Time

I know what it is and I can read a clock. But it’s not something that I am aware of a lot of the time. I am very poor at guessing how long a task will take me and when I am involved in a task, I am not aware of time passing. I often lose track of time in the shower and find I have gone wrinkly before I realise how long I’ve been stood there. I am a great time waster too. I will wonder from room to room picking things up, or just be sitting, messing about on my laptop before I realise it is lunchtime and I haven’t done anything constructive. I don’t like to feel rushed, people have always commented how laid back I am, that’s because I don’t have a clock inside me telling me when to do things.

Why do we separate time into sixes? Sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour and why 24 hours in a day (6 x 4). All our other systems of measurement are decimalised. I have a real difficulty calculating in my head the distance between two points in time. I can work it out if I have a pad and a pencil. But twice this week, today and yesterday I found myself in a tricky situation because I was couldn’t do these calculations with the same lightening speed as other people.

At the clinic yesterday when I went to book an appointment the receptionist told me she had an appointment available at such and such time that afternoon. I wanted to know how much time that meant I would have to wait but I didn’t know what the time was at that moment, so I asked her and she told me. But by then I had forgotten what time she had told me the appointment was. So I asked to repeat this which she did. I was trying to compare the two times in my head. If the time is in round hours that’s fine, but as soon as people start saying twenty to three or ten past two, I’m lost. Luckily she saw I was lost and told me I would have to wait half an hour to see the doctor which I did.

The same thing happened in Boots today when I went to pick up my prescription, only the lady behind the counter wasn’t as nice. She told me the Pharmacist was on her lunch break and would be back at such and such a time and did I want to wait? Only while she was asking me she had taken my prescription off me and was tearing part of it off. I was totally confused., why was she doing this? I had no idea how much time I would have to wait or why she had taken my prescription. She had assumed I was able to work out how long I would have to wait and also assumed that I knew what happens when you take a prescription in. I’ve taken a few in, but there are such large gaps between my visits I have forgotten what happens by the time I go back.

I asked her why she was tearing my prescription, and she asked me again if I wanted to wait. I asked her to repeat the times, which she did. When I said I wasn’t going to wait (I pretended I knew how much time that was) she gave me back the prescription. I stood still for a few moments not sure what to do. In my mind I was thinking she was going to put my prescription on the Pharmacist’s desk so she would have it when she came back from lunch. I assumed this because she was tearing it while she was asking me if I wanted to wait. It took till I had walked out the door (all the while listening to her laughing with her friend about my strange behaviour) that she was just a bossy woman who thought by taking my prescription off me before I had answered her question would mean I would have to wait whether I wanted to or not.

The first example was not so awkward as the second example; in fact the second was quite upsetting. The reason example two was upsetting is because the lady (who was supposed to be assisting me) was doing the classic NT thing of not meaning what she was saying. She didn’t really care if I wanted to wait or not because she had already taken my prescription. Being autistic I didn’t catch onto this till after the conversation, by which time she busy making fun of me to her friend.

The problem in these examples is that I was pretending to be normal. I pretended I could work out how much time I had to wait; I think part of me thought I might actually be able to. If, instead of asking the receptionist or the shop assistant to repeat the time, I had just asked how much time I would have to wait I could have saved myself a lot of embarrassment. I’d also have saved myself some brain power and might have figured out the prescription part instead of standing there looking dumb.