The Way Our Minds Fail

My sister got married several years ago and my mother purchased a few Muskoka chairs for the occasion.  She had a lot to do so she asked me to stain them for her. She bought the stain and the brush and she gave them all to my care.  It took a long time to paint the chairs as they were made of knotty pine and they were unpainted.  The stain was thin and the chair had widely spaced slat, so there was a lot of surface area that had to be painted.  And the wood was knotty and the stain did nothing to cover the knots; it actually accentuated the knots and the chairs were uglier because of the stain.  My mother insisted that this is what she wanted and how she wanted the chairs painted.  After I finished she pronounced that I had done a horrible job and I had ruined the chairs.  

For years afterwards every time she looked at the chairs she said to herself that I did a horrible job painting the chairs and I had ruined the chairs.  For years she did this.  Every year the criticism got a little worse in her head.  One day it all came out and she called me incompetent.  Later that same year she decided that she would paint the chairs properly.  She took out the stain and painted the chairs properly.  Her paint job was as effective as mine since the problem was not in the stainer but the knots in the chair were not covered by the paint.  She went out and bought oil based paint and covered up the ugly wood with bright yellow and red paint.  

She admitted that she was wrong for thinking I could not paint, but the damage was done through years of saying to herself that I can't do simple tasks and I was therefore incompetent.  Realizing that she had made an initial mistake years ago could not change the negative feelings that she built up because of the error on her part.  

This is how people work.  If you don't know this then try to now.  Which is why when I see people make inadvertent slights to friends I try to let them know that the slight has occurred and allow them to figure out how to fix it before permanent damage occurs.  I have noticed that this cumulative damage happens mostly with women and it is worse the older they are.  

Back in January I was with two of my friends and we had a good time in my friend's house.  In the morning, my friend who did not live there accidentally damaged my other friend's house.  Very slight damage.  I thought that my friend was an idiot for doing the damage, but I also realized that nothing could be repaired right this moment so I thought it best that they got on their way before they woke up my other friend, because he is loud and my other friend prefers to sleep late.  

We have not gone out together, the three of us because of that damage.  Every time my friend saw the damage that was caused she got angry at him.  Repairs took longer than predicted and that meant my friend was angry all the time at my other friend.  The friend who did the damage has Autism, just like me, and I know that he felt bad about doing the damage but did not know how to let my other friend that they were sorry.  My friend knows that he has Autism and so she does not think to tell him that she is angry and how he can make it right, like she assumes that every normal person would do.  And I can't tell him because she would know.  This sort of thing is the thing that can destroy friendships.  

I know that my autistic friend would never help me out if I were in a similar position, not because he does not care, but because he can't express it.  If he does express anything like that it is only to ride someone else's comment, which does nothing except aggravate me because he acts like it was obvious to him when I did it, when it is not.  But, I am not him and I hate it when my other friend speaks angrily about the incident.

So I do something.  I go visit my friend and I ask him if he has noticed that we have not been around him recently.  I tell him that if he wants to keep his friend?  And then I tell him what he has to do.  Because no one told him at when he goes on a first date with a girl he should try to wear clothes that are better than what he wears everyday.  No one told him things that other people find self evident, because he has Autism.  I thought, until I was told otherwise, that a person had to like me for who I was and not how I looked.  I told my friend that if he wanted to keep his friend, he had to ask if the damage had been repaired and how much it cost and then to pay it, because to do otherwise would be rude.  Then I told him that if he wanted to be treated better, treated like he was normal and not Autistic, he should not mention that I told him to do it.  I told him that my friend would ask me later and I would lie to them, because it was not fair for them to treat my friend like he was damaged.  It would not hurt my friends image to be raised in their eyes as his image has been lowered for three months now.  

I told him that he should do it when he was in the area.  But I should have told him that he needs to snip this off early and the more time he waits the more damage  is being done.  He probably does not understand how people think, how the way people feel about other people is more like paint being built up on a canvas and not like a brick.

My friend says that she knows that my autistic friend can't think like a normal person, but does not want to say anything to him, so will not seek him out for a year, until she is calmed down.  I look at my friend and tell her if it takes you a year to calm down, you will never forgive him and she assented to that.  I did more interference than was recommended and if he can't get it through his skull that he needs to act sooner than late, I can't help him.

If you resemble my grudge holding friend, let me tell you this: as you age you will get worse.