Am I the only one?

Here is probably where I admit to myself where my son's OCD (diagnosed by me) comes from.

Every day when I walk down the hall I walk by an admin’s office. When she is sitting at her computer with nothing up on the screen I get this strange urge to go into her office, scootch her away from her computer on her rolling chair and clean up the icons on her screen. Her entire screen is COVERED in icons. This makes me nuts and I don’t have to sit in front of it, just walk by it! How can she possibly work this way? Find anything?

(For the record I have one, the recycle bin, and I *never* put anything in it there. In fact, if I could get rid of it I would.)

Another...

I have a coworker and routinely I am in her office chatting while she has her Outlook open, as we all do. She has a really great organization system for her e-mails. Folders and subfolders. However, what drives me UP the wall is that many of the folders are bold typeface because they have unread items in them.

Why? Why would you file something, but not open it? Or at least go to the folder, right click and click on “mark all items read”.

I really would like to slide my hand over to her mouse as we chat and "here let me take care of those unread e-mails for you".

I am finishing up "Look Me in the Eye" right now which is a true story about one man's life with Aspergers. There have been suggestions that Leif is on the Aspergers spectrum. As I read the book I have marvelled not at seeing my son in the role, but at all the times I sat there and nodded my head or wondered to myself, "hmm, is this weird? This seems perfectly normal to me."

I was told one time, when I took a test in grad school - you know those tests where you volunteer for a fellow grad student in another department - that I definitely had Aspergers. Then I went back to my lab and looked it up on the internet and scoffed, I wasn't autistic. Though lately as I learn more about Aspergers... I look back to that test and nod my head.

Severe? Nope. On the spectrum? Most definitely.