assignment 6- Taetum

    people. good grief people confuse the heck out of me. they always have, particularly those around my age. even as a kid i had zero peoples my age who i could really call my friend. my 'friends' were the doctors, nurses, and plant managers my parents worked with. i had one or two kids that i tried to associate with but when my birthday rolled around, the only people who showed up were my parents friends, so i figured they were better friends than those other kids. i would sit there and have a conversation with them, but those tots in my classes? no thanks. growing up this sort of isolation and avoidance of anyone my age (because why is that kid coloring outside of the lines, why are you trying to touch me with your nasty hands, and no i don't want to play with you because your imagination doesn't suit mine and you wont do it right.) led to me being tested for Aspergers. it came back negative, and we later learned that i just have a really low EQ, Emotional Quotient, meaning that i just don't understand most emotional responses.
       well i got tired of having no one to talk to because my internal dialogues got repetitive and i got the sneaking suspicion that the adults didn't always want to talk to me because they had to work. so, i decided to figure these humans out. from around age four i made small efforts to relate to people, but it took until about 3rd grade that i made i conscious effort to become "normal" i started studying people, and training myself to respond as they did to stimuli such as injury, biting words, and the such. at first it was a train wreck that led to out of control emotions. i had essentially introduced a foreign species with no natural predators into the environment that was my mind. it was not good.
     the long story short of it,is that i eventually got a normalish grasp on them, to where the proper emotional responses occurred as they were supposed to. through this process i have developed an intense interest in the minds inner workings and drives. it's incredible to be able to observe someone casually and then be able to figure out the little quirks about them that make them them. those little quirks that allow you to predict their next move, or how they would react to a situation.
      i love using this in softball. i'll figure out if the pitcher is a perfectionist, and therefore its best to get in her head by messing with her rhythm by calling time right as she goes to pitch. or i'll gauge how passionate a player is and that will tell me how much of their potential they'll put forth, thus telling me the rough odds of them making a tough play or not. this then tells me if i need to be wary of them making a catch and throwing me out or if i can milk an extra base out of their tendency to go through the motions.
         it also allows me to figure out what drives my teammates. this person responds to challenge while another may need a coddling hand, all of which needs to be analyzed in a matter of days so that i can produce a group that will play together as seamlessly as possible.