Sensory: I have a noticeably lower ear-pain threshold than most. Not coincidentally, I have a talent for music. DW has significantly lower tolerance to bad odors than normal. Not coincidentally, she's a talented chef. DD8 displays the sensory sensitivities of both of us.
I also had a coworker who was clearly a "true peer," and he had significant sensitivities to office lighting. He had to insist on a special dispensation to wear a ball cap, or he suffered headaches.
Emotional: DD8 and I have often been described, depending on the situation, as "sensitive" or "explosive." It was DD's emotional intensity that eventually directed DW into learning about giftedness, because she was initially worried about what else was going on. DW also assures me I scare the crap out of her family when I'm angry... and sometimes that "angry" is better categorized by me as "irritated." I don't have behavior issues when I'm angry, so it's not like I shout in people's faces or overturn chairs. It's just normal voice and body-language cues I'm sending out, but apparently mine are a lot louder than normal.
Being understood: I'm pretty flexible, and try to meet people on their own level, as HK described. But at the same time, I refuse to masquerade as someone I'm not, so while I typically use vocabulary and grammatical constructs that anyone with a high school diploma could follow, there is still a significant difference between that and common usage. I also tend to get excited to share knowledge about some subjects (and hope that the person I'm talking to can add to it), which can lead me to sounding like a college lecturer at times.
I would not expect anyone to see anything strange in this, and nobody talks to me about it, but DW reports she's often pulled aside and asked, "Does he always talk like this?" Sometimes people misread it as trying too hard to impress, or just being a demeaning jerk. But DW assures them that, with an eyeroll and a sympathetic smirk, yes, that's how I always talk.
