“If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism,” Dr Stephen Shore.

Or perhaps if you have met one person who is an introvert then you have met one person who is an introvert. Or some combination of the two, or someone who is just self contained. Simple enough.

Or perhaps if you have met one person who is selfish then you have met one person who is selfish. Or some combination of the three. But then again the last may have no relation to the first two. However it may sometimes be mistaken for them.

I was in the self check-out at the supermarket yesterday when a plastic kick-ball rolled beneath me and went right out of reach under the table. A young lady in her twenties retrieved it and stopped to ask me if I wanted to play kick ball with her? 

Well at the moment I can no longer imagine myself running in a field kicking a ball so I said, "No, not today."

Selfish.

It would have been generous of me to pay some attention to her for that brief moment.

"Yes! that would be a lot of fun."

On the other hand, paying attention is a bit of an art. An art I am not practised in. A positive response, worded badly, could also have been the wrong kind of attention, and that would not have been so generous.