PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

I also don’t like taking this particular friend to certain places (like bars and most social situations) because of unpredictable antics. He is not a bad person in the slightest, but he is much lower than me on the autism spectrum in terms of social skills and keeping his mouth shut. It’s not really his fault (though he could do a bit more to improve himself like I have in the last decade). A very traumatic experience in August-September 2010 exacerbated the issues he had (he was mugged and badly beaten by four black kids at the Fern Rock SEPTA station in North Philly while headed home a Phillies game with the girl he was dating at the time, which resulted in a broken jaw). This was in no way his fault (though common sense dictates that being in Fern Rock at night is not a good idea), but it has turned him rather abrasive and cynical to say the least...

 

One time we were walking back to the car after an evening of drinking in Doylestown. Correction: I had been drinking; He’d had a couple of Bud Lights and was pretty much sober. We brushed past a group of two or three 20-something guys, and one of them made a comment about us being a gay couple. I forget exactly what they said, and it didn’t really bother me because drunk people are assholes and it’s to
be expected, but it really angered my friend. He started shouting at them, and I had to physically drag him along before he finally gave up. Keep in mind that, again, I was pretty buzzed and he was sober!

Shit like that (and the incident I am about to mention below) is why I don’t go out drinking with this friend when it’s just the two of us!

 

One time, we went to a well-known bar/restaurant in Doylestown. This was after I got my driver’s license, but before I put the first stereo system in my truck. This means is was after May 2011, but we’ll before March-April 2013. I’m 99% sure it was sometime in 2012, but not totally sure. We went to this bar, met up with these two random college girls we’d never met before and bought them drinks thinking it would actually lead to something...

I did not have any problems that night, and one of the things I remember well is that one of the bouncers was wearing a T-shirt that said Southern Comfort on it. I was 23 at the oldest and, being the lifelong GM nerd so I am, the only Southern Comfort I knew of was the now-defunct specialty vehicle company that customized not just GM vans, but trucks and SUVs as well. I asked the bouncer about the shirt and got an education about hard liquor brands. We had a friendly conversation and then I went back to my table.

The bar was packed, and on at least two occasions, my friend got very pissed off because a staff member asked him to move out of the way while he was chatting with one of the girls we’d met. It may have been three, but it should have been none...

My friend, in all his infinite wisdom, believed in no uncertain terms that the staffer was singling him out and harassing him when he was trying to chat with a pretty girl. I forget whether it was a barback or one of the bouncers, but I’m 99% the bouncer in the Southern Comfort shirt saw the whole thing. Nothing came of it, other than me taking my friend aside and explaining to him why his behavior wasn’t okay, and we left without incident. We walked around Doylestown for a bit and may have gone to another bar, but we ended up walking past the bar we’d just been at on the way back to my friend’s car (I say again, my friend rarely drinks to excess even if he’s not driving so he was sober). We started chatting with a couple of guys outside the bar, and they goaded us into going back into the bar where my friend had words with the staff member; I should say goaded me into going back into the bar, and I got my friend to begrudgingly go along.

I’ve been to the same bar multiple times on the same night after leaving and coming back, and the bouncer always recognizes me and lets me right in. On this occasion, the bouncer with the Southern Comfort shirt recognized us but wouldn’t let us back in. I was absolutely dumbfounded, as I wasn’t anywhere near visibly intoxicated and the bar was not so crowded that they couldn’t let anybody in. The bouncer refused to tell me why he wasn’t letting me in and I eventually just gave up and left. My friend wanted to drive past the bar blasting the horn and flip off the bouncer, but I talked him out of it.

Looking back on it, I realize that I probably would have gotten back in if my friend wasn’t with me.

 

This same friend has thankfully more or less grown out of this phase, though he still did so at least 15 years too late in my opinion...

Until I was probably nine, I carried a small stuffed dog around with me everywhere I went; At first it was a cheap Beanie Baby knockoff named Clyde (a white dog with a brown spot that even survived being dropped in the urinal at school on “Bring your stuffed animal to school day”; a ride in the washer and dryer fixed him right up), but then I graduated to genuine Beanie Babies and my favorite was “Dobie the Doberman” and so took him everywhere for the better part of 1998.

This raised some eyebrows, but it was regarded as more or less normal and this was one of the few things other kids never teased me for!

If you think I’m going to say my friend was carrying around a stuffed animal, or a blanket like Linus from the Peanuts comics, you’re wrong; I wish this was the case, as it would have been far less alarming than what he actually did carry around...

 

I’ve known this friend since we were both 19, and well into his twenties he was carrying around paper cutouts of every type of gun imaginable. He would print pictures of firearms from the internet and meticulously cut them out. His favorite seemed to be an almost life-sized cutout of a Glock handgun.

