An autistic woman is questioning the validity of her diagnosis after she successfully managed a single social interaction, sources have revealed.
Megan Aldrich, 33, was challenged by a member of staff at her local coffee shop to have a reciprocal social exchange while he made her drink. In a feat of conversational prowess, she remembered to ask him pointless questions, feign interest in his lacklustre answers and provide him with the right number of non-verbal cues to indicate that she was a normal person who had conversations every day.
Aldrich recalled: “He asked how I was and I made sure not to answer honestly. I just said, ‘I’m alright, thank you, and you?’”
“He said he was good, made an arbitrary comment about the weather and asked if I had any plans for the weekend. Again, I made sure not to tell the truth – that I was probably just going to lie face-down on the floor and dissociate for 48 hours. Instead, I said I was ‘just having a chilled one, maybe seeing some friends’. Basically, I smashed it.”
“Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if I really do have ‘deficits in social interaction’ like my psychiatrist said. Clearly, I’ve just been overthinking it. Small talk is actually piss-easy as long as you remember it’s all meaningless lies.”
Gavin Monks, 29, the barista who served Aldrich, said: “She stared directly into my eyes the whole time. When I gave her the coffee, she shook my hand and told me to add her on LinkedIn.”
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