Saturday 29 March 2014

The real meaning of "It's been so lovely to see you"

On Thursday night, some friends gave me a lift home.  We were chatting away in the car.  One of them then said: "Well, it's been so lovely to see you", which I took, correctly, to mean: "Please get out of our car now, we want to drive home and then go to bed"!

It struck me as so bizarre that people don't just say what they really mean!

The unexpected ambulance

Last night, a fuse blew in my house whilst I was on the phone to a friend.  All the lights went out.  Whilst still on the phone, I was looking at the fuse box and my friend was explaining to me what to do.  Some writing next to a switch told me to put the switch to "off" before handling any fuses.  I did this, not knowing what it would do.  It cut all the power to my house so the phone went dead.   

I didn't understand the fuse box and couldn't figure out what to do, so I went across the road to my neighbour's.  He came in and looked at it and then went back to his house for some fuse wire.  On leaving my house, there was what I took to be a police car parked outside.  On second glance, it turned out to be an ambulance.  I thought it was for one of my neighbours and wondered if their children were okay.  I went out of my house to see what was going on.

The ambulance driver asked if I was the householder.  I said yes.  She said my friend that I'd been talking to on the phone had thought I'd been electrocuted and had called for an ambulance!  I explained how the switch on the fuse box had just cut the power to my whole house unexpectedly, and that I hadn't been electrocuted.  She put her head back and roared with laughter and drove off. 

Wednesday 26 March 2014

Debi Brown, Individual on the Autism Spectrum

I've just been chuckling my head off because I've figured out why the description:  
 
"Debi Brown, Individual on the Autism Spectrum" sounded weird to me.

It's because the alternative option would be:

"Debi Brown, Group on the Autism Spectrum".

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Wednesday 19 March 2014

The interesting way to meet your neighbours

I was at my volunteering club, talking to a mother and her 7-year old child.

I recounted the story of me yelling across the street mid-bounce from my trampoline, by way of meeting my new neighbour S (see a few posts ago), and how the neighbour had said she'd already read my website so wasn't in the least bit surprised about the trampoline.

The 7-year old looks at me in horror. 

"Debi, that's not how you introduce yourself to a new neighbour!" 

"Really?" 

"No!"  The child imitates knocking on a door, smiling and saying "hello", to teach me how it's done.

Great, I'm now learning normal social interaction from an NT 7-year old! 

"Oh, darling, you're very boring" says tactful Mum to child. "Debi's way was more interesting".