Whitterer on Autism

How much longer does it take the average sized, larger dog, to pass safely through a door [which closes automatically] with his tail intact, than a narrower tailless small human?

It’s so easy to count to four.

“Can we are have Margaritas today?”

“Um.  I don’t think I’ve ever made one.”

“You are make dem?”

“I can try.  We’ll look it up on the web and make virgin ones.”

“Only one?”

“No several.  Maybe alcoholic ones for us grown ups and non-alcoholic or virgin ones for you youngsters.  Can’t be that difficult.”

“There are being two kinds of Margaritas?”

“I think there are lots of different kinds but they’re not really my kind of a thing.”

“But you are like them?”

“What’s not to like?  Are they traditional for Americans on Independence Day?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you learn that?  I’d have thought they were more Mexican than American?”

“No dats Mexican Hats.”

“I don’t think anyone will be wearing a Mexican Hat in the street parade.”

“You are not being wearing a Mexican Hat.”

“No I’m not going to be wearing a Mexican Hat.”

“No!  Nobody is wearing a Mexican Hat!”

“It’s o.k.  I’m not arguing with you.  I’m agreeing with you.  You’re right no-one will be wearing a Mexican Hat.”

“I am not want to talk about Mexican Hats.  I am want to be talking about margaritas.”

“I thought we’d already sorted out the margaritas?”

“No.”

“No?  What have we left out?”

“I’m gonna wear the Margaritas and the other people are gonna be wearing the two other colors.”

“What other colors?  What do you mean ‘wear?’”

“I’m gonna decorate my hat with Margaritas coz they are being white.  You’re gonna wear Mexican Hats coz they are being red and we need a blue flower too.”

“Ah! Marguerites!  The flower, not the booze.”

My children like many other people’s children, rarely, if ever, volunteer information about how their day went -  it’s like pulling teeth, but every once in a while they go all verbal on me.

“D’ya know what mum?”

“What dear?”

“Today we had science.”

“Did you indeed.  And what did you learn?”

“We learneded about the male body.”

“Ah.  What did you learn about the male body?”

“Males are different from females.”

“How true.”

“We learneded how males differ from females.”

“How interesting.  Maybe we should talk about this after dinner.”

“D’you know the biggest difference is being?”

But he’s on a roll.

“I do,  like I said, later.”

He’s unstoppable.

“Females are different from males because they don’t have a bladder.”

“!”

Driving home in the car, we parents talk over the chorus on the back seat – Goober Guy at 50 decibels times three – about how few people wear beards in the United States, or our part of the United States, very locally and quite recently, and whether or not this might differ from our old home, at a much older time, or not.  Our findings are inconclusive.

After parking on the drive my daughter tells me that on my next birthday, she will be buying me a lifetime’s supply of earplugs, minus my current fifty years.

Which is when I hear the boys:-

“What is it, a bird?”

“Not a bird, they said beard.”

“What is a beard?”

“A beard is hair on your chin.”

“What’s hair under your nose being?”

“A moustache.”

“Like Mario?”

“Yes –  but you can have both, a beard and a moustache, that’s called a combo.”

And the earplugs?  Not a rush job.

We bimble gently along in the car on our way home to a chorus of ‘I’m gonna tell it to your face,’ the current mantra, quite brain numbing.

My son calls from the back seat,
“What’s it mean?”
“You tell me, you’ve been singing it for seven minutes now.”
“No, the other?”
“The other what dear?”
“Robert Firmly.”
“Do you mean who is Robert Firmly? I don’t think I know anyone by that name. How did you meet him? School?”

I notice a great deal of friction coming from behind me as the car vibrates, and commuter traffic fills every inch of the road in all directions.

“No. I mean what does it mean, Robber Firmly?”
“Robber? Someone’s a thief?”
“No.”

I ignore the shudders in the car and keep my eye on the police car as it cruises down the hard shoulder with the lights flashing and siren blaring.

“Where did you see this…er…Robber Firmly?” I ask as another wave of shudders rock the car and an ambulance takes the same route as the police car before it.

“I don’t know,” he says.
“O.k. – try me again.” A fire truck comes bowling along to make up the threesome as the doors seem to judder and I notice the rear view mirror quivers.
“Rabbit Firmly.”
“It’s no good. I haven’t got a clue. Try again.”