This in itself was not that alarming, but the fact that he carried these things around almost everywhere he went was...

Even more alarming was the fact that he printed out a realistic FBI badge and added his name and picture to it. I would classify this as perfectly normal for a kid under the age of 10; My uncle bought me a Power Wheels Jeep in 1994, as a present when I graduated from preschool. My mom made a photocopy of her driver’s license, covered her name with white out and added mine, added my school portrait, and had me sign it; She even bought me a real fake leather wallet to put it in and carry around whenever I was driving my beloved Jeep. I would see no problem with a parent making their kid a fake FBI ID either; However, I was 5 or 6 at the time!

My friend was 20 or older when he was doing this! When I told him that what he was doing was technically a federal crime, he brushed me off; I could honestly care less about the action in itself, because deep down I knew an autistic adult would probably not go to jail or face any charges for merely possessing fake FBI credentials that literally looked like a third grader had made them. I could also care less what he did in his own time; What bugged me was that he would bring the paper cutout guns and homemade FBI credentials literally everywhere he went! This includes, but was not limited to, at least two parties hosted by me at my house!

 

I had to tell my friend a few times to “put that shit away” but luckily he got the message before I had to stop being nice. Also, he respects my wishes with regards to the paper guns and shit, but he still carries it around (I’ve seen it in his car).

This friend of mine is going to be 31 years old in a little more than 2 months as of this post; He has a driver’s license, a college degree, and a job (albeit an unpaid volunteer one). He still carries this shit around, and can become very volatile if you try to give him any constructive criticism about he should be acting and/or what he should be doing.

 

The parents of another Aspie friend of mine own a small house in the Poconos; A bunch of us went up there this past March to celebrate my 30th birthday; My friend who likes to pretend he’s an FBI agent was among those invited.

He spent most of the two-day trip on his laptop, and he damn near threw a fit when the group went on a scenic train tour in Jim Thorpe and his debit card was declined when he tried to buy a ticket (Luckily he had a bunch of cash too).

On our first night there, everyone wanted to drink and play Cards Against Humanity, except him.

We spent most of the evening drinking beer, and then when the hard liquor came out, this friend went “mother hen” on us and lectured us about his dad had told him that drinking after 11pm was a bad idea if you wanted to sleep well. Considering that this was my birthday party and everyone had been drinking all evening, this was not well received by the group. My friend stormed off to his room angrily...

A short time later that same night, angered by the fact that we were playing Cards Against Humanity, having a good time, and making a lot of noise in the process, he came back out and confronted us. I more or less told him that it was (A) my party, (B) Mike’s house, (C) that he was outvoted by everyone else there, and (D) that he pretty much needed to join us or go screw himself; He did not take this very well and said something along the lines of “Five minutes, and I start killing people!” He’s lucky he was in the private home owned by a good friend, surrounded by people not only cared about him but had known him for years and had more or less learned to tolerate his bullshit; He did not seem to realize that he could have ended up in the hospital and/or jail if he’d pulled that anywhere else!

 

As I said earlier, I have a problem with authority, but it doesn’t mean I’m one of those outlaw/sovereign citizen types.

From the time I started walking and talking, I had a huge problem with being put in timeout and would often throw a fit. I was a well-behaved kid 99% of the time, but I did stupid shit like coloring on the walls of my parents’ house with crayons and pulling the hair of other kids (all of this behavior ended when I was 3 or 4).

I also had a problem with biting when I was like three; This behavior went away by the time I was four, but came back with a vengeance when I was about five.

I’ve shared this story before and have openly apologized to the kid; I was in kindergarten and this kid named Jerry and another kid were hogging the fort thing on the playground. They wouldn’t let me inside, and I got angry and but Jerry either on the face or the neck. Jerry started crying, the teacher came over, and I ended up getting sent home early. My mom was pretty pissed at me, but I don’t remember getting grounded or anything (my parents NEVER hit me and my mom generally did not care for parents who so much as sparked their kids).

 

I have only been officially grounded twice in my life!

