r/autism_utensils

I have two of these die-cut forks with no pattern at all. I bent both of them like this to help me eat :)

I was recently diagnosed autistic, and I'm still discovering things I've done for years that I never really stopped to question.

This is my fancy spoon.

I make jewellery, and I use it for scooping beads out of my storage boxes. Technically, almost any spoon could do the job.

But it couldn't.

If I misplaced this spoon, I genuinely think I would spend two hours looking for it before I could carry on. Using another spoon wouldn't feel like a reasonable substitute. My brain would just be stuck on: find the spoon.

The strange part is that the opposite is also true.

There are perfectly normal pieces of cutlery in our house that I massively dislike using. They work. There is nothing obviously wrong with them. But something about the weight, shape, balance, texture or just the way they feel makes my brain go: absolutely not that one.

I'm really interested in understanding why something so ordinary can become so specific and important.

Is it mostly sensory? Familiarity and predictability? The way an object becomes associated with a particular task? Or several things working together?

I'd also really like to see everyone else's version of this.

It doesn't have to be cutlery. What's the completely ordinary object you own where other people would say, "Just use another one," but you know that another one simply isn't the same?

Bonus points for pictures. I want to see your Spoon™.

I would like to submit this spoon I found to the autism community for grading because what on Earth is this???