Autism

Yes, but not immediately. I am seen as obviously odd, but friendly, like a very big dog. I frequently have people stop me in shops to get help getting something off a shelf or finding something in the store, though I don't mind at all, I enjoy helping people. I also get asked for directions all the time in public, a couple of times a week on average, and according to other people I know that is far more than they have. I guess I just have that "open face" people talk about, and I also make more eye contact than NTs because of masking, so I think people take that as an invitation.

Also, once people talk to me for a while, and I mean like 15-20 minutes, they tend to clock that something is up. I know a lot of things in many areas thanks to the ADHD interest in just about anything, so I can speak from a relatively informed position on many more topics than people expect. They think I am just like them because I know a comparable amount about their favourite topics as they do, so obviously it must be equally important to me as it is to them. Given a fairly short time they will watch me interact with someone else and see the same thing happen and have that moment of confusion because I am interested in too many things.

After a little while of knowing me people refer to me as a wikipedia on wheels or google with a face. If I don't know something I am always prompt to say so, but if you ask me again later that day I have likely gone and fixed that hole and have something useful to say about it, and sometimes people do exactly that. I feel like a very odd LLM in a body running on 40 watts and being surprisingly efficient.