Analogies and Other Alleged Issues

I find analogies to be very useful in helping to explain something.

In an essay about diagnosis I used the following:

I had discovered enough information in that diagnosis to build a bridge between my world and the normal one.
I had built bridges in the past, but like any bridge they eventually fell.

I’m pretty confident that people don’t think I built an actual physical bridge.

I realized after I constructed the bridge—to use as an analogy—I was actually constructing a very useful metaphor to expand my meaning. (I guess it was an expansion bridge.)

Which brings us to some of those lingering, pesky generalizations about Asperger syndrome:

• Literal Interpretation:
  • Tending to take things very literally and having difficulty understanding sarcasm or idioms.
  • They often think literally, making it difficult to grasp figurative language like cliches, sarcasm, and metaphors.
• Individuals with Asperger syndrome frequently have significant difficulty understanding and utilizing non-literal language. Their communication challenges in this area include:
  • Idioms and Cliches: (Often lumped together because both involve familiar expressions, but they’re quite different.)
  • Humor, Sarcasm, and Irony: Grasping jokes, teasing, sarcasm, and irony requires reading between the lines and interpreting the speaker’s underlying intent, which can be highly challenging. (Could these be any different?)

I wonder how I came up with the bridge metaphor.
A mystery.

Here’s a thought.
(Maybe more than one.)

I’ll admit, there have been times when someone said something that went over my head. (Idiom)

But, in every instance, that I can think of, and I have an eidetic memory, there were contributing factors that helped the other people within earshot, to understand the meaning.

Please explain!
Ok.

Expressions in normal use among folks, for instance, proverbs, cliché, idiom are used enough around children that they translate the non-literal into literal ideas or meaning.
As a child in grade school they actually taught us this in English class, providing examples and the underlying meanings.

They trained us to interpret them.
As a sub-language.
Much like a dialect.

There are plenty of Philly expressions that if used here would require translation for anyone not from inner-city Philly.

How about Humor, Sarcasm, and Irony?

Have you read any of my stuff?

Here’s a few lines from my first book:

I’ve heard we do not understand sarcasm. Anyone who believes this obviously never visited our house when I was growing up, where sarcasm was raised to a high art form!

Those who point this out probably mean pedestrian sarcasm.

This was in a house full of musicians, watchmakers, electrical engineers (the worst kind) and medical professionals.

Who all behaved pretty much like me.

Some people believe that the Marx Brothers had Asperger syndrome.

Many feel that the first three Marx Brother’s movies were the funniest.
Had the most intense humor.

Why do you suppose, that when they went to a new studio, and the producer required them to “dumb their humor down” that attendance in the theaters rose dramatically?

Maybe we, Aspies, find a lot of what normal people say, is just not that funny.

Find any of this ironic?

But back to the situational:

Much of this in my experience happened at work and in sports venues. Where the people had developed their own inside language based on the rules and norms of the particular venue.

Combine that with my expectation that anything they wanted, needed or expected within that venue was a serious ask or request.

Not something open to interpretations brought into the venue with me.

Not having experience in a particular venue makes it difficult to read into the meaning.

Remember the reference to the eidetic memory?
It’s a recording, or picture memory. But that doesn’t exclude, sounds, touches tastes and smells.

If I hear a French expression, although I don’t speak French—I can go to a dictionary days, weeks sometimes years later, replay the sound of the conversation, and translate what was said.

And that affects everything that surrounded the expression; causing a whole row of dominos to fall into place.

Here’s an example of an actual work event:

I used to generate dBases of internal spend for a large company.
We used it for analysis.

One day I was in my office with a friend Grace, who was familiar my idiosyncrasies.
A woman came in and asked me if I could generate a dBase on a certain subject.

I said, “Yes.”

And there was that pause.

I looked at my friend, and she did that thing with her head that means, “Go on!”

And I asked the woman, “When do you need it?”

She smiled and said, “Oh, whenever you have time.”

I said, “Ok.”

I didn’t get a smile back from the woman this time.

I looked at Grace. She did that thing with her head again.

I said, “Is tomorrow Ok?”

The smile came back, she said, “Yes that would be fine!”

Now, the doctor who diagnosed me, who happens to be a woman herself told me:
“That’s the way women ask for things.”

Which is probably the subject of an entire book, but you get the point.

The thing was, I never forgot that.
Now, I know suggestions mean action.
(At least where women are concerned.)

In the workplace, where things are supposed to be:
SMART: Specific-Measurable-Applicable-Realizable and Timebound,
I expected literal answers, not “Oh, whenever…”

Here’s a sports example:

I was an oarsman. That’s the correct term for someone on the crew team.

When I first got into a boat, the coach said, “Try not to catch a crab.”

How would that have landed with you, or anyone not familiar with the sport?

Without insider information, you have nowhere to go with that.

What it means is, square your oar, or when you pull on it it will dive into the water, halt your forward momentum and possibly flip the boat.

I once saw an oarsmen in a race catch a crab and get flipped completely out of the boat.

I used to wonder how some people could apply meaning to non-literal expressions, with which they had no background knowledge, but I realized that these particular expressions had been reduced to cliché or relegated to proverb—having been so heavily used in the past.

I’ve tested it.
People get the expression: Russian Roulette, with no understanding of the grim mechanics behind it.

And I was aware of an equal number of proverbs or clichés that were not properly understood by the same normal people, because they were infrequently used.

Only, it works in reverse for normal people.

I’ve heard them say:

• Tow the line.
• Hone in on the target.
• For all intensive purposes.
• Mute point.
• Beck and call.

I’ve even heard some politicians mix several together, but they were so convoluted, it makes them hard to remember.

Which brings me to mechanism.

Written June 20 2026