Eau, good point about Dan Aykroyd! I think Charlie Brooker is one of us btw, loads of stuff in his columns about feeling like an alien compared to the human race, social anxiety etc, plus you know how addicted to screens he is...
My son doesn't 'get' jokes and tends to cry as he is confused by them. I'm training him up though and I feel we are making progress. Sharing humour is really important for social bonding type reasons. I also think its a good stress release to be able to let go of tension.
Athena, yes I'm exactly like that. You could chart how well my life is going by how upset I get at trivial things.
Unfortunately lots of jobs involve communication/people. Personally I think I do better when I know what I'm talking about. Can you look at your skills, special interests etc and try and pick a field you would feel confident in. I am on the scrap heap career-wise because of ds but previously I picked a job I wanted to be in, in the future, and worked backwards. What traineeship/experience could I start doing alongside paying work/degree to get there. Better to be on the road to somewhere you want to be than just stuck. And autistic traits can be a positive eg attention to detail.
I came on to say I'm reading up on SPD (for ds) and lots of things are jumping out that have been discussed on this thread about organisation skills, concentrating, memory etc to do with visual and auditory processing issues. Also says SPD is commonly mis-diagnosed as ADHD. Might be worth a look for anyone trying to work out what is going on with them. Out of Sync Child has lots of specific examples of behaviour rather than the vague 'do you like X' type question discussed above.