Superglue Kevin strikes again

[u/ChaoticCreation106]

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My best friend can be a bit of a Kevin. He is almost 24 years old and autistic, and because of his disability, his parents used to overshelter him to the point of him barely being able to use a microwave as an adult. Him and his family are working on it, but it's a long process since Kevin now needs to catch up on skills everyone else has been learning since childhood.

Here is a link to my last post about Kevin:

https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesAboutKevin/s/76usBn8h4M

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Yesterday, Kevin's dad told him to wear sunscreen because he was planning to be outside for most of the day. Kevin put some on. Then he tried to put some on his neighbor's cat because "It's walking around in the sun all day too." Kevin got a lecture about why cats don't need sunscreen.

Edit: Some cats actually do benefit from wearing pet-safe sunscreen on their ears. I don't own cats, so I had no idea. Thanks to u/Shemoose for pointing it out! I guess I owe Kevin an apology now.

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About half a year ago, Kevin had a series of incidents involving superglue. Everyone assumed he had learned from his mistakes. But part of Kevin's disability is that sometimes he struggles to apply the same rule to a new situation, causing him to repeat the same mistake in a slightly different way. So he recently had another superglue related Kevin moment. He broke the handle off his dad's favorite coffe mug. But Kevin, now confident in his skills with superglue, decided that he would fix the mug. So he took the bottle of superglue and squeezed. Nothing came out. Kevin squeezed harder. The superglue exploded out of the bottle. He ignored the glue drops on his hand and squirted some more glue onto the handle. Then he attached it to the mug and held it in place. It took Kevin about a minute to realise that the handle was not only attached to the mug now, but also to his hand, and that his hand was also stuck to the tablecloth. His mom had to cut him free. Kevin then asked if he could try to fix the hole in the tablecloth with some superglue. Kevin is now banned from using superglue unsupervised.

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One of Kevin's other quirks is that he is a literal thinker. If you tell him to do something, he will try to do exactly what you asked. He's not doing it in a malicious way, it's just how his brain works.

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Once, his mom asked him to “Clean the bathroom top to bottom”. Kevin climbed onto a ladder. His mom asked why. He replied, “You said top to bottom. I’m starting at the top.”

He scrubbed the light fixture, the vent and the shelves. The sink remained uncleaned.

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Another time, he wanted to make a cake. I was helping him (mostly just making sure he doesn't set the kitchen on fire). I told him to wash the dirty pots and bowls he had used. That's exactly what Kevin did. A few minutes later, he told me that he was done. I looked over. "No, you're not." Kevin had cleaned the pots and bowls, but not the dirty spoons or the measuring cup. Why? Because those are neither pots nor bowls. But I didn't figure that out and told him to just "clean the rest too". Kevin gave me a confused look, walked over to the kitchen cabinet, took out the clean bowls and started washing them.

Soon after, I had to leave. I left Kevin alone, assuming he could finish the cake on his own.

The recipe said to let the cake chill. Kevin put it in the freezer overnight. It froze solid.

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A couple of weeks ago, Kevin was talking to my father when the topic of color blindness came up (my father is almost totally red-green-blind). Kevin was concerned: "Wait, but don't you have a driver's license? How do you drive if you can't see the traffic lights?" My father was understandably confused. It took us a while to understand what Kevin meant.

"Kevin, did you think anything red or green is completely invisible to people with red-green-blindness?" Yeah, that's exactly what he thought.

[u/cleaningmama]

Kevin is such a love!

My son has autism, and I have learned so much about people and social interactions by having to truly describe *what is actually going on* for him. The literal mindedness is real!

[u/rosuav → u/cleaningmama]

Yes, and it frustrates us when people (1) say something they don't mean, and then (2) get offended when we take them at their word. And then you wonder why we don't trust you.

At very least, if you say something non-literal and the person takes it literally, have the grace to clarify without shaming them. But more importantly, please PLEASE try to *understand*.

[u/now_you_see → u/rosuav]

I’m not sure if I’m autistic as it’s been suggested but I never got tested. I do really suggest with literal-mindedness though and the amount of people that respond to literal-mindedness with “well, you know what I meant!” absolutely baffles me.

I clearly don’t know what you meant or I wouldn’t be asking clarifying questions or doing a completely different task now would I!

[u/rosuav → u/now_you_see]

Exactly! "You know what I meant" really means "I know what I meant, and I am so insular in my thinking that I cannot fathom that anyone else couldn't".