Social Incompetence #1 Persistence & Pain

Unlike people with classical autism, I am not satisfied to live in my own, isolated world.  I want to be part of your world, especially the social universe.  Unfortunately, I am an alien.  I don’t have the communications sophistication, emotional control or general intuition your society requires.  I am a social incompetent–eager but awkward.  Consider the book titles authored by people with Asperger’s:  Freaks, Geeks and Asperger’s Syndrome by Luke Jackson; Pretending to be Normal by Liane Holliday Willey; Asperger’s Huh? by Rosina Schnurr.  These titles reveal the distance we feel from normal society.  They are matched by websites like WrongPlanet.net and Aspergia.com, a decidedly defensive Aspergian community.  

We with Asperger's are intelligent enough to perceive our difference–acutely.  Our sense of abnormality is a persistent gloom, and many of us fight daily to pierce it.  I distinctly remember at age five learning that my normal conversational impulses were unacceptable, and had to be replaced by socially proscribed scripts.  For you normal folk, the ones we Aspies label “NeuroTypicals (NT’s), that might be part a normal process of acculturation and maturation.  For us, it is a gap that widens through childhood and explodes in adolescence.  I need your help to bridge the gap.  I need friends, and more importantly, I need explicit coaching on how to be a proper friend.