I’m waiting in a car, trying to explain to my wife that I’m not comfortable with a group of strangers having her phone number in some group texting she was telling me about. She doesn’t see the potential problem. I offered to check the settings in the app (a very popular messaging app), but she didn’t seem to think that was needed.

About 15 minutes ago, my son – also autistic – was upset by seeing someone not properly taking care of a possibly expensive object. We didn’t know the person or any real details about the object, and I told him that people don’t really seem to want our advice our help. I have years of experience!

The very frustrating flip side of this is that I often feel ignored when I believe I need help.

Now, I would probably appreciate – assuming I understood- someone warning me about a mistake I’m making or about to make. But, trying to help people has often caused bad outcomes for me, so I have to think of doing exactly the opposite of what seems correct.

Notice I’ve italicized the words potential, possibly, and believe. These are all hypothetical assessments yet based on concrete data from the past or current observation. Is this an over application of facts, data, and details? Is it my attempt to find relevance for those things? Is it an attempt for me to find relevance? If someone cares about me, they should care about my observations, knowledge, and opinions, right? It doesn’t seem to work that way most of the time.

At least, nobody is being forced (that I know of) to read this post. In that sense, if you’ve read it, I’ll assume you liked my observations, at least this time! (Maybe this is the perfect time to suggest liking or subscribing to this blog.)