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Has a rude/bad person ever helped you?
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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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I have a neighbor who's neurodivergent. He's an older gentleman, retired.
He does the lawn care and looked after the house I'm currently in, when it was empty. He knows the owner. Anywho. The owner told me of the guy before I moved in.
The way she talked about him kinda clued me in, that he might be a little odd. Owner assured me tho that he was a good guy and very dependable.
If you only met him once. Or... Maybe a handful of times, you might conclude he's an asshole.
He's very to the point. And critical. Of everything and everyone.
But. He's actually incredibly kind and thoughtful.
After living here for 6 months, he comes and mows the lawn. Also mulched the leaves and now has shoveled my walkway. Just does it. No pay. I don't have to ask.
And I told him multiple times, if you need any help, just knock on the door. Cause I don't usually hear you out there and I definitely can do half the work. But he's like nah I got it.
Ive had a few minor issues with the house im staying at, and he's always been available to help immediately.
He will bitch about how so and so is responsible for the problems. Usually reasonable culprit (old house, owner hasn't done maintenance, or wrong building supply used, etc).
Nothing he complains about is a blame game. It's all legit. But he sure does complain pretty much non stop. I mean non stop.
As I said if you just met him or only interacted with him in some scenarios, you would 100% think the guy was an asshole.
But he's not. Not really.
Just different.
(very) Late diagnosed autistic guy here.
Thank you for writing that.
One of the revealing things about realising this is what I am is looking back at a long life and realising a lot of people thought of me as rude, or that I was being deliberately awkward. I've certainly lost one job because of it, lived a life that's largely friendless (IRL anyway) and doubtless missed a thousand opportunities through not being aware of them. There's also an element of cause and effect - sometimes you know pretty quickly that someone's not going to warm to you, so you just shut them out mentally. It's expensive for me to make the effort to be normal and as I've got older I'm less willing to waste this time and energy.
I see it as very positive that so many people are aware of neurodiversity now, especially younger generations, and their first thought when someone behaves differently isn't always that they're deliberately being an assehole. Sometimes they are, of course, especially those with particularly bigoted views, but not always.