I recently had a conversation like this with an autistic person, and their perspective was interesting.

I have a lot of strange niche interests that other people seem to think I know a lot about. An autistic person and her autistic friends thought I might be autistic too, which I took as a compliment because I interpreted it as them saying they think I’m like them.

I don’t think I’m autistic, but I’m not bothered by the possibility, so I suggested we both take an online autism test. As we took it, the differences were apparent before we even finished.

I had no issues answering the questions and found them very easy. She struggled to know what they meant and what the “correct” answer was. I finished in about a third of the time that it took her. When the results came in, I barely scored on the autism possibility scale while she scored very high as likely autistic. Her mind was kind of blown because it reframed what she thought a neurotypical experience was like.

After more discussions with her, I realized she had a bit of a prejudice against what she interpreted as neurotypical qualities, but in my opinion, those were just the qualities that make up someone who is either kind of a jerk or just callous. As we’ve known each other longer, she has been amazed at my ability to let arguments go, do gross tasks without a problem, not fixate on things that bother me, and a host of other abilities that she struggles with, even though she also notices that I am passionate about certain subjects and tuned in to how I act most of the time.

The thing I think some people on the spectrum don’t realize is that it is possible for a neurotypical person to learn and display positive qualities that are associated with autism. The reason why autism is considered a disability, in my opinion, is that it is harder for an autistic person to learn and display neurotypical qualities (though not impossible).

So, if I were a fern guy, I think it would be totally possible for me to write an eight volume series about them single-handedly. The trick is that I would have to want to, and it would not be something that I was fixated on, but rather something that I chose and endured to the end for.