After a hefty sigh because his patience is wearing thin, as well it might, he gives it one more shot, “Rubbit Firmly,” he articulates with great clarity and just enough volume. I check back over my shoulder, just a quick peek to see him holding a Bakugan ball- a toy – in one hand while the other whizzes back and forth in a blur.

“What are you doing to that ball?”
“I’m rubbin it so the secret code will be revealed.”
“Ah! So you’re rubbing it firmly. Of course.”
“I know rubbin but I don’t know firmly.”
“Well that’s easily explained,” I sigh with relief, “firm is like hard.”

I wonder how it is that he can know ‘reveal,’ whilst ‘firmly,’ remains a mystery, because splinter skills are fascinating? The traffic begins to disperse, we pick up speed, commuters funnel on through and we glide off at the next exit.

He leans forward and grabs my chair, either side, “I’m gonna tell it to your face” he says, to the back of my head, “Good job Mom – you got there in the end.”

I step out into the kitchen– my skills in the gentle art of persuasion begin flag – I need a deep breath before starting the other three double digit multiplication sums. I estimate that if it’s taken us one hour to complete six questions, it will probably take another five and a half life times, squared, to finish the last three.

My daughter peeks out at me from a curtain of hair, ear-buds firmly in place, so she yells in a friendly manner, “Wouldya like me to finish him off for you?”

“!”

“I mean…shall I help him with the last ones?”

“Would you dear?”

I can’t disguise the leaking pleading in my voice to my twelve year old.

“Sure. You make supper I’m starvin. And I am so sick of salad.”

What a deal.

What a break.

My savior, and dinner’s salvation.

Time to cook.

I beat about the kitchen but I can’t help but earwig as she takes charge, loudly, as her approach differs markedly from my own – it’s amazingly effective as she tells him how it is.

“Stop shoutin 4 x 7 over an over again! You know it alrighty. You know them all already. Y’just need to shut up and listen to yur brain.”

They sit on the sofa together; she – relaxed with soft open limbs – he – knotted like a pretzel, eyes squeezed shut, teeth bared, laboring to lay an egg, willing the answers to come. It’s agonizing, and that’s just the watching.

I stop watching and annihilate the potatoes.

I listen as her voice takes on a maniacal tone, “Just imagine that each answer is a tiny little chick and if you get the answer wrong…… the chick DIES!”

I drop the potato masher and dash into the family room, aghast, as my son tumbles off the sofa to writhe on the carpet. I open my mouth to speak and notice that he’s chortling, tears of silent laughter. I look to my daughter – “It’s o.k. Mom – it’s his favorite quote from the Simpsons.”

I park the walking wounded on the sofa and hand her a tablet because the icy-hot has failed to relieve her stiff neck as she lies on the sofa with a mircro-waved heat pad draped around her shoulders. I return to supper preparations for the starving millions and homework help for the tardy one.

Her younger brother, the only free agent, is always sympathetic to those with physical impairments, so he pipes up.

“Why is she?” as he pirouettes in the kitchen, because constant frenetic movement is an aid to speech production.
“Slept in a draught I suspect.”
“It gave her wind?” he asks, as he throws himself onto one counter and then bounces off the next, pin ball style.
“Um… no but it was a bit windy in the cabin so that’s probably why her neck hurts now.”
“Why she has it?” he says, pogoing the entire length of the kitchen, first forwards then backwards.
I try and think of other ways of packaging the essential elements of the message – sleep in draught, neck exposed to the cold, camping cabin chilly – but I’m struggling… “Er… she..the muscle…”
“No. Why she burps a lot?” he adds in time with his full-body jumping-jacks.
“I don’t think she does much, not by comparison to you two at any rate.”
“But the pill?” he continues, spin to the right, stop, spin to the left, stop.
“The pill is for pain.”
“They don’t make you burp a lot?” he says swinging his head down between his parted legs to speak to me upside down, his hair brushing the floor like an upside down cuckoo from his clock.
“She doesn’t have indigestion she has a pain in the neck.” The emphasis is purely accidental.
“Oh.” He stops abruptly, as if I stole his key. Clearly my tone is too sharp and windy with irritation.
“But it says,” he bleats as he peers at the jar, “Oopsie. Oh no it doesn’t,” he whispers. “Never mind!” he yells at fifty decibels charging from the room.

