French. I know a bit of Spanish too but not much.

I speak English. That’s a foreign language for me… Does that count?

In french that’s the word for a merry-go-round

Those cubes do ring a bell although I suspect it may be fabricated memories. It being an IQ test makes sense with what was told to me, thanks!

The pictures question wasn’t about “comparing two pictures”: pictures were presented only one by one and I was supposed to find “what was wrong”.

My dad coming should be just a one-time thing, he lives hundreds of kilometers away and wouldn’t make the trip just for fun. But yeah, writing it down is definitely something I’m doing (thanks for reminding me, I would have forgotten…)

Thank you! I guess I’ll still mask anyway because, well, I can’t picture myself not masking at all when interacting with a stranger, and even less if my father is present. Also this shouldn’t be my last appointment so hopefully I’ll have other occasions.

Thanks for your account! Mine won’t be remote, and I don’t have any animal at home (except some spiders but they are too cute to eat my cords).

This. Except I’m not limited to authority figures and that’s sometimes very hard to handle. Like if a friend wants to invite me on monday but I already have something planned with another friend that same day I sometimes feel like giving the real reason would make them jealous. Yes, I know I shouldn’t do this, and I’m working on it, but it’s not easy. It’s especially hard when the real reason is something like “spending time with you in particular is very stressful for me and I can’t handle it”.

Here in France (American) comics aren’t common. Findable if you look for them, but you won’t see it in your supermarket. Meanwhile mangas are almost as popular as our own kind of comics (bandes dessinées) which is its own thing.

I’m a huge fan of bandes dessinées but also read my fair share of mangas. Meanwhile I must have read perhaps one or two comics in total unless you count “Picsou magazine” (Picsou is the french translation for Scrooge McDuck)

Not speaking for all of them but sometimes just feeling good about yourself is enough. You can even tell them how you appreciate their efforts (assuming you do)

Reddit wasn’t even always like that: I’d say it progressively went downhill during the last decade. Design choices were progressively made to tailor the most toxic users.

I do care. I totally get how you can be charismatic in school despite being autistic, that is perhaps the biggest misconception. I personally think if I had no morals and just wanted to make money my best bet would be running some kind of cult (but that would be wrong ofc).

I am a native French speaker who had a phase with an interest toward grammar, so I probably can help you with it if you are learning this language. Also I am quite good at explaining maths to kids or teens, even those with difficulties. It gets harder with adults.

The diag criteria are an ad hoc thing that only exists so that the society has a systematic way of deciding wether a given individual is autistic or not. Someone who just barely misses the criteria to be positevely diagnosed could very well have a lot in common with those who meet slightly more criteria.

Think of it like the administrative criteria to be considered “poor” in a given country: it helps to decide who can benefit from financial help and such, or to have statistics on how fair is the ressource distribution through the time, but it doesn’t mean that your life will switch the very moment your income crosses the limit.

Hypersensitivity is its own thing but the comorbidity rate with autism is huge. I’s also not always high pitches: personally I have issues with the air pressure, daylight, and many smells.

Oh, one call is already stressfull* for me, but I can manage it. Perhaps it would already qualify as “not comfortable”. That said there is a gradation between your average “not your cup of tea but that’s ok if you can take your time for it” and “risks having a meltdown in the middle of a phone call”. It was dangerously close to that second category.

*Except those from that one person I’d marry if we weren’t both ‘commies’ who think marriage is a thing of the past.

Good luck! Please tell us how it went, I hopefully will reach the same point as you at some point so your experience interests me.