[Pincho Paxton]

People are confusing Gary's brain damage for...

1/ Tactics
2/ Winding People up.
3/ A clever Game Plan.
4/ Abruptness
5/ Bad Manners
6/ Deafness (his deafness is not all to do with his hearing. see below***)
7/ Rudeness
8/ Ignorance

Gary's brain damage means that Gary has less filters than most other people. He reacts instantly to situations, he says the first thing that comes into his head.

He doesn't recognise his own rudeness.

When he does realise that he is winding people up, sometimes he likes it. It wasn't his original plan to wind them up, but during an argument he realises that they are wound up, so he feels glad that the are wound up, he knows that he can win the argument this way.

*** He is easily distracted. When we are in a conversation we are focused on that conversation. Gary soon loses focus of the conversation, his missing filters cause a distraction very quickly. This is being blamed on his deafness, but is in fact more to do with his brain damage. Lots of people talking distract him, does not necessarily block his hearing, but block the messages to his brain from his ears. You may notice that movements also distract him very easily, background action. He says "what?" that is not through deafness, that is through distraction. His own thoughts most likely also distract him at times. He has ticks.

Gary's emotions are also slightly lacking in empathy. He doesn't feel what others feel at the moment, but what Gary does is takes time to reflect on what they were feeling later when he has time to think about it. Then he feels bad about what he said, or did. However when he tries to apologise he may get into another argument, because now he doesn't have time to empathise with the reaction to his apology. So for example he feels bad about what he said to Dee, but if he apologises, and Dee has a strop about the apology, then he needs another half an hour to think about that as well.

Putting his hand up... is to keep his thoughts flowing. If he is talking he is flowing. If you interrupt the distraction is like reading a book with the TV on for us.

So when you account for Gary's brain damage you can see that even deafness is not necessarily what you think it is. And a gameplan goes out of the window.