bring the house down with my historical Knoxville, Tennessee tie-in when gas prices at Sam’s Club were being discussed, I’m going to call a foul on my attempted interjection of an interesting factoid. An interjected bit of information needs to have some semblance of relevance or provide useable information. My interjection of the 1982 World’s Fair history was neither relevant nor useful, so I failed on my conversational input. Why would I have thought that this would have been interesting or engaging to the conversation in the first place?
Point two: Conversations have an ebb and flow that cannot be charted. I know, I’ve tried. During the 70s, when I was a kid, my mother used to have a friend, another suburban mother, who would come over with a bottle or three of wine. During these visits, the conversation would just roll, and there was no way, no way I could have understood or predicted or even really charted the evolutionary path that these afternoon/evening discussions took. And I tried; I tried to understand the paths their talk took, tried to predict where things might go, tried to understand how what they talked about previously flowed into what they were talking about now. I couldn’t. I do find it strange, now, to realize that I was more at home in their conversations than I was with my own peers. Success in conversation deals with the timing, and obviously, the model conversation referenced above had moved beyond the point of relevance, even tangential relevance, for my little interjection.
Point three: I didn’t detail in the scenario how long I spoke for when I brought the house down with my contribution to the conversation, but it doesn’t even matter, really. Five words, five minutes…having failed points one and two, it doesn’t matter how my point three would be interpreted, but, as an Autistic person, I know that to an allistic audience, any length of time dumping information is too long. So, this is an all-around conversational failure.
We live in the information age. Every company is in the business of gathering as much information as they possibly can on each and every one of us who happens to call the internet home, and quite frankly, each and every one of us is more than willing to share that info. And it’s not just online.
This is another aspect of modern conversation that I just cannot abide. I cannot tell you (because you know) how many people just out and out share their personal business via cell phone calls in waiting rooms. Every time I am in a waiting room, be it for a doctor’s appointment or in a hospital, or someplace as innocuous as waiting to get your car serviced, I have heard so many stories about Junior’s test results coming back positive, about that oozing cyst on the baby, granny was found wandering ‘nekkid’ along the shoulder of Highway 14, somebody’s anal glands need to be expressed, somebody lost their job…modern waiting rooms are a country song unwritten, and I don’t need to know this about people, don’t want to know this about people, but today, everybody seems to be fine with sharing everything.
I hate it.
Is this where modern conversation, and modern interaction have gone? Am I supposed to, since I make an effort to study people so I can at least attempt to interact with them in a semi-acceptable manner, tell everybody about that thing on my thing?
No thanks.
It is at this moment when it becomes apparent that scripting and camouflage have failed, and I start counting the moments when I can withdraw from the allistic world and head to my Utopia.
