Asperger’s, or why I am taking a writing course with Penelope Trunk

(This post is in English, just for once, so P.T. can read it.)

Penelope Trunk sends me an email: Can an ENFP be an introvert?

I raise my eyebrows.

Trunk has been my favorite blogger since 2011. She writes on her blog what you and I hardly dare think. See The psychology of quitting. I’m too sad to write a title. 

She is sharp, rebellious and witty.

As a bonus, she has Asperger’s. Since Autism runs in my family, her contrarian insights into the matter fascinate me. What it’s like to have sex with someone with Asperger’s. Why I need a sick day to register my car.

Back to that email.

Can an ENFP be an introvert?

ENFP is a personality type in the Meyers Briggs classification system. Penelope does a lot of job coaching. She uses the Meyers Briggs test to assess her clients quickly. Actually, she does not test them. She can tell your type just by listening to you for a few minutes. May be even from reading your blog. Possibly just from sniffing you.

I refuse to believe in Meyers or Briggs. Psychologists have shrugged their shoulders and told me the test is oversimplified. I suspect Trunk just uses it to make sense of the world.

Whatever.

I write to her. Or rather, to her assistant.

Hi Amelia, could you please remove me from this mailing list? I am not even an ENFP ;-)

Penelope cuts in:

I wonder how you got on the list???? Are you on the INTJ list? You’re an INTJ, right?

She would know that, because we have been talking. Back in February she offered a year long writing course, which consisted of editing, really. I told her I would love to work with her, although I did not know on what. So now we talk every month and we make up a problem.

I write back:

According to you I am an INFJ. But I am an IWTF ;-)

She writes to Amelia:

Put her as INFJ. She has Aspergers.

I bristle.

I do not.

She has written on that, too

As if it weren’t bad enough that I already disclosed on this very blog that I have tics, that I am impulsive and intense, that I prefer books to people, hate dressing up, forget to pee when I work, that I take anti-depressants and that I will never, ever just simply do the things I am bloody paid for.

Mr. Blogacademie wil not be happy if I add another diagnosis to my list. Not happy at all.

He always tells me it does not signify, as he likes me exactly the way I am. Though preferably with my clothes off.

Yes, he is quite the charmer.

Last night Penelope and I were on the phone again

‘So how come you now believe you have Asperger’s?’ she asks.

‘O, I’ve always known, I guess. I start my writing course with a little movie where I tell my students how to deal with me. They have to tell me their feelings specifically. And they should not feel hurt all the time, because I can be blunt.’

‘That is such a great idea,’ she says. ‘My students never tell me when they are hurt because, they say, they freeze up.’

‘Huh.’ I say. ‘That’s funny. They say the same thing to me. Like: I was so hurt I could not tell you I was hurt.’

‘Huh’, Penelope says.

‘Even if I tell them not to get hurt.’

‘Funny’, she says.

‘I know,’ I say.

‘I read this book on Aspiegirls’, I say

‘Or rather, it was for the partners of Aspiegirls.’

‘Was it any good? Should I read it?’ Penelope asks.

‘Nah,’ I say, ‘it was just qualitative stuff. But I laughed when she explains that, if your 16 year old car broke down, your girlfriend with Aspergers might just say: well, what did you expect, it was old.’

‘I would totally say that’, says Penelope.

‘Of course. Me too’, I say.

‘You know’, she says, ‘a lot of my writing students have Asperger’s. They write about daily life with Asperger’s. And they are such great stories. I could make a book

‘You should do it’, I say.

‘But how? They will not admit to having it.’

‘Ah’, I sigh. ‘Whyever not?’

‘Yes’, Penelope says, ‘whyever not?’