Announcements

I flicked through our local free weekly paper last night.

Like free newspapers everywhere (I suspect), it is a mixture of the major local news and sports stories from the last week, which previously appeared in the local daily paper; adverts, and a couple of pages full of births, deaths, weddings, memorials and coming-of-age announcements.

I always look at these family announcements with a sense of bewilderment and a little horror. They are so completely not what I would do. In a very real sense, I don’t understand the rationale behind people placing these messages for thousands of people to read.

If, in life, you were very popular and well known, I can see why your family might place an advert in the local paper to inform people that you’d died. So too  can I appreciate why you might want to remember someone who died on that day in a previous year, although I can’t imagine why you need the world to know that you are remembering that person, and clearly the person concerned isn’t going to be reading the paper and looking pleased that you’ve remembered. Those with large social circles may want to advertise the birth of their child too so that everyone gets to hear about it, but in a sense this feels to me like they are being rather boastful.

But why tell people you’ve got married? Surely those that want or need to know will already know, because they were at the wedding? And do parents really place adds to state that their children have turned eighteen for any reason other than to embarrass them? Not if the childhood photos used are anything to go by. I find that frequently these coming-of-age announcements tell a sad but all too modern story too. First there is the boxed advert from mum and siblings. Then there is the nearly identical second box from dad and step-siblings. This feels wrong – like the clearly now divorced parents are trying to get one up on each other. Competitive families seem to mention pets too (unless they have named their children oddly), and sometimes have boxed ads from various sets of grandparents. Why? What does it achieve?

All of this rang a bell with an article I read earlier in the week on Saja’s blog. Saja says:

I don’t miss people. For most of my life, that’s been my dirty little secret. What kind of horrible, cold, selfish person doesn’t miss the people she loves?

Well, me for a start. I found Saja’s sentiments to be spot on. This is how it is for me too.

I miss the things that people do when they aren’t around, but I don’t miss the person – not even those close to me.

I think this might explain why it doesn’t occur to me to phone people to stay in touch, or to arrange to go out and socialise. It’s part of that different experience of social interaction that I have versus non-autistic people.

There’s more too. I don’t miss people, and I don’t celebrate them either. I send people birthday cards because it is expected, and I’ve programmed my on-line calander to remind me to do so. I’m not sending birthday cards to celebrate the persons birthday, nor to say that I’m thinking about them.

It really does sound cold and selfish, doesn’t it?

But it isn’t – not to me. I’m not being deliberately selfish or unfeeling. I’m just being me – that’s just the way it works for me.

And maybe it explains my lack of understanding of the newspaper announcement pages. I wouldn’t make announcements in this way because I don’t naturally miss nor celebrate people.

But most people do. I shouldn’t frown on those who place the multiple announcements from their fractured families. Yes, they are telling the world that their family is broken into pieces, but they are also all stating that they care about someone and want the world to know it.

That’s quite touching, even to my autistic brain.

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