The first time was sometime in 1997, when we were living in California. I was playing with the younger brother and sister of a friend whose family also lived in the on-base housing. We were pretending that the hose nozzle was a revolver and playing cowboys and indians or something. The little sister wanted the hose sprayer, so I tossed it to her rather hard. She didn’t catch it, and I unintentionally caught her right in the nose. She started crying, and if I remember correctly I hopped on my bike and rode away purely because I was scared of getting in trouble (I was 8 years old). Of course, a 4-year old kid is going to tell an embellished version of the truth; If I’d stuck around I probably would have been able to get my friend’s mom to believe it was an accident, but by running away I destroyed my credibility. A short time later I was on my bike when my friend’s mom approached me while she was en route to my house to talk to my mom, and she started screaming at me about how her daughter’s nose was bleeding and I could have broken her nose before telling me she was on her way to talk to my mom. 8-year old logic told me to just stay out until dinner time and explain it to my mom later, and everything would be fine. Quite some time later, my mom roared up alongside me in her white 1990 Camry, down the street from our house. She was crying and screamed at me to go home. I rode my bike home and got the chewing out of a lifetime. My parents always been against corporal punishment and NEVER hit me, but my mom really pissed. In tears for most of the conversation, she went into “What if?” mode. “What if you’d broken her nose?” What if you’d hit her in the eye?” What if you’d chipped her tooth?” She was worried that we could have been sued if the girl had gotten much more than a bloody nose, and grounded me for a grand total of one day. I was not allowed to go outside and play, but I was still allowed to watch TV and go on the computer.

This whole ugly incident blew over, my friend’s parents forgave me, and we remained friends until he moved away a few months later; I recently reconnected with this friend on Facebook.

 

The second time I got grounded was in 2001 or so, when I was in middle school and we were living in Washington. From what I remember, I went out to play without telling my mom and ended up at the home of a friend just one house away from ours. My mom was freaking out and apparently drove all over the neighborhood looking for me, only to find my Razor scooter outside the aforementioned friend’s house when she’d calmed down.

I forget whether she went to that friend’s house and made me come home, or confronted me when I came home later. Either way, she grounded me from going outside for a mere two or three hours and I remember throwing a fit. My parents have never grounded me since because, quite frankly, I never needed it. The only times I got in serious trouble at school were when I lost my temper with kids who bullied me and got physical with them. I never got arrested, never did drugs, and generally stayed out of trouble.

 

I just don’t like authority because I’d say 99% of the time I follow the law and I when I busted for “petty bullshit” that it seems like normal people would not care about, I get raked over the coals...

 

The most recent one would be the January 2019 “red light incident” in Doylestown. I admit I was wrong, but in my eyes there’s a difference between blatantly running a red light and what I actually did; Luckily I know a really good lawyer, and the judge agreed that there was a different between running a red light and what I did. If the responding police officer had been more professional but still written me a ticket, I would have fought it anyway because I don’t want points on my license. By not-so-subtly attempting to intimidate me into just paying the ticket by saying that he and the deputy who initiated the traffic stop would be in court to testify against me, I was triggered.

In my eyes, the cop was being a dickhead, so I decided to utilize my legal rights to be a dickhead back to him and guess what? I won!

 

I am all for discouraging dangerous driving and criminal behavior, but what pisses me off is that the government seems to care more about its bottom line than the safety of the general public, and lower-income people tend to suffer because of it.

That person rolled a stop sign at a deserted intersection! This person was doing 15 MPH over the posted speed limit! That person accidentally chirped their tires in a parking lot! This person absentmindedly treated a red light like a stop sign at a deserted intersection! Let’s give them a ticket that rivals some car payments and carries three or more points on their license, even though it may ruin their flawless driving record and cost them their job!

An example of somebody getting what they deserved would be the asshole who crashed his Mustang into the back of a Honda CR-V on Route 611 on Thanksgiving in 2012, doing about 150 MPH. The impact crippled the driver of the CR-V for life and killed her granddaughter, who was in the backseat, instantly. The prick driving the Mustang had injuries and was using a cane when he appeared in court, but more or less made a full recovery.

I think he ended up pleading guilty to third degree murder and going to prison for like 12-15 years. The inevitable lawsuit bankrupted him and he had to sell his house. He had numerous driving violations prior to this one, though his license was valid at the time of the deadly 2012 crash.

I think he got exactly what he deserved punishment-wise and should never be allowed to have a driver’s license again!

 

@PennSilverTaco I noticed something sort of surprising from your posts. You and my son have the exact same birthdate (3/14/89). You were both born in Northern Cali (my son was born at Travis Air Force Base). And crazy enough my Son's first name is also Charles (assuming Charlie is a nickname). My son has always fought with pretty severe ADHD and at one time they thought it may have been Aspergers and honestly I don't know enough about it to know how they determine what's what. Anyway, I just wanted to say hey and keep posting your story.

 

Come up to my neck of the woods and I’ll buy you both a beer!



Does your son drive, have a job, have a college degree, etc?

 

He lives in North Carolina. Still in college, been in and out of it since he graduated high school is supposed to graduate this year. He is VERY intelligent but lacks the focus needed to see things through. He does drive and has his own car. Not working right while he finishes school, part of his past problems with school was time management.

