I have AS, and in college a professor of mine (upon being told about my AS) related to me a story about a previous student of his with AS.
Girls with AS are more rarely diagnosed than boys (its unclear whether it happens less frequently in girls or if girls typically just hide it better so only extreme cases get diagnosed) but tend to have it bad when do (see previous parenthetical). She was no exception.
In the middle of class, during a lecture, she raised her hand and asked if anyone had a screwdriver. Obviously, this baffled the professor, and he asked why.
Because she needed to sharpen her pencile. This was in a time when no.2 pencils were still the norm, and indeed the classroom had a mechanical pencile sharpener mounted on the wall.
"Why cant you use the pencile sharpener?" The professor asks.
"I can." The student replies, clearly getting frustrated.
"So why do you need a screwdriver?"
"Because," she says in a tone of voice as if stating the obvious. "The pencile sharpener has a loose screw so it wobbles when you use it, which makes a lot of noise. Its distracting."
The teacher, thinking he has found a teachable moment, says "Dont you think you are being distracting right now?"
The girl stops, and thinks, and considers her next response very carefully befire finally saying: "Do you have a screwdriver or dont you?"
The professor says no.
The girl immediatly gets up, walks over to the sharpener, and sharpens her pencile. It is wobbly. It makes a lot of noise.
