Comments on: How to Boil Water the EASY Way

By: Melody

Melody — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:43:00 +0000

The harp is a beautiful instrument (and is related to Harpo Marx, too, I see now).

By: molly

molly — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:32:46 +0000

Hey, I play the harp too! I have a panic disorder and the vibrations from holding the harp against my body are really powerful in keeping the panic attacks at bay. It’s a real nuisance to tune and stuff, but I love how physical it is. I just like to touch all the parts of it in different ways and explore the sorts of sound it can make.

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:34:07 +0000

I would settle for something that could somehow make me focus on the right parts of the task and sort of put me on the right path and not all the wrong ones that always crop up and trip me up.

I mean, sometimes I boil water in a much shorter time, I don’t want to give wrong impressions here, but it really can take that long too.

I don’t think I’ve ever cleaned a room in five hours, though. How long does it normally take to clean a room? I can clean parts of a room, but doing a whole room is really hard (trying to think if I’ve ever done it). We had room inspections in the college dorms and I mostly coped by throwing nearly everything I owned into boxes and vacuuming like crazy, and that took me over five hours in itself. And room-cleaning is not helped by the fact that the messier it gets, the more disoriented I get, and therefore the less capable of cleaning I get.

And yet in a more ordered environment… I once walked into a Blockbuster and alphabetized their entire classics section because I was being driven crazy trying to look for Marx Brothers movies and not finding them. But I’m not sure I could do that on command. Oh well.

I’m thinking back, and they used to make me clean my desk, which is much smaller than a room, and that I couldn’t do without taking hours at it even if I was seated right in front of the desk the entire time.

But no, I wouldn’t say you shouldn’t complain or whatever. The existence of someone who has more difficulty with something than you do, doesn’t mean that you don’t have difficulty with it. I know of people with way more trouble with things like boiling water (like can’t ever do it, at all, in any circumstance) than I do, and I still have trouble doing it.

By: chaoticidealism

chaoticidealism — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:26:23 +0000

Wow–after seeing that, I’m never going to complain about my own executive dysfunction again–I thought it was bad that I took five hours to clean a room!

I’m going to be an engineer–I wonder if more automation would help; and if so, could I create it? If there were a button to push that said “Boil Water”… then you’d only have to plan and execute one thing. Still working on a robot to clean my room for me, though! :P

By: Connie and Steve

Connie and Steve — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:25:08 +0000

Hi Amanda,

I hope you don’t mind but I recommended your video to the folks at with[tv]. They are looking for video submissions for the web site they are developing and of course yours came to mind. If you haven’t discovered with[tv] I encourage you to take a look. I’m sure they would appreciate hearing from you.

http://with-tv.blogspot.com

They have a guest book folks can sign as well.

And while I’m thinking of it, have you tuned your harp yet?

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 17:49:44 +0000

I don’t know if that kind of guide is useful for other people, it wouldn’t be for me. Too much memorization of word-concepts that I wouldn’t be able to apply in the real world.

By: progosk

progosk — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 17:29:57 +0000

on the subject of how-to’s, here’s a book with an opposite tack: “Coping:
A Survival Guide for People with Asperger Syndrome”
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~alistair/survival/
(via mefi: http://www.metafilter.com/62319/ )

i’d be interested to know your take on it…

By: Philip

Philip — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 09:47:54 +0000

The ability to make a cup of tea reasonably quickly is regarded as a skill ‘everybody’ should have. The absence of that skill is regarded as a sign of abnormality. But a person who cannot make videos is not regarded as abnormal or lacking in any essential skill. However having the ability to make videos but not to make cup of tea quickly is regarded as something which needs explanation. It subverts conventional categorisation of skills in which people who have a higher order skill, such as video making, should also have a lower order skill such as tea making.

By: Momcat

Momcat — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 22:15:30 +0000

Thank you for sharing your experiences.
Almost every post you write gives me new insight and education. This one was particularly helpful, because it may help to explain why my son does certain things. Knowing the “why” of something helps determine a more appropriate reaction/interaction to what he may be doing instead of what was asked.

By: Jesse the K

Jesse the K — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 04:52:02 +0000

I think that microwave and fridge doors are particularly rewarding distractions because they light up when I open them.

Lady Bracknell’s excellent point notwithstanding, it’s important to remember that almost everything our (Western, white) society knows about “normal” comes from studying those of us who aren’t. Doctors discovered the different functional areas in the brain by testing folks who had steel pipes driven through their brains in accidents.

So it’s not surprising that those of us who aren’t “normal” and those of us who are share experiences — we’re all human.