 

Then there are the assholes who do something so stupid and dangerous behind the wheel that their license should be permanently revoked, but get little more than a slap on the wrist...

An example would be the October 2015 incident, where a 70-year old man slammed his 2002 Mercedes E320 into the side of my prized 2010 Tacoma while driving drunk.

The fact that he was was driving drunk is not what gets to me; I have a few friends who have a DUI in their past but learned from their mistake and never drove drunk again.

If this old fart had just admitted fault and given me his insurance, we could have gone our separate ways and I would have gotten my truck fixed without ever knowing he was drunk. Unfortunately for him, he wanted to party. His dumb drunk ass called the cops, and since I was sober and he failed a field sobriety test, the cops believed me over him when he said I ran a stop sign.

This asshole’s insurance company had an adjuster look at my truck and was ready to cut me a check for almost three grand, which was several hundred dollars more than it ended up costing to fix my truck, but it was two weeks before they finally got ahold of him. Despite facing a DUI charge, he upheld his story that I’d run a stop sign and his insurance company believed him. We weren’t home when the insurance company called us, so what we got was an impersonal message basically saying “Our client says you ran a stop sign so we aren’t paying to fix your truck. Tough shit!”

I’d know this was not going to be pretty from day one, so we’d called our insurance company the night the accident occurred and explained everything that had happened. My insurance company had determined pretty early on that the other guy was 100% at fault, but told us to wait for the the other guy’s insurance...

 

By the time December 2015 rolled around, I wanted one of two things...

1. My truck fixed at no cost to me.
2. Five minutes alone with the drunk bastard in a locked room with no cameras or recording devices so I could smash his face like he smashed my fender.

The first one was much more realistic, and luckily USAA came through; they ate the cost of fixing my truck, but waived the deductible and didn’t raise my rates.

 

USAA’s plan was to sue the drunk guy’s insurance company for whatever they paid to fix my truck, and the asshole’s insurance company stood by his claim that I’d run a stop sign. It ended up going to court, and they ended up reaching a draw where my insurance company ate the cost of fixing my truck and his ate the cost of totaling his Mercedes (Given the fact that the Mercedes was 13 years old at the time of the accident and suffered a bent frame, I guarantee you they totaled the damn thing). Here’s a timeline so far...

October 29th, 2015: Accident occurs...
December 2015: My truck is finally repaired, with my insurance company footing the bill!
April 2016: Insurance companies finally go to court and end up coming to a draw...

 

The scumbag who hit me of course pleaded not guilty and tried to get out of it without losing his license; This is when the truth came out. In May 2016, the county prosecutor called my house to get a statement.

Not only had this asshole been over the legal limit when he clobbered my truck, but he was a repeat offender. My jaw dropped (as did my mom’s) when the prosecutor told us (we were on speaker phone) that this guy had killed somebody while driving drunk in the late 1980s and done time for it. The prosecutor then told us the old fart was trying to get off easy by taking Pennsylvania’s Accelerated Rehab, which would still result in a DUI conviction but not cost him his driving privileges.

It’s worth noting that the this guy was legally a Florida resident; He had a Florida driver’s license and his Benz was registered in Florida. I’m guessing he was a snowbird who only lived in PA during the summer months and was about to head South for the winter. I have no idea where he was living when he killed the person while driving drunk in the 1980s, or how he’d been punished (I’d imagine he’d gotten a felony, done jail time, and lost his license for a while) but he’d done his time and his Florida license was valid.

The prosecutor did not want to let him off easy, but this guy was fighting the charges and they were ready to put me on the stand. At first, I just wanted to avenge my truck, but when I found out he’d taken another human life as a result of driving drunk, I was ready to assist in nailing him to the wall.

The prosecutor started asking me the standard questions (again, this was over the phone) about my interactions with the guy right after the accident had occurred. I did not lie; First words out of my mouth were “Are you fucking kidding me?!?! I just got this truck out of the body shop last May!”*

*I was rear-ended by a woman in March 2015, who I’m pretty sure was texting, resulting in $1,200 worth of damage to my poor Tacoma. She owned it and took full responsibility, plus she was sober, so I did really hound her about why she’d hit me.

The prosecutor asked me if the man had seemed drunk when I was talking to him, and I told him that something seemed odd and I suspected he may have been drinking, but I had no idea he was as drunk as the blood test said he was. I detailed my conversation with him and how we couldn’t agree on who was at fault. The prosecutor asked me what I did for a living, probably to further portray me as an innocent victim. I told him I barbacked at a bar in Doylestown, and he asked which bar. I told him Puck, and there was dead silence...