1.) It is common for people with ASDs to hear the words, …”But you did it before, and smoothly, why can’t you do it now??!”

Though this happens most often in the social situations neurotypicals often associate with ASDs, it can also happen in the other things that affect people on the spectrum. For instance, one of the common lacks in intrabrain communications for those with ASDs is the negative feedback in musculature command paths that neurotypicals take for granted. It keeps humans from hurting themselves through overloading the muscles. Some with ASDs lack this.

As a result, in HS, I was wrestling, and went into panic in the middle of a match, gripping an opponents forearm too hard, and gave him a green-stick fracture. Later in life, the damage to me from such incidents is evident as general inflammation in the hands and arms, but even as a young child my father could not understand why I could not grip a paint brush to help paint the garage for more than 5 minutes without pain, and could not hold on to the paint brush to keep painting for more than 10-15 minutes. Manual repetition was, and increasingly is, simply too painful for me after a short time.

2.) This lack of inhibition also contributes to the sensitivity of *some* with ASDs to light, or to sound, or to smells. Commonly, in order to socialize, human brains use inhibitory circuits as a sort of Automatic Volume Control in crowds to keep distraction from others’ voices to a minimum. *Some* with ASDs lack that AVC ability, to a greater or lesser extent. I have a friend on the spectrum who has been Concert Master for a local orchestra, and loves uncluttered music. However, she has real trouble in crowded rooms, and at a party she will find a nice quiet corner from which to people-watch, by preference. She considers light I can barely see in to be too bright quite often. If we are walking down the street and she sees someone walking towards us on the sidewalk smoking, she will pull me across the street. If we must cross close to the smoker, she will have a hacking cough afterwards for as much as 30 minutes.

3.) Some combination of these lacks, (such as lack of focus in the trials portion of the competition) alongside training and other variable from the environment (while my mild ASD still causes some problems, 90% of the difficulties in my life have come from family demands that I act “normal”) could easily account for the variation in performance reported in this article.

Saying, “a nine year old elite autistic sportsman” would make the satire even more biting.