This is Part 7 of 10 of My Venture Into Asperger’s.  This post is primarily about the Aspie Quiz.

After studying this condition for a good while I took the Aspie Quiz. The Quiz is a pre-diognostic tool to help determine if you might be autistic.  The quiz is a group of 50 questions that are rated on a scale of 1 to 6. The answers to the questions are grouped in various categories including: Talent, Perceptions, Communications, Relationships, and Social skills.

After completing the quiz I was given the results as shown below. It took some time to really determine what this graph says but I have come to the conclusion that I am significantly skewed toward the Neuordiverse/Aspergers side of the spectrum. Particularly in the talent area and to a lesser degree to the other categories.   As I was looking over the results it struck me that I have never thought to group these situations together but when I do that trends definitely appear.

The basic results of the quiz are that I have both neurodiverse and neurotypical traits. That is, like my deafness, I am in between two worlds.  I am probably described at a highly functioning Aspie.  That is, the neurodiverse side of me has not greatly impeded my ability to function in the neurotypical world.

My strongest Aspie category is in the Talent area. Part of those characteristics are:

• I get extremely focused on special interests almost to the exclusion of everything else. When I get involved in some things the world completely disappears. My total focus is on the topic at hand. That proved to be somewhat beneficial in my last career stage in the business world. I was a software tools developer and was able to create apps that would normally have taken 2 to 3 people to accomplish.

• I have an extreme need to catalog information. During my thirty year career I religiously kept a weekly index card of all the things I did. This card stack grew to over 6 inches high before it was moved to a computer when PCs were available.

Perceptions is my second highest neurodiverse category:

• It upset me greatly when someone says they will be there at a particular time and then don’t show up or are even late.

• I dislike it when people walk behind me but I literally hate it when people are tailgating me.

• My eyes have always been sensitive to glare and I am hypersensitive to many smells, particularly  the smell of mint; it overwhelms me. My brain doesn’t see anything but the smell.

• I can’t seem to do anything unless I have it down in list form and thoroughly follow it.

• During conversations I guess I often miss when it is my turn to talk. There just doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it. If I don’t barge in when I want, I have to wait until there is a very noticeable pause to know it is my turn. I often just barge in.

There are numerous other areas in day-to-day traits that I don’t seem typical but I will leave those things to another post. Stated simply I often have always had trouble getting my feelings across and communicating with others.

So here I am between two worlds.  That seems to be where I have been my entire life. That is not necessarily a bad thing but it has presented many challenges in my life. Much more on these sort of things in future posts….