A blog about all things to do with autistic authors and more. Talking about my own experiences and would love to hear yours too in the comments section
I was just thinking the other day how I have a block with certain expressions or turns of phrase. I can look them up every time I hear them and then forget again. Is this an audhd thing I wonder? I’ll think ‘oh yes’ when I look up bit without a context or regular use I’ll forget again.
Two of mine off the top of my head are 'hostage to fortune’ and ‘Occam’s Razor’.
In fact, I looked up Occam’s Razor after doing the accompanying video and it’s something about finding the easiest way to do things rather than making it over-complicated. Hmm. It’s not surprising I don’t remember it because the expression sounds as if it’s something much more vital and grand than that!
I have many more like this but can’t think at the moment. No doubt I’ll add to this as and when. How about you?
When I made this video I was thinking about how I took song lyrics literally. I don’t know if I was behind my contemporaries in this respect. I know children have more concrete thinking so maybe a child-thing rather than an autistic thing when very young.
For instance 'Heard It Through The Grapevine' was one and I pictured a literal grapevine - probably not helped at all by the video on Top Of The Pops! I was about ten when the song was out. Adults would understand that it’s a metaphor and I’m sure maybe some ten-year-year-old children would too. Another example was 'Baby Come Back' and all the songs about babies when I was the same sort of primary school age and then it gradually dawned on my that they weren’t singing songs about actual babies but (usually) a boy singing about his girlfriend or someone he fancied.
One I’ve not included in the accompanying video was a song called 'Baby Jump' by Mungo Jerry (I was twelve by then and knew that it wasn’t a song about how well his baby could spring in a baby bouncer!). No, it was another line this time. One that goes ‘she’s got a beautiful form…’ and I thought it was ‘she’s got a beautiful phone…’ My older sister thought it hilarious but I swore those were the lyrics for years afterwards. (Nowadays someone might well sing about the most coveted iPhone but in those days people rarely had their own phone - just one landline per house if they were lucky). This example is more about a misheard lyric that makes as much sense as the actual words.
Another example: there was a band called Our Kid who had a massive hit in 1976. I think it was their only one, to be honest. I was living on Merseyside at the time, too, so the term ‘our kid’ was part of everyday use. I remember a time at a fellow student's house where he talking to my then boyfriend about ‘our kid’ (his brother) but I was trying to compute what he was saying in relation to the group. I remember butting in with something to do with the group and he just looked at me as if to say ‘what are you going on about?. I did feel a bit of a twit!
I'm sure I'll be adding many more examples as they come back to me.
