Excellent subject - thank you!

I'm glad you brought this topic up, Dissident, as it has crossed my mind a number of times and I know there are at least a few in the community here for whom it is a very relevant issue. Of course, it's indirectly relevant to ALL of us, so I hope everyone reads your post!

The usual social customs for people my age are total rubbish and I can only stomach them for about 0.4 seconds before I give up. But "usual" is far from "all", and I have found a lot of people my age with whom I get along with wonderfully. Usually this is in a 1-on-1 setting rather than a group setting. And in fact, I have friends who have the same distaste for these common social customs, but who haven't got any convenient label to "explain why" they feel they don't belong or are out of place of whatever. And their needs are certainly no less than yours or mine, I think.

As for me, I disdain labels of any kind, but I also feel dramatically more at home around kids (read: girls) (well, okay, some boys, but few) - they flip an invisible switch on in me and suddenly I'm better at talking, laughing, being clever, being creative, having fun, etc. and the interaction is totally first-rate. It gets me in the "in the moment" mode, where I'm not thinking or reflecting but just spontaneously reacting and experiencing it all.

With some practice I've learned how to partially flip that switch on my own, even without kids around. In other words, adults suddenly find themselves dealing with kid-mode Furcifer, and they don't even know what hit 'em. @_@ And I've also recovered the same form of passionate interest applied to various hobbies, leisure activities, and creative pursuits that I had as a kid.

That process isn't yet finished, and to be sure, interacting with kids is still an essential component of the puzzle. But once I've learned more I would love to do some meta-analysis of whatever internal (of primary importance) and external (supplemental importance) tricks helped me, so that I might share it with folks here, and perhaps with people in general, because I believe all people can benefit by being able to approach and react to situations like a kid would - and that spending at least some time around kids can provide a useful boost or dust-off to anyone's mind and spirit. (And if the kids are energetic and require a lot of moving around to keep up with, the body also!)