Sunday, 21 September 2008

PS I have Aspergers....

Badger and Stray are watching Chelsea vs Man United. I am cooking Sunday lunch. 

Lovely smell, says Stray. 

Kuszczak? asks Badger, a little bewildered. (The Man United substitute goalkeeper had just been brought on to replace the injured Van der Sar.)  

No, says Stray, the lamb. I can't quite smell Kuszczak from here. 

I thought that was a bit odd, says Badger.....

....because I can only smell Van der Sar. 

Badger, who has synaesthesia, is astonished that the rest of us can't smell people on the tele.



Van der Sar smells faintly of stale urine (Badger is a Chelsea fan after all);  Joanna Lumley 'absolutely stinks' (of perfume, Ms Lumley); Gordon Brown smells musty, and there are some people who smell so much that Badger just can't watch them. 




 

16 comments:

Miss Tickle said...

I met a girl once who said on meeting anyone new, she immediately got an association with a type of biscuit. I was ginger nuts. Which I was quite happy with.

anticant said...

Van der Sar says: "You will be hearing from my lawyers by the next post."

anticant said...

Van der Sar says: "My urine does not smell stale."

DJ Kirkby said...

I'm confused...who has AS? I can't actually smell people on the TV but I know what they MUST smell like in RL...

librarylizzie said...

I only have boring old colour synesthesia. I always fanicied sound to colour....but smell...how brilliant!

Anonymous said...

I am prone to associate people with certain tunes and whenever I go into the office at work, I start thinking of the Spiderman song [sings, Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can...etc].

Having met you guys, I think of the Chasing Sheep family as a rock band. Ms Mmmm as jazzy vocalist, Badger enthusiastically on the drums, Master M, cool and funky on bass guitar and Stray the keyboard and computer whizz on the mixing deck/synthesiser. Of course, passing sheep would be doing the backing vocals.

And as for the Hullabobo theme tune, it would probably currently be something from Flashdance, like Gloooooooriiiiaaaa!

Stray said...

Hey Miss Tickle - I would hate to be a ginger nut ... I don't like them at all. However, being a pink wafer would be a lot worse ...

Anticant - :)

DJ - Badger has tourettes (TS), and almost everybody who has TS also meets the diagnostic criteria for a diagnosis of AS or OCD (and in children frequently ADHD), so there is some debate about whether it's an additional diagnosis or whether it's more a case of TS (Aspergers type).

Badger's neurologist says they are all part of the same family of neurological difference - so if you have a parent with AS and a parent with OCD then your chances of having TS are a lot higher. (Or 2 parents with OCD or AS). There is even a theory that TS is a modification of AS / OCD which is triggered by a strep infection during a particular stage of development. Apparently a much higher than average proportion of people with TS have had their tonsils removed due to recurrent strep, or nearly had them removed.

Interesting stuff eh?

Badger sometimes feels uncomfortable with the AS part because she is actually very good at making friends, and AS is so much more commonly associated with finding it hard to make friends. I think it's much better to dump the concept of "difficulty" and just think of "difference" and then we can recognise the diversity without being implicitly judgemental about it.

library lizzie - don't get Badger started on the colour of the days of the week ...

hullaballoo - wow - that would work really well in our house, as Badger might just sign the theme tune spontaneously! Fab :)

I'm not sure about Ms M as vocalist though - she has a lovely voice and a good ear but for some reason Ruby gets rather upset by her singing and joins in with some barking.

Misssy M said...

Ask Badger for me. Does Clarkson smell of Magic Tree?

I imagine he does.

Ms Melancholy said...

Hi there misssy m , Badger says she knows exactly what Clarkson smells like, because she has met him. Apparently he smells of cigarettes, and whenever she sees him on the tele she smells him immediately. I really like the Magic Tree hypothesis though. That is exactly what he should smell like.

librarylizzie said...

Now I'm really curious - I wonder if Badger's colours of the days of the week are the same as mine. Saturday - brown, Sunday - black....

Stray said...

Oh goodness Librarylizzie - badger would say that surely everybody can see that the weekends don't have a colour! (Her saturday and sunday are both white, although saturday does apparently have a slight grey gradient fill ... )

Monday = Red
Tuesday = Green
Wednesday = Blue
Thursday = Browny-orange
Friday = Purple

We have another friend who has colours for days of the week, but hers are different as well. *sigh*

Ms Melancholy said...

Hi Jude, so anticant was right after all - his urine doesn't smell stale. Thanks for clearing that up for us! BTW, what to do the rest of the team smell like? Any stale urine at all?

Jude said...

I have shaken Mr VdS's hand a couple of times so I am clearly well in the know. However, I haven't got up close to anyone else on the team. So I can't give a comprehensive answer to your olofactory enquiry I am afraid.

I am sure they have showers and stuff at the ground though.
x

Ms Melancholy said...

Ah Jude we are all much impressed, particularly Stray who is a proper southerner and therefore a Man United fan. She will be quite cross with me for saying that, but she is far too busy at the moment to even read her own blog so I think I can probably get away with it. Fingers crossed.

Juliette M said...

I approve of the synaesthesia thing! I see some numbers as colours; sadly not all of them. 3 is always orange and 4 is royal blue... among others. I love the smell synaesthesia idea. Badger rocks :)

from a fellow schmaow-er (schmaow-ee? I have to admit I had never known how to spell it before.)

It truly is a wonderful word to use to replace words which are quite unnecessary. My favourites include "Schmaow river, wider than a mile" and "Let's face the music and schmaow"

DJ Kirkby said...

Thank you for explaining that. I know that TS is on the spectrum and I agree with all that you said...do you know that I have AS? My N3S does too and we think N1S is an undiagnosed AS. No one (well very few) people believe me when I say I have AS which is just ridiculous as they only see my 'out of house' disguise...I appear to be good at making friends too but am very bad at following through on maintaining friendship.