Authistic: Authism - Demand Avoidance (Telephones)

In my other blogs and videos on Demand Avoidance I've not yet related it one of my stories and today I'd like to do that and give a couple of excerpts. I have spoken about my very first book Did You Whisper Back? and spoken about Amanda's problems with telephones which is central to the book. Amanda is actually schizophrenic and there is actually a link between schizophrenia and autism but that's for another time.

Below is the video version of the blog uploaded to YouTube:

In the 60s and 70s phones looked and sounded formidable. In Did You Whisper Back? we see Amanda has a morbid fear of them and I've recently written a short spin-off exploring this further, although it isn't published yet. I hope to publish it later this year.

But what Amanda fears most is not knowing who is on the other end and them making a sudden demand of her. Here is a short excerpt:

"Silent Callers didn’t scare her, no. It was fear of the voices. On the other end. Known voices. So-called school friends asking things of her, making social demands. Do you want to come to town with me and Pauline on Saturday? My mum says you can come for tea after school tomorrow. She did have one or two friends, but she did the minimum to keep them sweet. White lies. Or gritting her teeth for an outing once in a while, then recovery time from the effort of smiling and keeping up. She noticed how other children at school seemed to phone each other a lot in the evenings or weekends. Wasn’t it enough seeing them in school without having to spend extra time with them?"

Now, I've had this fear too. When I was a teenager I used to dread the person asking to speak to me. Nowadays we can ignore phones. But we didn't even have an answerphone in the 70s. You damn well answered them but if my parents were out I would frequently let them ring and ring. We could always make an excuse later. Oh did you ring? I must have been outside. Oh the ringer must have been switched off. Oh I’d just gone out. If I wasn't expecting a call I didn't mind taking a message for my parents. Again it was about someone making a demand of me and that thing of being put in a spot and freezing. Delayed processing again seems to come into this. I prefer making calls to receiving them as I'm more in control and can wrote down beforehand what I want to say and be prepared. I suppose that at least nowadays we can see who's calling and it's perfectly acceptable to ignore 'unknown numbers'.

Here's another excerpt:

"She recalls a time when her mum would ask her to take any messages if the phone rang when she was out at work. Amanda relays...how she would get home from school and be in dread of one of the friends phoning to ask her out that evening or weekend. She began to take the phone off the hook in that quiet time between getting home from school and her mother returning from work, remembering to return it to its cradle once she heard her mother’s key in the lock. Or she would carefully adjust the receiver slightly askew, so it looked as if someone had knocked it off by accident or not replaced it properly."

Now since joining autism groups I'm amazed to hear how common this telephonia is. Even with today's smart phone the demands are endless and excessive. Yes, you can switch them off to stop the infernal pings and bleeping but texts, messages and emails - they're all waiting for replies.

I probably haven't finished with the huge area of Demand Avoidance quite yet as I wanted to share some memes by Jenny Cat for those of you who relate to pictorial information (I do too).

As always I would love you to leave any comments below.