My Ancestors Sent a Little Lizard to Help Me?

Sometimes I'm not convinced that I'm autistic.
I mean, think about it--if I really had autism, could I have gotten this far in life?
Could I have graduated from Allegheny, or gone to England, or France, or go to a metal concert solo?
I suppose if you reflect deeply enough on these experiences (or even just barely scratch the surface in some instances), you can find the autistic-like behaviors, but I sometimes still need to be reminded that I operate on a whole different level than most.

Then I read books on autism.
More specifically, Asperger's.
And I'm like daaaaaaaaaaayum girl, how did you ever NOT know you're autistic?

I think the front this is most obvious on is language. Which is fairly logical, I suppose, since autism in its very nature is all about communicative barriers.
According to the experts (namely, Tony Attwood), female Aspergians are social chameleons--able to adapt and change to fit the social climate and to mimic proper social behavior, without necessarily understanding the meanings behind said behaviors.
Basically, that describes me to a T.

I tend to pick up accents easily, and sometimes for no apparent reason. Yesterday at the grocery store, I ordered half a pound of ham in a British accent on accident (been watching a lot of Game of Thrones of late), and the lady was all o_O and I had to repeat myself in American English. I wasn't horribly embarrassed or anything (and I think it actually might be slightly adorable), but it's just so bizarre. And I spoke with an accent I can't quite place for a while because of a woman I worked with--I just added Ys to shit for NO REASON (metYastasized, cYat). I think one of the reasons I get along so well with the Turkish, Russian and Nepali women I work with is because I speak in fragments to them--"You need? Is done? No light! You check? Give me please red pen." It's not like I'm talking down to them or anything, and I think they know that--it's just that English isn't their first language, and it's a very confusing one at that, so I try and adjust my speaking patterns to something that is easy to follow. Because who better than I knows how difficult and frustrating it is, not being able to communicate? And honestly, it didn't even strike me as an autistic thing at first, until I noticed that most other people in the plant don't make such a concentrated effort to understand and be understood by them. I asked one of the machine operators, a native English speaker, "you need?" as I grabbed some paperwork from his desk, and he was like "LOL, are you transforming?"

Uh, nope. Just bein' a lizard.

Another thing I've noticed is vocabulary--particularly, the word "retard." Normally, I do not use the word pejoratively (although I have been known to use it semantically and people don't realize it and get offended), but in settings where people use it as such (again, at work), I notice myself using it.

This bothers me.

To some extent I think I'm doing it unconsciously, or at least chameleonly, but I still don't think that really excuses it. But to people who use it pejoratively, there is a major difference between saying "that's stupid" and "that's retarded." Interestingly, several synonyms for "retard" were also once "legitimate" (those are ironic quotes, FYI) terms for the mentally ill: idiot, moron, lame, etc. But where I want to talk about semantics and the evolution of words, most people want to just get their point across with "retard." And I really don't know where that leaves me.