M&Ms (or Smarties) Autism Day Meme!

Seen at a comment left at Wyatt’s Blog by the tao of fish:

And remember to have a packet of smarties some time today (it’s a new ritual for the 2nd of April…). You must sort them before you eat them, and you must eat them in a specific order of your choice. Those are the only rules.

I’m not in a country that sells Smarties*, but we do have M&Ms, which I hope are an acceptable substitute. Bede sorted mine for me, and in fact fed them to me, one by one, in this color order: red blue brown green yellow orange. That’s all the reds, then all the blues, and so forth.

*Smarties here are a horrid little candy that consists of long cellophane wrapped tubes of sugar pills, and we mostly only eat them around Halloween.

11 thoughts on “M&Ms (or Smarties) Autism Day Meme!

  1. Ah, thank you, of course they are called M&M’s on your side of the world. Thanks for supporting this really important campaign… 😉

  2. I eat my m&m’s two at a time in pairs of matching colors. When matching colors run out I have to give the rest of them away. I’ll eat a bag today. 🙂

  3. Ahem. Some of us actually do not find American Smarties to be horrid. (You will find us bouncing off walls everywhere … )

    teehee

  4. I love smarties! Yes, the american kind. But I can’t find gelatin-free conversation hearts anymore. 🙁 Used to like those, too.

  5. Yep, I like convo hearts too. The sugar free convo hearts (DD is diabetic) rock. NECCO wafers, though? Vomitrocious!

  6. I was under the impression that I was the only person in the world who sorted M&Ms by color before eating them.

    This is very reassuring to me.

    I eat them two at a time, and when I eat two of different colors (which I do when I have an odd number of a color, because desire for sugar trumps desire for aesthetic order), there is discomfort mixed in with the sugary satisfaction. It is alleviated somewhat if I can think of a significance to attribute to the combination of the colors (such as a logo).

    How serendipitous that I should have been eating M&Ms on M&M Autism Day!

    (my husband is reading over my shoulder and shaking his head)

  7. Oh, boo! I missed M&M day. Well, I’ll just have to eat two packages today (fun size) to make up for it. 🙂

    I always line up all the M&M’s in stripes by color (brown, red, orange, yellow, green, and blue), noting how many of each color I get. Then I eat the excess of each color until all colors have the same number of M&M’s. Then I eat all the browns (’cause brown just isn’t as pretty as the others), all but one of the reds, all but two of the oranges, etc., so I make a triangle (I may have to reorder the colors if there are too few blues, etc.). Then I eat one of each color so I have a smaller triangle. I keep going till they’re all gone.

    No, I’m not autistic, but I’m a math geek who likes to look for patterns in things — and my brother’s as autistic as they come. Go figure. 🙂

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