I appreciate your being here to talk about your book, What Did I Do Wrong? Let's start with, how did you find out you're autistic, and what led you to a diagnosis?

My discovery that I'm autistic was kind of a strange process.

I remember back in 2007, 2008, I was sitting in an office, an office I used to work at, and somebody came to my desk, and I think they told me a joke or something, and I didn't understand it, and I just sort of looked at them, and they sort of looked at me, and it was this very awkward moment of, like, you know, when someone smiles and the smile starts to fall away from their face? But then, and then it just looks really strange.

They kinda have this look on their face where it's like, "Oh, you didn't understand my joke." I got really frustrated with myself because I couldn't understand what happened, and I took it literally, and I was like, I think I, I put into the Google search results, "Why do I take everything literally?" Of course, this was a long time ago, so the defunct term now is Asperger's Syndrome, and that's what came up.

And I was like, "What's this?" So I started looking at it, and I had seen it before, one time on the cover of a magazine.

Somebody had talked about their experience, and I said, "Oh, okay.

This is, this seems like me." And I went down this really long rabbit hole, and, and so many things made sense.

Talk about what direct communication is for an autistic person and how their loved one can understand and respond to it.