Chatting and Other Pointless Activities

A new survey shows that people chat, on average, for four and a half hours a day. Four and a half hours. Why would anyone want to do that? I barely chat for four and a half minutes a day and that’s with the dog.
I hate chatting and I hate small talk. In fact, if I die and have to go downstairs rather than up, I expect to arrive at an enormous cocktail party where a suitable scary demon will thrust a drink into my hand and whisper ‘go chat…for an eternity’.
Vanessa and I once went to London for the day. When we returned, I realised that, to people other than her, I had said only ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘please’, ‘thank you’, and ‘green tea’. I appreciate that the last two words look a little gratuitous but they were, unfortunately, quite necessary. I also appreciate that admitting this makes me look a little weird. Let me confirm that view.
The first use of the word ‘yes’ came on the train, by the toilet. Trains are curious. The staff continuously try to sell you drinks (or even give them away with an accompanying doily in first class, which was not where we were sitting), then the train throws you around to give your bladder such a pounding that you are desperate to excrete said liquid within moments. Maybe that’s just me, but when you do go to find the toilet (which if you sit at the end of the train, as I do, is shared between two carriages) it’s always busy. Always.
This gives me a dilemma. If I nonchalantly stand a few feet away and gaze out the window there is always some obnoxious smart arse ready to jump the queue and nip in before I realise that the person using the toilet has come out. The alternative is to stand so close to the toilet door that my nose is wedged up against the woodwork. That stops anyone queue jumping but it can rather startle the person coming out.
The morning of our trip, the lobby leading to the toilet was full of the usual characters. A serial killer looking out the window. A woman jiggling a baby on the verge of throwing up – as if that was going to help. And a fat girl drinking coke and pausing occasionally to stuff another quarter pound of sausage meat down her gullet. Wonderful. At least nobody spoke.
The toilet was busy. What a surprise. I waited next to the door but ensured that I was far enough from the serial killer that I wouldn’t get stabbed, far enough from the baby that I wouldn’t get sprayed with vomit, and far enough from the fat girl that when the strain on her mini skirt (in God’s name: why a mini skirt?) finally gave way I wouldn’t drown in rolls of blubber.
Just then, the obnoxious smart arse arrived. Of course he did. I shuffled closer to the door of the toilet. He tried to edge in front of me but I was too quick. He then acted peeved and asked me whether the toilet was engaged. What did he think? That I habitually stood around with the dregs of humanity looking at toilet doors? Idiot. I replied with my first word to a stranger that day: ‘yes’. He then proceeded to ask whether there was someone in there, as if I might have been referring to the toilet’s forthcoming nuptials with my previous answer. I gave a more measured and, I hope, particularly stern ‘yes’ (I hate repeating myself) and carried on looking at the toilet door.
Fortunately, the occupant finished what was rapidly becoming an extended stay in the toilet, and came out. She was met by my malevolent stare and an obnoxious but clearly retarded smart arse trying to barge his way in. I won that little contest and shut the door with a satisfied flourish.
Behind me the tiny room was a mess. I once saw a wildlife documentary about hippos. It said that the big males mark their territory by taking a dump whilst wagging their tails furiously, so as to splatter their excrement in an alarmingly wide radius. It was clear that not only one but probably three male hippos had used the toilet that morning. They had even sprayed the ceiling, which I thought was particularly impressive.
I suppose I should have told someone about it but that would have required the use of words and I had completely exhausted my conversational allowance for the morning with the obnoxious retard. So I returned to my seat where Vanessa asked me if everything was all right. I thought hard for an answer and eventually settled for…’yes’.

My Diagnosis 5: The Result

Those new to autism may not be aware that we have our own way of testing just how autistic we are. It’s called the AQ test and it’s sort of like the Olympics for nerds. You get asked questions like whether you enjoy socialising with friends (presumably without first using mind-numbing drugs that turn you into a drooling zombie), or whether you would talk to someone if he or she was the last person on the planet following a nuclear holocaust. That would be ‘no’ on both counts, obviously.
The Professor went through his own, slightly idiosyncratic, version of the standard AQ test. I wondered if he thought that I had been researching the questions (and the possible answers) beforehand and this was a way of catching me out. Scurrilous accusation but spot on, Professor. I reasoned that I’d rather know before the consultation whether I was likely to get a positive diagnosis or not and this would help me relax through the process. It didn’t but it was worth trying.
So we went through a list of questions where the Professor asked me something, I answered, and he then repeated it back to me. I felt I was talking to a parrot. In this way, we covered a lot of ground.
At the end of it, the Professor mumbled something about Aspergers and quickly moved on to list all my positive attributes, assuring me I was special – at least in terms of needs. Whoa! Slow down there, Professor. My mind was expecting another question at that point, not the diagnosis. If you must change the subject at whiplash speed then at least warn me first, otherwise my mind will expect a question and, when it doesn’t get one, it will revert back to a dormant state. That means I can’t hear what you are saying. Or rather I can hear it but I can’t understand it. So have I got the damn condition or not?
I could have asked him to repeat the diagnosis I suppose but that’s not how I tend to do things. You get one shot with me. If you blow it, you blow it. So the Professor was telling me how great I am and I’m wondering if I have the bloody syndrome or not.
He then posits that a social interaction programme might be helpful. I asked if he meant for him or me. He said that a group of Asperger people meet locally and all stand about looking at their shoes and checking their watches to see if it’s time to leave. Would that be helpful to me? Er…no.
In his later report, the Professor wrote (and here I quote) "I could detect no enthusiasm for this". Enthusiasm? Professor, I couldn’t have been less enthusiastic if you’d recommended that my testicles need massaging once a week by a gorilla. I’ve got Aspergers for goodness sake. A room full of people is like the seventh level of hell to me. Of course I’m not enthusiastic.
But at least that indicated he thought I had Aspergers in the first place. If only he hadn’t dealt with the diagnosis bit so quickly, I might have known for certain. Why he didn’t labour the point and repeat it several times in succession, like any reasonable person would do is beyond me – that’s how I approach my explanations. As it was, I bugged Vanessa for two weeks afterwards, checking that he really did think I had the syndrome and whether, perchance, she’d changed her opinion in the several seconds since I last asked her. The Professor could have spared us both the agony of those two weeks.
In the end, I accepted that I had Aspergers and this is what the Professor was imparting to me in the twenty seconds that I zoned out. He later confirmed it in a written report, stating that I have "Asperger Syndrome without doubt". Those last two words struck a nicely ironic note.
So that’s how I was diagnosed. The whole affair has probably left me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but I think we’ll just let that lie on file. I don’t think I can face another consultation for a very long time. A very long time indeed.