Me as Aspie.

Most well-known diseases or conditions have well-recognised symptoms now. Frequent headaches can mean brain cancer or a tumour, AIDS can bring bodily lesions, heavy coughing can mean cystic fibrosis. But autism spectrum disorders are a quite different beast. With each one there are definitely common tell-tale signs, but unlike those of genuine diseases, they can differ markedly between cases. This may be one reason why autism awareness, even in medical circles, didn't really emerge until the 1980s, and why understanding of it still has so far to go.

I have Asperger's syndrome. If you don't know, that's a high-functioning autism spectrum disorder, characterised by deficiencies in social and interpersonal interaction, motor skills, spatial awareness and sensory processing, with very specific, intense interests.

Its namesake, Hans Asperger, was an Austrian paediatrician who, in the 1930s and '40s, studied the behaviours of numerous children who'd been referred to him. He found a psychiatric pattern between them, which led to his discovery of the condition that would be named in his honour in 1994. Intriguingly, Asperger himself, reportedly exhibited many of its "tell-tale signs": he was frequently lonely and struggled to make friends as a child, he often referred to himself in the third person, and would recite obscure poetry to his uninterested university classmates, among other things.

But anyway, this entry's main purpose is for me to reveal my particular Aspie traits. I'm not ignorant of others'; I just can't speak for them.

- I'm sensitive to being poked, and EXTREMELY ticklish.
- I'm very prone to overthinking and can easily trip over my words.
- I often talk to myself conversationally.
- I value routine (but too much can be boring or constrictive).
- I can be rudely honest or assertive.
- I sometimes have a different sense of hot and cold to most.
- I'm easily bored or distracted.
- I play with my hair constantly.
- I have all my books arranged by height and/or weight, all my DVDs and Blurays arranged alphabetically, and all my CDs arranged alphabetically with ones by the same artist arranged chronologically.
- I have a very high physical pain threshold (several GPs have told me so).
- I can very much hold my liquor (mind you, I also have Irish ancestry).
- I often have trouble with following or remembering choreography or new procedures.

These are the most common ones I have, anyway. I have numerous friend with it who share some of them but also have ones of their own. But the spectrum is vast and needing guidance is simply human. Cure autism? How about bigotry, or actual diseases?

P.S. You all know what a movie buff I am, and the Best Picture Oscar winner for my birth year was Rain Man. Coincidence?