So say you’re in a grocery store, and you’re going to get the pasta, and you realize you are walking too close to a stranger. Most people at this point would adjust their speed, but you can’t remember how to do that, so you turn and walk down a random aisle to let them separate from you, adding about thirty seconds to your grocery shopping trip.
It looks from the outside as if you just like, decided to walk down an aisle for no reason? Maybe you wanted to stare at the beans instead of getting the pasta? Maybe you don’t know how to find things in a grocery store? What it looks like is not a problem, if you are alone. If you’re not, though, you may be expected to explain your actions, which you may not be able to do, or may not be able to do adequately, or maybe explaining things is tiring and it takes you several minutes to find the right words and now that you’re in Words Mode you’ve forgotten what you are doing and don’t have your grocery shopping procedures “online” (at the top of your mind, where you can access them), or maybe it would take you several minutes to find the right words but with someone pushing you to speak, you have to process *their* words, and it takes two hours. Or maybe people don’t expect you to explain, but they ascribe motivations to you that are going to cause trouble when people get annoyed at you because you said you were going to get the pasta and are evidently not doing that?? what? or decide you need to spend your time being painstakingly taught how to find things in a grocery store.
This is An Inconvenience. An Inconvenience that wouldn’t have happened if you had been shopping alone. Now say you do things like that, that look like they are For No Reason, any time you ever try to do anything. And/or, if you are going grocery shopping with someone else, you spend a lot of energy trying to think about whether you are reading the labels for too long and they’ll think you’re just staring at the labels For No Reason or whether they’ll think you’re moving like that For No Reason or making that noise because you don’t like them and if you don’t want donuts when you usually do will that become An Explanation and if you want a LOT of peas is that going to be An Explanation and oh crap are you making a face that will be An Explanation better check your face oh no you got so distracted thinking about your face you accidentally walked in the wrong direction which will probably be An Explanation and-
Thinking like this stresses you out and makes it harder and more tiring to actually grocery shop. But maybe you can’t really grocery shop alone so well, either, (maybe it would help if you got more practice doing it alone, maybe it wouldn’t) or maybe people have decided that you obviously still need supervision grocery shopping because you need someone to help you find things because you obviously don’t know how to find things in a grocery store because you walked down the wrong aisle when you were going to get the pasta.
Say people have decided it would be a good idea to teach you how to ride a bus, and, since you needed someone to show you how to make sandwiches, wash dishes, and make a grocery list, you obviously need someone to show you how to do it. Except the person’s explanations of bus riding are coating your brain with words and making it harder to actually understand, or you’re trying to keep yourself in Words Mode in case the person demands you speak, or you’re concentrating really hard on making the right face since a person is with you, or being supervised is making you anxious, or all of the above, and you are so distracted you forget which stop to get off. The person concludes that you obviously can’t ride a bus alone; you need someone with you to help you remember the stops.
An autistic person can have both things they can only do or learn with very explicit demonstration and instruction, and things they can only do or learn if people leave them alone and don’t try to guide them and they can learn which weird, abnormal, For No Reason way of doing the thing works for them through trial and error without anybody watching. An autistic person can also have things they can learn one way or the other- either explain to them the Common Sense step that is so Common Sense you didn’t even realize it was a Step seventeen times or let them figure out their own way on their own- but not with a middling, normal level of instruction. An autistic person can also find that grocery shopping while supervised and grocery shopping while unsupervised are totally different skills, which have to be learned different ways. An autistic person can also find that how much instruction they do or don’t need with a task changes day to day or step to step.
In conclusion, autistic people are a majestic prank, like most of the best things are.