Taking People at Face Value

Like many people with Aspergers, I tend to take people at face value (although usually without actually looking at their face, obviously).
This means that I judge you as I find you, with absolutely no reference to anything else. This is not all good.
If you make a smart comment to me, then I will assume you are smart. If you make a dumb comment to me, then I will assume you are dumb. This is irrespective of anything that has gone before. If Kermit the Frog quoted Shakespeare I would immediately assume he is cultured, well-read, and completely overlook the fact he is a frog, and a puppet. Similarly, if Einstein said he didn’t know the name of the President, I would assume he was a complete idiot, and completely overlook his contribution to, erm…snazzy equations. Although being dead, I’d probably give him a little more leeway.
So, despite almost 20 years of marriage, Vanessa gets no privileged treatment from me.
Regular readers of this blog will remember that I have recently had a head cold. As soon as I thought I might be going down with it, I emailed Vanessa to tell her. I didn’t make a big thing of it, of course, but if I wasn’t going to pull through, I wanted a record of the cause of my passing.
Vanessa didn’t respond.
Now I will save you from the crushing disappointment that I felt that morning, realising that after almost 20 years of happy marriage, Vanessa had finally decided that she was no longer concerned for my well being and clearly couldn’t give a hoot whether if I lived or died, by telling you that she didn’t actually receive the email. It had vanished into internet stardust, never to be seen again.
That didn’t occur to me. Instead, I started to plan my life as a single person. I realised I would need to move out of the house but as Mabon would still need feeding and walking every day, I reasoned that I couldn’t go far. Maybe I’d buy a caravan and live in the adjacent field. It also left the weekend clear. I decided I’d watch a film.
Within a few minutes, I was sorted. My new life opened up before me.
Then Vanessa emailed. Upon reading its contents, I realised that not only had she ignored the perilous state of my health, she was even pretending that everything was perfectly normal by wittering on about the usual banalities she writes about. She made absolutely no reference to my earlier email at all. Nothing. I might as well have dropped dead in the interim for all she seemed to care.
Before I began to pack my belongings, I emailed back. I asked how she could be so uncaring as to throw years of happiness away at a time when I might be taking my last few breaths on earth.
She responded to explain that she had not received my earlier email. I hadn’t considered that possibility.
That was all right then. No need to buy a caravan after all. She also said that she feared she might be going down with the same illness as me (albeit in the milder form that women seem to get).
I replied in jovial fashion, ending with ‘I hope you haven’t got it too’. Except that I didn’t write exactly that. In error, I left out the ‘haven’t’.
I only noticed a few hours later. Despite being grammatically incorrect, the statement was still pretty damming. I immediately emailed Vanessa and took great pains to explain the mistake, pointing out the incorrect grammar as proof of an error rather than a callous and quite unnecessary statement (well, quite unnecessary now we had things sorted out). I feared that, in the few hours since I had sent the email, she would have already consulted solicitors and that divorce papers were probably on their way.
Vanessa responded. She said that of course she had assumed I had made an error and hadn’t given it another thought. In fact, she always thinks the best of me anyway.
Er…right. Funny that: I’m just the same.