Here is the pattern:

• I see someone do or say something, and it makes another person laugh.
• If the person is laughing, they must be happy.
• If they are happy, that’s a good thing!
• I don’t want people to be sad.
• If I see someone I want to make happy, I do or say what I’ve seen others do to get people to laugh.
• The person gets mad at me, and I’m confused and upset.
• Sometimes, this attempt to make someone feel better has made them ignore me, make me feel ashamed, or run me down to other people.
• The person I wanted to help has been hurt, and now I’m hurting too.
• Nobody else seems to understand, and I isolate to avoid more problems.
  

HYPOTHESIS: If I do the same thing as another person, I should expect the same result.

OBSERVATION:

My humor gets the opposite result when I do what I think I’ve seen someone else do with a positive result. People get upset when I’m expecting them to be happy.

CONCLUSIONS:

• My humor is not funny, and it sometimes upsets people.
• People laugh at me, not with me.
• My autism makes all of this difficult and confusing.
• I really don’t understand humor as well as I thought I did.
• It’s probably a misapplication – wrong time, manner, way of speaking.
  

FORMULA:

Where h=humor, r=expected response, M=me, and A=another person:

M(h)xB(r)= -((A(h)xB(r))

(My humor is the negative equivalent of the other person’s.)