I've been best mates with my roomie since the day we met (literally, we hit it off THAT fast) 4 years ago. Since then we've been completely inseperable (just bought a house together), and he seriously is the nicest guy in the WORLD.
But something is off about him. People don't like him, on the whole, because he can be "weird", as they put it (conversely, the people that do like him absolutely adore him because he's so... innocent. He never means to harm anyone and he's delightfully quirkly, lol). He was diagnosed with OCD when he was 13, but it doesnt really seem to fit. He is absolutely obsessed with science, no doubt about it. And he has a couple of tics, but only sometimes, and they change, which I dont think is that consistent with OCD.
So I was reading an article in a journal (I'm a biomed student) about Asperger's, and it was like reading a personality description in places. He has absolutely no social skills whatsoever, not that he doesnt LIKE socialising, on the contrary he's very friendly etc, but he has no concept of what is appropriate in a given situation. He'll just start dancing in the queue in a shop, yesterday he accosted a girl in the street to ask her if she knew where a national park was! And he is brutally honest, ALL the time. For example, he'll tell somebody he's just met that they should clean their teeth more often. And he doesnt mean to be rude... he's just trying to be helpful, but they obviously get offended. I've gotten used to it, and he just grins when I'm like "Yeah, well your hair sucks, so you can shut up!" in response to one of his "comments".
He can't ever get jobs because he always does something that seems ridiculously stupid to everybody else in the interview, but he cant see why it's inappropriate. Everybody gets frustrated with him because it is SO OBVIOUS that you cant tell an interviewer you have nothing particularly special to bring to a role or that your future plans involve getting "out of this dead end job and into something I'd LIKE". He got fired from his last job for telling their customers their rival store was cheaper.
He also has this thing for hanging around with younger kids. Not like that, just 18ish year olds. Which was fine when he got to college at 19, but now he's 24 it's starting to look weird to other people. And he twitches his left arm nearly continually when he's at home.
Conversely, he is massively intelligent, and he is memory is simply astounding. He can quote you entire passages of a book he's read once, he can sit down for literally eight hours at a time to do something without losing concentration, he's amazing. But... eccentric? I can't work out if he's just eccentric, or if something is wrong. And I dont want to just blurt out "Hey, have you ever considered you might be ill?" because he'd be offended. =/ But it's starting to get him not succeeding with people/girls/jobs when he clearly has the intelligence and kindness.
Any ideas? =/
Does this sound like Aspergers? 
