Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

Self-diagnosed Asperger's, but I definitely have the "don't intuit social rules, and can't relate behaviour X with feeling Y without training" bit. And yeah, it comes out sometime in Remora behaviour (I'm better at that now, though), and other socially inappropriate ways.

But with almost everyone I've met or read about on the Autism spectrum, especially me, the key is "intuit" and "without training". I now read North American body language about as skilfully as your average Egyptian, and I've been given enough 101 in various places to be able to go *look up* and *learn by textbook* specific things that didn't work or I didn't parse properly - provided I parsed the situation well enough to look it up.

In other words, We Can Be Trained - as long as others realise it is something trainable.

In other other words, I'm violently agreeing with everyone here - especially the "it's an explanation, not an excuse" ones. "Excuse" would be "he can't understand the situation". "Explanation" is "he can't see the situation until it's explicitly pointed out".