I've found it best to assume that everyone on the Internet is mildly autistic.

In other words, I doubt it's you.

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I felt something akin to the flip side of that when I went to see "Trip To Bountiful" at ACT a few months ago. Everyone -- everyone -- who reviews this play seems to understand intuitively that Carrie is a lovable old woman who deserves every ounce of our empathy at every moment. And I... while I understand that "lovable old lady" is the stock character, what I actually saw on stage was a fairly nasty old baggage: untrustworthy, manipulative, self-absorbed, histrionic, and spiritually vain. Reading the reviews, I thought, "Am I nuts? Is it just because my own mother-in-law is a backstabber? What? Am I totally incapable of understanding normal human communication? Is there something weirdly wrong with me?"

Nah. I mean, my experience with my own MIL is something I'm sure I brought to the play, but -- people see what they expect to see. Every experienced theatergoer saw the famously lovable old woman from the famously lovable old play. That's what they were looking to see. I'm not an experienced theatergoer, so I saw something else -- something in front of my own nose.

If you say "abc" when people are listening for "xyz", they'll hear "xyz".

And if you point out that you said "abc", half the time they'll explain to you that "abc" and "xyz" rhyme, so really it is "xyz" deep down, and besides, it's the element of "xyz" that is important here, so never mind "abc", let's get down to that "xyz" you were implying. Grar.

I really, really doubt it's you.

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