But I catch him mid dash, “it doesn’t what?”
“I thought it said ‘I burp often,’” but now I see it doesn’t.”
I turn the label around, run my eye over it again, “Hmm…yes, I can see how you might mis-read Ibuprofen.”

Some of us will occasionally admit to a grain or two of OCD, but for some people, sometimes, it can be paralyzing.

On a lighter note, I noticed that parents such as myself, long for their non-verbal children to speak – when or if they eventually do, I still don’t understand them.

***

I find wads of sticky tape balled up and stuck to the wooden jam of the pocket door – nasty lethal finger choppers.

I seek out the culprit.

“Why is their sticky tape all over the door dear?”
“S’not sticky tape. It’s Scotch tape.”
“Right. So why is there Scotch tape all over the door?”
“S’not all over the door, s’jus a small ball.”
“Right…So…why is it there? Were you trying to lock the door?”
“Er…no.”
“It’s very important to tell the truth you know. The reason I don’t allow locked doors is…because of…er…um…earthquakes, right?”
“Right.”
“So why?”
“To stop my ears.”
“Stop your ears from what?”
“From the door jam bang.”

***

Although sometimes, I think he’s teasing me.

“Mom!”
“Yes dear?”
“All the peoples in dis program are ….calm…..mediums.”
“Are they? What is a calm medium?”
“Itsa…itsa…Ker…media.”
“Um…try again?”
“I know…they’re all Canadians!”
“Canadians? Are you sure?”
“Er…no… they’re all…?”
“Yes?”
“Comedians!”

Which “childhood expression” to “pick” I wonder?

So I thought I’d change the focus from my typical topic to an atypical one.

The first comes from my elder daughter, back in the days when I was a single parent when everything was overwhelming. [hindsight really is a gift!]

Back then she was growing up much too fast just like many children of divorced parents. We read a great deal together, from the board books, baby books, picture books, onwards and upwards to independence. I had never liked ‘baby talk’ and so I used the same words and style of language that I do with everyone else. She had a great vocabulary as is so often the case when children are surrounded by adults: my parents, my siblings, my friends.

The details are hazy, so many years later but I remember that feeling of cozy harmony, the intimacy between parent and child when a family consists of only two units. If a parent is solely responsible for a single child a devotion develops such that communication is instinctive, words are hardly necessary – a separate world of understanding.

Madonna and child – perfection.

Maybe it was bedtime, perhaps we were at the beach, or playing hang-man? Yes! Hangman, all those years ago…

“That can’t be right dear?”
“It is.”
“I think you’ve left the ‘h’ out by mistake.”
“It doesn’t have an ‘h’.”
“Weren’t you trying to spell Bahamas?”
“Bahamas? No, it’s bajamas.”
“What’s bajamas?”
“Bajamas… you know… you wear them when you go to bed at night.”

Now if we’d lived in America then, no such confusion would have arisen, that’s why we stick to PJ’s now.

A few decades prior to this exchange, I had my own mishap with my mother, along quite similar lines. Being the dunce of the family I progressed from comic books, to Enid Blyton, to Agatha Christie and I’ve been stuck in ‘whodunnit’ mode ever since. On one particularly balmy summer’s day, [in England!] I was lying on the grass at my mother’s feet, devotional dog that I was, as I read the latest blood curling thriller some 45 years after it was first written. My mother sat in a deck chair, knitting, as only mother’s can, as she fought with a particularly complicated lacy pattern, which involved a great deal of counting and under breath cursing. Yards of fine yarn were testament to the unraveling of mistakes.

“Mum?” [I was then English]
“Hmm?”
“Can you tell me what this word means? I see it on nearly every page.”
“What is it?”
“Determinded.”
“Determinded? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Oh.”
“Can’t you guess from the context?”
“No.”
“Read me a sentence.”
“Hermione Herringbone was determinded to defeat her tormentors.”
“Are you sure it isn’t…Spell it for me.”
“D.E.T.E.R.M.I.N.D.E.D.”
“Really? How odd. Here, pass it over, let me take a peek, hmm, lets see…’Daphne Dalrymple was …’ that’s not ‘determinded’ that’s ‘determined.’”

What can I say? It’s genetic.