Eurogamer had a stream today with donations going to The Autism Self Advocacy Network in part because Zoe (one of the video producers) is autistic. I jumped in after they met their first goal of $2,000 and raised it to $4,000. They were roughly seven hundred dollars short when I hopped into the chat. I related my story about my brother, how I mentioned to him a few months ago that he was on the spectrum. I thought he knew; I honestly did. It was so obvious to me, so I thought it would be to him as well. Especially since one of his sons is on the spectrum as well, which he knew.
Anyway, he didn’t have much of a reaction when I said that to him, but several weeks later, he brought it up. He said that it hit him like lightning and opened up his eyes. So many things came together to make sense and it made such a difference to it. He’s mentioned it more than once since and said he’s mentioned it to other people. In other words, it’s really made a difference.
Anyway. Part of the stream was dropping a link to the online test you can take to see if you’re on the spectrum or not. You need to score 14–I got 16. Here’s the thing, though. The traits listed were, how shall we say it, poorly defined. They would make a statement and you had to choose between not true, true now and then, true then, or true now. I hate multiple choice tests because I can think of how each answer would fit in different instances or five different meanings for each statement. One of them is “I focus on details rather than the overall idea.” Why does it have to be either/or? I always get tripped up with either/or because it’s both/and for me more often than not.