That is the normal human experience, I think.
Phew. Good. For a moment I thought I might be on the spectrum.
This. Almost everyone I know has said, “Fake it 'til you make it” and “When in Rome…”
I discovered this year that there was an unspoken rule to get on the bus in the order you arrived at the bus stop at. I had never paid attention to this and just got on in order of proximity to the door when it stopped until I got yelled at. I thought the guy was just being weird but I’ve paid attention since and it is absolutely true, people will move away from the door to let people who have waited longer board first.
Not sure how universal this is, I’m in the UK.
This has to be a UK thing. Elsewhere I’ve only ever seen people with accessibility needs prioritized.
I was like “I’m pretty sure that’s autism” and then I saw where I was.
This peaks when the police drives by.
Am I actually allowed to sit on this park bench?
Am I actually allowed to sit on this park bench?
Ughhhhh, this drudged up a painful old memory.
When I was in elementary school, I went to a sleepover. One of the girls was Jewish and brought out a dreidel. I didn’t know much about dreidels, but I did know I have a tendency to miss important cues and could easily offend somebody by accident. She offered me to play, but all I could think about was “this is an important object to her and her religion. If I fuck up, I’ll definitely be offending her.”
I was terrified of doing something wrong, so I declined to play.
Turns out, that was the biggest fuck-up of all. She immediately started accusing me of being anti-Jewish. I was overwhelmed and confused, and no amount of explaining my reasoning could push away that accusation.
Anxiety strikes again.
When I was working at a day care decades ago I didn’t want to read a kid’s book that was partially in Spanish, because I didn’t want to fuck up the pronunciation in front of actual Spanish speaking kids.
I’ll never live that racist reputation down.
Someone once remarked to me that I’m “good on the train”. That’s because I used to get near panic attacks on where I should be standing, sitting, where to stack my bike, and if someone else needed a seat.
Even now I’m constantly adjusting my position at every stop like a slowly neurotic madman to give people space and walk access because I’m terrified of blocking anyone
One of the rules I find interesting is that when you ride an elevator you should turn around and face the door.
Not saying there is a wrong direction to face while riding an elevator (without further context), but it always just made sense to me to face the door you expect to open when the elevator gets to the floor you’re traveling to. Like, nothing stops you from facing sideways on a moving sidewalk, but facing the direction you intend to go when the ride is over is more convenient.
How are you supposed to know when it’s your floor if you’re not facing the door?
I commonly see people spread out and stand with their backs to each wall, facing the center. You can still see the floor indicator easily when standing to one side like that. Of course, if there’s only a couple floors, you may not need to look.
Sure, if your back’s to the wall you can turn your head to look at the floor umber. I don’t think anyone would think standing there is strange.
I found a secret. Normal people also feel like this, they are just better at reading the ambient rules.
It turns out, if you project your own mindset with enough confidence, they will sync to your rules. No need to figure out the rules, when you’ve already redefined them to suit yourself.
You say that but when I took my pants off on the airplane, they arrested me when we landed.
Agreed, it has its limits. Trying to get a library karaoke session going, to reduce exam stress also ends poorly.
As a kid I didn’t know you need to press the stop button and just assumed the bus stops at all stops every time. Somehow I got through 2 years of regular use without missing a stop until I learned about the button.
If there is no buttons you are supposed to yell “next stop please.”
Holy shit. Went to a Japanese restaurant. In Japan. Despite close to a decade of martial arts training and dojo etiquette, I stuffed up and placed ONE foot on the tatami surface while wearing shoes for 2 seconds. The other patrons gasped.
My sensei would yell at everyone who ever did it.
I cannot overestimate how much you need to prepare for being in public.
I know it’s autocorrect but I got a giggle out of ‘marital arts’
I manual-uncorrected it. Even though I’ve been practising marital arts even longer.
To be fair, Japan has designed a whole culture around the exact fear that you and OP described (also, don’t do that. Shoes don’t go beyond the shoe area at the entrance.)
Worst case is when there are some written rules, but there’s a spoken agreement (which you don’t know about) to ignore some of those rules
And only some people are allowed to not follow those rules but you don’t know that they’re not following the rules when you copy them, and you eventually get iced out and get yelled at.
And it’s never explained why some people can not follow the rules and still be treated respectfully and some people can’t and get yelled at.
