One thing I still don't have set up yet at my house is a washing machine (or dryer, for that matter, but I'm not opposed to line-drying if I need to do it). The previous owners had had the washing machine in the kitchen -- apparently this was a bit of a fad during the 1950s, when I guess it was considered wonderful for "the housewife" to be able to stay in the kitchen all day, no matter if she were cooking or doing laundry (yay?).
But I digress. The bottom line is that while eventually I'd like the washing machine hooked up in the garage, at present we don't have one hooked up anywhere -- and while hand-washing would be fine for things like t-shirts and underwear, it's a right pain in the arse for jeans and towels and such, which tend to defy all efforts to rinse by hand and end up very stiff when dry. My partner's parents have been kindly letting us use their washer and dryer, but it isn't always convenient to go over there.
Hence, a few weeks ago when the laundry pile had begun approaching epic proportions, I decided to try out a local laundromat, having noticed just such an establishment about three blocks down the street.
Being a non-driver, though, the matter of how to transport two loads of laundry to even this very close laundromat posed a bit of a creative challenge. Even if that amount of clothes hadn't been too heavy to carry more than a few feet, the bundles were cumbersome and awkward. It was really a job for a wagon or some sort of shopping cart, but I didn't have any of those handy. But then I remembered I still had my old computer chair in the garage, and that it had wheels, so I stacked the laundry baskets (actually one basket and one cloth bag) on the chair and pushed it down the street.
While not wonderful at navigating bumpy curb-cuts, overall this strategy worked great -- it not only enabled me to launder two very necessary loads of clothing, but once I got there I had a nice comfy chair to sit in and read ebooks on my iPod Touch while my textiles dried. So in my estimation the whole situation was a win.
But: apparently, I learned later (based on discussions with several people, including my very bewildered next door neighbors who had seen me), this is exactly the kind of thing that I am prone to doing, but that most other people Just Don't Do. And I have a hard time understanding why.
For me it was actually far easier (not to mention quite economical, as I was able to use a device I just had sitting in my garage for transport purposes) to get my laundry done the way I did than it would have been to try and arrange a ride from someone, etc.
So, I guess I am wondering why that sort of thing is apparently considered so "weird". Is there a social stigma associated with pushing stuff around on office chairs, to the point where most people just wouldn't bother even if all they had was an office chair?
I am not going to speculate with any rigor on how this may or may not relate to my neurology/cognitive phenotype, but throughout my life I've been slowly having it dawn on me that one of the reasons people tend to call me "weird" or constantly ask me "why are you doing [x]?" (when [x] seems perfectly normal to me) is because of this tendency to just do what I think needs doing, using whatever materials I have at my immediate disposal.
Also, I sometimes suspect that some of the social issues I've had come down to people assuming that I must be "trying to be weird on purpose" when in fact I often haven't a clue that something I'm doing is somehow "weird-looking" until someone tells me it is. Moreover, I've yet to encounter anyone who, upon explaining to me "Anne, that thing you did, it was weird!" can also explain why I should care!
Certainly I want to know if something I am doing is somehow harming someone, and I definitely appreciate being told when I'm doing something unsafe without realizing it -- but if the only reason people suggest I "shouldn't" do something is because it "looks funny", I guess I just don't see that as a very good reason to go out of my way to do it in a more standard manner.1
Which brings me to my next point, which is to say that one thing I suspect people don't realize is that the "standard way" is often inaccessible to me -- or, at the very least, so convolutedly difficult for me to do that it really isn't worth bothering with.
It's like it's just presumed that things in List A are "easy" whereas things in List B are "hard". For me it's a heck of a lot harder to "make arrangements" with other people do do my laundry at their house, especially when it's a matter of "z0mg, I'm running out of underwear" like it was the day I made my little chair-jaunt to the laundromat, than it is to push a mound of fabric down the street and stick some quarters in a machine.
And really, one of the reasons I think I've been able to become as (what would be considered by many people) "independent" as an adult as I have is because my dad (among others) didn't raise me in a manner that trained me out of my inherent tendencies toward unbridled MacGyverism.2 There's a whole laundry list (ha ha) of things I know I simply would not be able to do at all if I couldn't do them "my" way, and I guess I'm just really grateful sometimes that despite the imperfections that exist in all families, I grew up in an environment where "pass the duct tape!" was a far more commonplace sentiment than "get someone to buy you a new one".
1- As I get older and learn more I am also beginning to think there's class-related stuff involved here, as well as more general disability and "fear of the other"-ness going on. E.g., in the area where I live, there are very few pedestrians, and (as someone commented to me recently) the mere act of walking almost serves to suggest to the folks whizzing by in their cars that you're either poor/homeless or that you have "something wrong with you".
