By Leo I have tried to avoid, as much as possible, speaking for or on behalf of others. As the cliché goes, “you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person”. However, as with all things, there are commonalities, and I hope I have drawn these out, and that they will help, in some small way, to make the world a better place for everyone – autistic and non-autistic alike. The rules for small talk among most non-autistic people seem from the outside strange. At their core they appear to require the need for indirect communication. Small talk is the “grease” of social interaction. It is full of meaningless additions, and a tendency to circle a topic before broaching it. This is perceived as politeness. But is it? When younger I used to refer to conversation as “the rules of engagement”, because I found it akin to a battle, that needed pre-strategising to survive until the end (let alone “win”); in this context “winning” was succeeding in getting to the end of the conversation without being thoroughly exhausted, and having understood the other person sufficiently whilst ensuring they understood me.
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