I saw this today:
When you see the good advice to ‘post relatable content’ on Notes do you start to wonder whether anything you think is relatable? — SOURCE
I think about this all the time.
I have autism and grew up in a culture that most Americans can not even comprehend, and so I always wonder:
“If Americans read this, will they even be able to relate to it?”
It’s a constant thought I have.
I am constantly, daily bombarded with culture shock of American society and I find I am completely unable to related to a good 90%+ of anything Americans say or do. Americans put value on things that are totally illogical for a person to desire.
And Americans have such weird things they obsess over -like phones and shoes (OMG! Shoes! I had to start wearing shoes to go to college, that was in 2010 — what the fuck? How do you get used to wearing shoes? It’s been 14 years since I learned how to walk with shoes on and I still have so much trouble with)… and strange habits — like women shaving, and wearing makeup, what’s up with that?
The first time I heard of a phone was in 2012, in college, I had won an art competition and I got sent to have a gallery showing and it was a mix of photos and canvas paintings, and one woman came up to me and asked “What phone did you take these photos with?”
And I was so confused, because I had never heard of a cell phone yet and so I had no idea phones could take pictures. And I said to her: “I am homeless, I live under a trap in Old Orchard Beach.”
And she said: “What’s that got to do with it?” And I said: “There’s no way for the phone company to bring a line from the street to my tent.”
She was just as confused as I was, but see, I had only ever heard of switch board lines and rotary phones with a line to the switchboard, I had never heard of cell phones before, and I guess she had never heard of a switch board with a landline to a rotary phone before.
Here is the tent by the way:
And I have found that most Americans simply can not relate to Gypsy culture on any level at all, not just the houseless part of it. And yet, I can not relate to the desire to live in a house. It is just baffling to me why anyone would want to do that.
I was NOT homeless while living under the tarp either. The tarp was set up behind my house. The house was there until crazy nutjob gay haters drove over it with a backhoe August 8, 2013:
Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, I had hundreds of various leantoos made out of tree limbs, covered in leaves. There were 20+ on my farm at any given time. Each had a different purpose. I slept in one, eat in another, painted in another.
The house was basically a closet for my clothes and shelves for my books. I never lived in it. There was also no electricity, no plumping, and no running water either. A porta-potty was set up behind the house, and a brook on my farm, is where I got water for drinking and cooking and washing. I have a 50+gallon metal wash tub that belong to my great grandmother which I bathed in. And I had my grandmother wringer washer, which which electric, can be run off a car battery with and inventor.
I’ve always been fully off grid, This farm used to be a hippy compound back in the 1950s and 1960s, I’ve lived here since 1975, and I’ve owned it since 1983.
And, I have found that Americans have as much trouble understanding any of that, just as much as I have trouble understanding their glut lust for electricity, cell phones, and shoes.
I can not relate to the Americans on any level whatsoever, so I always wonder, is it even possible for the Americans to relate to me?