Slap on the head for the hand maiden
I trundle through the day with all the usual hic-cups, the known and the familiar.
“I am done.”
“Oh good. I’m glad you’re finished.”
“No! I am not done done, I am done.”
I look at him covered in dot to dot paint spots, a rare achievement for those battling with tactile defensiveness. I doubt if his tolerance will last much longer, especially as the paint begins to dry and flake and itch. For the moment he is still at the soggy stage of body painting, but it’s none the less impressive for that. The paints are easier to manage in this format, where fine motor skills are thin on the ground.
“Well are you finished or are you not finished.”
“I am not finished I am done.”
Well really! This pernicketiness over words is beyond the pale! Must he always be so American! I remind myself, again, how lucky I am to have ‘non-verbal,’ autistic children, who choose to communicate with me verbally.
“Alright, fair enough. So you’re done. Shall I clear away and help you get cleaned up?” Tis truly a foolish woman, who offers a child a choice. This tenacious adherence to ‘done’ rather than ‘finish’ is so tedious. How can I take them all back home to England in December, if they insist on bellowing “I’m done” every five minutes? It will give my mother a fit of the vapours!
“No! I wan you to look at my done.”
“?” I am unaware what ‘done’ might look like. “Er which…..what ‘done’ do you want me to look at?”
“Dis done.”
“Which done?”
“Dis done on my tum…yes, on my tum. It be rhyme like dat.”
I look at his tummy. He extends it to it’s maximum capacity, no doubt to aid my bifocaled vision.
“See?” I look. I see brown paint on pallid skin.
“Um….?”
“It be done. I be mix.”
“What did you mix?”
“I mix dah red and dah blue and dah yellow and I bin done make done!”
“That’s called brown dear, not done.”
“Nooo. Not brown. Brown be dark like chocolate. Dis be light brown, dah tan or dah done which it dah light.”
“Oooo you mean ‘dun’!”
“Dun?”
“Yes, you’re absolutely right, it is dun coloured.”
I hear his father stumble in from the garage and turn to advise him of the turn in his son’s tertiary colour wheel, but he trips over something in the utility room and curses, “damn! I stepped on a lance!” My immediate thought, is the vision of several gallons of blood. My knight in shining armour has just fallen off his horse and impaled himself.
But of course I so rarely get these things right.
Stumble it!
October 17th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Where did you get that paint? I would imagine it will be a big hit in 6mths or so.
October 18th, 2007 at 12:17 am
this morning my husband went off to work dressed as a pirate - complete with eyepatch and cutlass. the autistic girl that he looks after at school loves dressing up so they are in for a fun day!
October 18th, 2007 at 1:32 am
‘a fit of the vapours’ Wow its been a while since i heard that one!!!
October 18th, 2007 at 3:43 am
Words and their meanings - will we parents ever really understand?!?
October 18th, 2007 at 5:01 am
Good on you Maddy! I would have never have gotten to “dun”.
October 18th, 2007 at 6:33 am
I agree- excellent investigative skills! I don’t think I would have gotten that one. And I must compliment your boy on his patience wit you- Jaysen would have screamed, thrown the whole arty mess at me, and proceeded to meltdown by the second or third round of me not understanding.
October 18th, 2007 at 6:38 am
I loved this! I’ll have to show these amazing jousting knights pictured to my son, who loves all things knightly.
October 18th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Dun? Holy cow.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:35 am
OK, I don’t know what floors me more, the fact that he kept telling you it was “dun” and knew it, or the fact that you figured it out! Damn, you’re good, Maddy! BTW, good thing ad didn’t draw blood…or is it your other son that’s squeamish about that?
October 18th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Good grief! Dun, tan? Loved the way he stuck to his guns and dunned you until he won. Congratulations to both of you.
October 18th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
I might never have deduced the correct meaning of “done” - “dun”. Good work, mom. I love that he is not swayed from his convictions.
BTW, glad your knight is alive and well. LOL
October 18th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Oh, that’s awesome. Just wait ’till you’re stewing the stew or roasting the roast.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
So, what is Dun, anyway???
October 18th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Me, being a neurotypical with only neurotypical kids, and a horsey person, looked at the lovely picture of the clearly Iberian horse type and wondered…..
Sheesh, how did the whitter offspring twig that dun / grullo may be the foundational color of horses?
October 18th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Mayhap another word that might be added here is…..wench….no, best not to mention that! We like dot art too but take care to keep it on the paper.
Charlie has few white shirts, too.
October 19th, 2007 at 8:40 am
We have the dot paint, but I’ve never had one of my kids use it on themselves! Might be an interesting experiment to see if Little Bug would even try it…
October 20th, 2007 at 12:25 am
where on earth did he get ‘dun?’ Like most Americans of my generation, I learned all the fancy colors from Crayola: burnt sienna, periwinkle, but I don’t recall dun. And I loved the precision of it. Priceless.