I watched a couple of videos of a girl with autism talking about some aspects of how she experienced it. One topic she discussed and gave an example of was what I think is called echolalia. I don’t know but, for as long as I could remember, even up to today, I have always enjoyed repeating lines of dialogue or noises I have found funny. Not necessarily immediately but, often when I feel the situation feels appropriate, though most other people won’t understand that since they cannot read my mind to get the context I’m referring to. Basically these repeated noises or lines can be triggered by responding to some sort of stimulus, like the topic of a conversation. This has got me thinking about whether this is a symptom of autism.

For example, yesterday when I was preparing some food to take for lunch on my day trip, I heard a typical news story about the American’s blowing hot air about returning to the moon. Now of course that story begins with a reference to the original Apollo program, including Kennedy’s Rice University speech. In middle school, during the 50 year anniversary of the program, this commercial played nonstop of the clip from the Rice speech where Kennedy says the word “moon.” At the time, I thought the way he said the word in his New England accent was funny so I repeated the word as an exaggerated “moo.” When I heard the context of the news story, I started to say “moo” in reference to the Rice speech. This then runs into a stream of monologue that I’ve gone through before, all of which I find funny but, to a stranger would seem quite unusual.

Then another time today, when two people near me were talking about cars and mentioned a jeep, that triggered the specific memory of a one-off character on an episode of MASH I saw 12 years ago. It was the way the guy on TV said the word jeep that made me copy and remember the sound. Then my mind went to remembering the rest of the dialogue. All during that moment, I lightly held back the urge to say the words I found most funny out loud because I knew that would make me look unusual to most observers.

I can do this when talking to people or more often, when I’m talking to myself, even in the vicinity of others. I know this probably makes me unusual in their opinions of me but, part of me just doesn’t care since I know from life experience most of them would still ignore me if I acted the way they wanted me to be. In those cases, I usually chalk it up to acting like a jokester to get attention but these videos made me reconsider that a bit.

For additional context, I had some college officials at the child autism center suggest I get evaluated but, I was turned off by the runaround with trying to find local adult resources for this issue (I love stress and procrastination). The same thing was suggested by my high school guidance counselor after a rough year where I reverted to taking my ADHD meds to improve my grades, though my mother felt insulted at the suggestion given to her by the evaluators that she just dropped it there and never explored it further.

I don’t know. I’ve heard that autism can vary from person to person but, I guess one thing that keeps me doubting every time my suspicions bubble up is comparing myself to my college roommate, who was diagnosed during the time I lived with her. She showed symptoms that I don’t have and that has reassured me in saying that I do not have autism.

So I guess I’ll ask if these instances I’ve described above sound like symptoms of autism? There are plenty of other times I’ve acted like this in everyday life but, I wanted to provide a couple of concrete examples of what I’m talking about so I provided the most recent examples I could remember.

Also, does repeating certain words you latch onto occasionally during a time of stress constitute a symptom, because now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve been conscious of doing that for at least 15 years or so. The word or phrase tends to change every couple of years.

I appreciate your input on all of this. I’m so isolated all the time that I never get to compare notes with peers.

Edit: I just thought of another example right now. When I hear a certain type of doorbell sound, that gives me the strong urge to say the phrase “quorum call.” That one again comes from when I was a teenage lib and watched C-Span on occasion. I don’t know the exact thought process but, that’s a thing for me and I try not to say it out loud in front of strangers.