Which, if true, seems to be a bizarrely region-specific sentiment, as certainly in parts of Europe where public transit actually has a decent infrastructure that people hence actually use (and where cultural/physical layout variables of living/working/shopping areas are more pedestrian-friendly in general) you're going to see pedestrians of all shapes, sizes, neurotypes, and from all walks of life. I also don't recall anything resembling such a stigma being present when I lived in a smallish "college town" on California's central coast whilst a student...students, I guess, are expected to get around without cars at least some of the time. But, again, I digress. And certainly "oh but what if people think you're homeless...or CRAZY!" is not going to stop me from walking to the danged laundromat if I need to! Sheesh!
2- This is not to say I was never given help at all, or that I was just "left to my own devices" all the time. In fact, I had lots and lots of support -- not always perfect support, and not always in all the areas I needed it in, but enough to get me through the worst of the rough patches I experienced growing up alive. And nowadays I still receive a lot of assistance, some of it standard-issue (for people of my background/class/etc.) some of it on the unusual side for someone my age (like when my partner keeps me from wandering into traffic).
But it has taken me until now, really, to realize just how much of what I can do today is sort of contingent upon having had at least some opportunity whilst growing up to figure things out on my own terms.
And it has also taken in some areas, having encountered a few people very similar to me (cognitively/perceptually), but who have ended up experiencing far more struggles than I due to having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, in view of the wrong people (especially as teenagers). The individuals I am thinking of were, among other things, taught in many ways to be very very passive, very dependent on getting "permission" to do everything. And when you already have communication impairments to begin with, this can have disastrous consequences.
19 comments:
What's their problem? If I saw you doing this, my response would be "Clever idea", not "People don't do this". I don't see why this would raise any issues, I've seen people using office chairs to move things around on a number of occasions
Being weird is not wrong, and anybody who can't tell the difference is just reflecting typical conformist american culture.
You are being sort of weird in this instance, and the reason has three parts.
1) A chair is not a great way to move things outside. It's hard to steer over bumps, things can fall off it, and when you drive a chair outside it gets grit in the wheels that makes the chair less useful at home.
2) There's a better alternative, and it's the grocery cart. This one has a shelf in it, which makes it good for groceries but bad for laundry, but there are models without shelves. http://store.helpinghandtools.net/model3915.aspx
Grocery carts are cheap and easy to store, so anyone who can afford to live in a neighbourhood where people don't drive is presumed to be able to buy and store one easily.
3) If you were able to figure out how to get your laundry to the laundromat in a chair this week, but you weren't able to then figure out how to get a grocery cart to use next week, that would be weird. Because it would be unusual and difficult for other people to understand that someone could have cognitive and material resources to solve one problem and not the other. Or perhaps they can solve the problem, but have unusual and difficult to understand priorities, such that they prefer having a comfy seat at the laundromat to having a convenient vehicle for the laundry.
The reason I say "sort of" weird is that this was a one-off. You realized you had a problem to solve, and you solved it. Absolutely nothing weird about that at all. The weird part only comes in if you use a chair every week and you never get a grocery/laundry cart. Even then, you have every right to be weird if that's what works best for you!
So basically, I am agreeing with you that judging something as weird has to do with judgement about how easy or accessible alternatives are.
Sorry. That should be:
Grocery carts are cheap and easy to store, so anyone who can afford to live in a neighbourhood where people don't walk is presumed to be able to buy and store one easily.
People's reactions to that remind me of reactions to my brother when he moved into his first apartment. He carried his box spring on his head all the way there. This sounded perfectly logical to me, but the rest of the family thought it was bizarre and something you just don't do. But then I was always the only person not weirded out by my brother. (We are total opposites when it comes to most autistic traits, but both of us are no stranger to being really weird.)
And count me in as another person who hasn't been able to consistently go out alone without attracting police attention since I was a teenager. I mean occasionally I was screaming or something, but usually I was just out walking or sitting around. It got bad when some of the cops got on a first name basis with my family, but that didn't stop them picking me up (especially after they learned I "wandered"). If I reacted badly (usually after being touched without warning) I also earned a trip to the local mental institution, although given the track records of some of the police departments involved with disabled people I am probably lucky I didn't get shot.
In response to Alison's point #2 - Wow, seriously?
Because I have known a lot of people who could so barely afford to live in whatever neighborhood that they lived in, that they couldn't afford enough food to eat or other basic necessities.
But I suppose people who COULD afford to live in their neighborhoods might have been blissfully unaware the neighbors were going hungry as well.
Oh my. Being without a washer and a dryer is beyond a doubt a royal pain in the arse. When our house flooded a while back I went to the laundromat. It took up so much time but it was fun getting several loads done all at once.
