My paternal grandpa was a mechanically/technically inclined person, a socially awkward, blunt and stubborn person with multiple failed marriages, and no friends … who turned to tobacco and alcohol to cope… and he literally did have an extensive, hand crafted model train set and environment, the size of two queen mattresses, that he built, and often neglected his kids to spend time on/with. That and the alcoholism also caused some serious familial neglect.

My dad was a technically/mechanically inclined person, a socially awkward, very brash and overconfident, sutbborn person with a history of tumultuous romantic relationships, is still in a very unhappy marriage, no friends, who turned to alcohol to cope, which caused him to neglect his kids and wife… and then also went through various hobbies every 2-4 years or so, which became his whole personality untill he switched to another one.

I can remember him one time, piss drunk, explaining to 10ish yearold me the ins and outs of structural concepts in aircraft design.

I am also a technically/mechanically/computer programming inclined person, a socially awkward person with a history of tumultuous romantic relationships, who is overly literal and often quite blunt, with no real friends beyond the age of about 25… who would often isolate with the computer to get away from insane family drama… but at least I have not fallen into alcoholism nor had any marriages or kids, as I realize that social/traditional pressure alone is not a good reason to sign up for massive responsibilities…

But nope! Ask any of my dad’s family if maybe Autism is a thing that runs in the male line of our family, and this is evidently a ludicrous, unfounded notion, but also at the same time there’s ‘just no real explanation’ for the astoundingly obvious pattern I have here described.

They don’t disagree that the pattern isn’t there, they are all just massively biased/stigmatized against any concepts of mental illness or neurodiversity, choosing to view atypical, consistent behavioral patterns as simply indicative of the underlying, quality of moral character of a person.

Back in my day the quirky pixie dream girl had an encyclopedic knowledge of local flora and fauna. A book with cut out examples. And a physical tick anytime someone looks her in the eye

Like God intended

I never played with trains when I was growing up. I wanted to though but I was told I can’t because they’re boy’s toys and I’m a girl and “girl’s don’t play with trains” 😭

My parents used to be the kind of people who thought autism == rain man, which is funny because my dad often displays some very aggressively autistic behavior (you know, things like inflexible routines, food and texture aversions, gross misunderstandings of social cues which have led him to quite a few actual fights, draconian rule following and imposing, an obsession with guns, yadda yadda) which he thinks is perfectly normal and “how things should be”, because “that’s how he was raised and is therefore good”, according to him.

And, obviously, when some of those behaviors crossed over to me, he thought it was perfectly normal as well lmao

(I say used to because I’ve been trying to educate them a bit but man is progress slow)

I was in my thirties before I realized I was autistic, even though I’m basically a walking checklist of symptoms, likely because I’m a woman who was taught to mask well by two well masking autistic parents. Nobody was weird about my tics (even in school, somehow- I didn’t even notice them until I started playing dnd and 6+ hours of group socializing made them a lot more frequent, but my family and friends said I’ve always done it) and my food sensitivities fit neatly into a vegetarian diet, so everything else got written off as being smart and a bit of a cold fish with ADHD and OCD.

I wish I could explain to the train guy what a weight it’s lifted to see that parts of myself I hadn’t previously been able to describe common to lots of people. It’s the opposite of alienation and it’s really gratifying.