You probably have Asperger Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism without significant cognitive impairment, but which affects us in the social sphere of life. People with AS often have trouble with the pragmatics of speech (initiating conversation, fixing social errors, and ending a conversation.) Many people with AS, like me, have problems with "small talk." I find it impossible just to talk about "nothing," preferring to talk about my cats, history, or my current passion, British athlete and neurologist Roger Bannister, the first man to break the four minute mile.

Other problems such as dyslexia, or its flipside, hyperlexia (precocious reading, which was probably what I had), OCD, etc. can co-exist with Autism/Asperger's. If a person has high intelligence, but weak social skills and semantic pragmatic difficulties, AS is the likely problem.