The Canine Expiry Sketch

Autistic people are given to laughing at the wrong moments, and I was no exception in that department.

It was when I was a student at university. One morning we were sitting round having breakfast together, when the phone rang. One of us answered and had a brief conversation consisting of the words oh and yes . He then disappeared upstairs leaving his breakfast half finished. A little while later he came back down and continued eating his breakfast, but in silence. I thought this was rather odd behaviour and wondered what was going on, so I asked. He said it had been his parents on the phone, ringing to tell him that his dog had died. At this point I roared with laughter, and the other chap disappeared upstairs again for some reason. The other people sitting round the table said, “How could you be so insensitive?”

But why did I laugh at this person’s distress?

The answer is, I didn’t. I didn’t cotton on to the fact he was upset. I laughed because the whole scene was like a comedy sketch to me – like something from The Two Ronnies, for example. In comedy sketches like these, you often get people behaving strangely, and it’s not revealed why until the end, which becomes the punch line, and everyone laughs.

On a similar theme, laughing is infectious of course. The trouble is, I didn’t used to be able to distinguish between someone busting into tears or someone creasing up with laughter. If someone was starting to blub, I would start to uncontrollably guffaw. The a few seconds later I would realise and feel really embarrassed, and would then assume everyone hated me for acting inappropriately.

In fact, the whole thing was really quite developed by the time I reached adulthood. Essentially, my reaction to anything social situation I couldn’t quite fathom was to laugh. As well as finding situations genuinely funny, and being in those that weren’t so, I think I was laughing in the hope that everything would become simple and other people would join in.

Just after I was healed, though, I found things a whole load harder. In these situations, I fully sensed what was going on, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. It just made me want to run away. I think I’m starting to get the hang of it now, having now observed other people handling awkward emotional situations. I’m far from perfect, and when my wife is with me I still tend to rely on her to provide the sympathy in the correct format.