Amanda,
Seriously. Otherwise people wouldn't be perceived as weird, right?
Rich people behaving like poor people is weird. Poor people behaving like poor people is not weird.
One explanation for not having a laundry/grocery cart when you need one is that you can't afford one. This can be weird if all your neighbours can afford one and they don't understand how it's possible that you can't. Alternatively, it can be weird if your neighbours are struggling hard to keep up appearances and they don't understand why you would get out in the middle of the street and admit your poverty to the whole neighbourhood. (Poverty being weakness, and weakness being shameful.)
Another is that you can afford one but that you can't get your act together to get one. This is weird to people with high executive function, because it feels so obvious to them.
Another is that you could afford one and have the executive skills to identify its usefulness and obtain one, but you don't want one. This is weird because most people like life to be convenient, and the conventional understanding of convenient is having the right stuff.
(None of this takes away my thinking and feeling that Anne was completely appropriate with her laundry transportation strategy. I've done similar things myself, with similar public reactions. I'm just riffing on the meaning of weirdness.)
I had to comment on Footnote 1 because it's reminded me so much of my own experiences. It's weird, because I am, in fact, living in a college town, where you'd expect that walking, biking, etc., would be common. And to be sure, they're more common than, say, in typical suburbia-- but still not common enough. I've gotten quite a few quizzical reactions when I revealed to fellow students-- undergrads, even, when I'm a graduate student!-- that I don't even have a driver's license, much less a car.
Admittedly, not every student reacts like that; there are at least some people who are, well, reasonable. But it's definitely been more common than it ought to be.
And that's another weird thing. Around campus and downtown, walking is quite common. In other parts of town... not so much. And to be fair, that's often because of the environment, which often lacks such basic things as sidewalks-- but even in parts of town where pedestrian accommodations do exist, I'm usually one of only a few people who are actually walking rather than driving.
I believe it's mainly a class issue because not having either a washing machine or a car makes you look poor, and I don't think a grocery cart would solve that problem. Your neighbors might decide that you look like the stereotype of the homeless "bag lady" who pushes around a grocery cart with all her stuff in it.
Just do what you have to do, and let the neighbors stew in their own biases, I'd say.
Here's a quote on that sort of class prejudice from Barbara Kingsolver's novel Pigs in Heaven:
"Well, look, there's poke," Sugar says, suddenly animated. She pulls a wadded plastic bag from her purse and shakes it open as she steps sideways down the bank. There in the ditch she squats and picks handfuls of new green leaves. A truck passes, and Sugar waves. Alice doesn't know what to do with herself, and half turns her back, as if her cousin were going to the bathroom down there. She knows you can eat poke, has known it all her life. But she also has known for many years what people would say about her if they saw her collecting her salad greens from the roadside.
> The previous owners had had the
> washing machine in the kitchen --
> apparently this was a bit of a fad
> during the 1950s, when I guess it
> was considered wonderful for
> "the housewife" to be able to stay
> in the kitchen all day. . .
I don't know about "the housewife" part, but in the (cheap) ranch-style, concrete-slab house I grew up in (a fine example of post-World War II construction-boom housing), there really wasn't any place else to put a washing machine (or a dryer, which also ended up in the kitchen when we finally got one -- before that, my mother used the clothes-line in the back yard, something which is considered an eye-sore in upscale neighborhoods these days and which is forbidden by zoning regulations).
But when I was really little, oh in 1956 or so, we had one of those machines that had to be rolled up to the kitchen sink, where it would be filled up with a hose attachment to the faucet and drained back into the sink. It had an agitator, but no spin cycle -- there was a pair of rollers over the washer's tub, and you'd stop the machine, put your hands into the soapy water. grab an article of clothing, and feed it through the rollers to squeeze out the wetness. The flattened result would drop into a tub on the floor. I guess the process would be repeated for the rinse cycle. This operation would take over the entire kitchen, while I watched from a seat at the kitchen table.
I remember when we got our "modern" Sears Kenmore top-loading washer (with spin cycle). I was fascinated by its pastel-colored rocker switches for setting the cycle. But that was in the kitchen too. At least it stayed where it was, with permanent attachments to the plumbing, and didn't have to be rolled up to the sink. The dryer came some years later.
Martin:
Re. "what's their problem", I haven't the faintest. That's part of why I wrote this entry. I mean I've learned a few reasons people *give* for why this or that (completely harmless) thing is "weird", but I don't get why "weird" is such a big deal to some.
Allison Cummins:
Thanks for the "weirdness theory" explanation, it is interesting at the very least to get different thoughts on this stuff.
