Taken from Sally Holloway’s interesting article How to spot a true oddball, I’ll zip down to THE OFFBEAT INDEX of Dr Weeks’s 15 characteristics of eccentrics, in descending order of frequency (the first five apply to virtually every eccentric):
1 Non-conformity
2 Creative
3 Strongly motivated by curiosity
4 Idealistic
5 Happily obsessed with one or more hobby horses (usually 5 or 6)
6 Awareness that he/she is different from early childhood
7 Intelligent
8 Opinionated and outspoken
9 Non-competitive
10 Unusual eating habits or living arrangements
11 Not very interested in the opinions or company of others, except to persuade them of the “correct” point of view
12 Mischievous sense of humour
13 Single
14 Eldest or only child
15 Bad speller weddings as being far too messy
I need to point out an extra tidbit for number 13’s being ’single’. It is possible to be more single married than single. Number 15 has me confused because I don’t know what a bad speller wedding is. Is it when two people who are bad spellers get married, because having one bad speller is messy enough so two would only double the mess?
Golly… if articles like Ms. Holloway’s on oddballs can’t get people to understand why there are some who think being ‘normal’ is actually a ‘disorder’ then I guess the gap might be bigger than I thought! Neurotypicals tend to fit the description of neurotics more than Aspies do, which would beautifully explain why society would like to alter the way most Aspies prefer to live rather than try to understand them and accept [better yet→ appreciate!] whatever differences exist. Here’s another piece from this mentioned article:
One of Dr Weeks’s most vexing diagnostic tasks was to distinguish between eccentricity and neurosis. “Simply put,” he says, “neurotics are miserable because they think they’re not as good as everyone else, while eccentrics know they’re different and glory in it.”