Re. a chair being a sub-optimal way to move things: yeah, I'm aware of the limitations, and steering over bumps is indeed difficult. But it's still far more optimal than hand-carrying, I may at some point acquire a grocery/laundry cart (depends on whether I determine it'll be useful over the long term), however, I suspect that (as abfh notes) this wouldn't do much to de-stigatize the laundry-transport process in the eyes of any judgmental locals.
(Also, I should state for the record that my "bewildered" next door neighbors are actually very cool folks, they were just surprised in a "well you don't see THAT every day!" sense.
They've also offered to let me use their washer if I need to, though I don't know if I will take them up on that offer as I am not sure at all how to navigate that socially -- I mean, I don't figure I can just show up with a load of clothes at their door, and I have no idea whether my laundry schedule would coincide in ways convenient for them, etc. But it was nice of them to offer, and there is no way in heck it ever would have even remotely occurred to me to ask them about.)
Of particular interest to me, though, are your comments regarding "[having] cognitive and material resources to solve one problem and not the other", and "[having] unusual and difficult to understand priorities". I have a sense these are things I run up against frequently. E.g., some people I've encountered find it somewhat odd that I will preferentially wear hats and scarves indoors rather than turning up the heat, when for me it's not (just) a matter of being a cheapskate, but one of actually liking the feeling of "cold ambient" air but warm clothing, for sensory reasons. But I guess a lot of people can't relate to that because their sensory systems are geared differently.
> . . .no spin cycle -- there was
> a pair of rollers over the
> washer's tub. . .
It was called a "wringer", and those machines were wringer machines.
http://repearworld.net/mylifeinpictures/800/
wringer.jpg
It was still an improvement over a wash **board**. We had one of those in the hall closet too!
Speaking of washing, though -- you know, washing technology plays an important (if humorous) role in the section of Samuel Butler's _Erewhon_ called "The Book of the Machines". Butler was, apparently, impressed enough by Darwin's _Origin of Species_ that shortly after its publication he spun a fantasy (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) in which he imagined that **machines** were evolving. The Erewhonians recognized the threat to human supremacy, and banned all technology after a certain point. That cutoff point was, according to the narrator, a certain type of "washerwoman's mangle". A "mangle" is what we now call an "agitator", but human-powered. ;->
Marla:
Yeah, it is definitely a pain, though having lived in apartments for the past decade prior to this house I actually have little recall what it is like to have a washer (that doesn't need quarters) right in the house!
At my last apartment the laundry room was in a separate part of the building so we still had to go outside to get to it. Once we DO get the washer hooked up here I am sure it will seem like the height of luxury! We just got kind of burned out after gutting and remodeling the kitchen, among other things, so haven't been able to get it together to call in a plumber yet to run the washer line to the garage.
codeman38:
Well from many things you've described, it sounds very much like the area you're in is *very* pedestrian-unfriendly, despite (as you note) the fact of walking in college-related areas being more common than in typical suburbia. I still WTF when I think about some of those maps you've shown me, and that one parking lot with the Bus Stop Location of Death!
Amanda:
Heh, yeah, I don't see anything remotely odd about someone carrying a boxspring on their head to move it. If I saw someone doing that I would just figure they were trying to move it somewhere, no other judgment.
And re. being stopped by the police, gah, I think it was you who initially pointed out to e that it was in fact NOT common for teenage girls, particularly white teenage girls, to get stopped and questioned. That happened to me so much I thought it was *normal*! It hasn't happened lately but I also very rarely spend much time these days out of the house by myself (whereas, as a teenager I was out as much as I could get away with being out, and would go on long rambly walks all over the place). And when I am out places with Matt he is sort of good at...deflecting a lot of stuff, which is handy.
abfh:
Yeah I was thinking that too -- around here just *being a pedestrian*, period (unless you're obviously jogging or walking a dog) seems to be viewed as somehow aberrant (which reminds me of a bit from Farenheit 451, actually; one character at one point remarks that her uncle was arrested for being a pedestrian, IIRC.). So, regardless of whether one is using a chair or a grocery cart, pedestrian + pushing stuff around = extra-weird, or so I've heard at least. But like I said in my footnote I definitely don't let that sort of thing stop me from doing what I need to do.
Jimf:
Whoah, actually I wouldn't mind one of those wringer/roller things right now...a washing machine that can be rolled up to the kitchen sink and attached to the faucet sounds positively "high tech"!
OT- I noticed in your non-driving post that you see in blocks of color and shape and have to consciously translate them to objects. I was wondering if that helps you avoid some visual illusions like the one somebody just posted on LW http://lesswrong.com/lw/1om/bizarre_illusions/
Wringer washers have several definite advantages over automatics - my family stuck with wringer washers even after they got hard to find.
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