My Special Kids

I am going to blog about my children now. They are very special children, more special than yours, even. I am their mother, I know this to be so.

My daughter is so cool. She is a better person than her father or I. She is healthy in all ways and came with bonus features. The greater being, whoever, installed an amazingly well calibrated moral compass in this child. When she was five years old, her friend Maggie, the Teller of Tall Tales, found a pack of chewing gum in the very special place in the car armrest where such things can be safely stored. She picked it up and started unwrapping a piece. DD told her not to, that pack of gum belonged to her brother. Maggie replied with logic – well, he’ll never know, he’s not here. Exactly, DD, said, he’s not here, therefore we cannot ask his permission to take a piece of his gum. Maggie was not deterred, DD became distressed. Here Maggie, she said, here’s my gum. You can take TWO pieces of my gum if you promise to leave Brother’s alone.

I don’t want to make her out to be a martyr. She’s not. Nor is she a wallflower, doormat, or nerd. She is just inherently good. I am afraid I will corrupt her. And she can pogo for 31 minutes straight. Easily.

My son is a pioneer. One of the first in a wave of newly diagnosed high-functioning autism spectrum critters. Nobody knows what to do with him – including his parents (yes, 50% of which is me). He would provide stiff competition in the Most Annoying 12 –Year Old Boy World Championship Finals. He would get a good run from his autistic friends, the Perseverator, the Echolalist, and The Boy Who Is Not Necessarily Finished Experiencing His Food Once It Enters His Mouth. But for the past six months my son has been training quite intensively. He is strict with his daily regimen of sticking his face into others’ and making loud groaning noises even when one is trying to converse with the nice car salesman, spitting on the floor, letting doors slam into people’s faces no matter how elderly or frail, interrupting conversations with howls or maniacal laughing, perseverating about hippopotami, touching his anus and licking his finger, rolling around on the floor in public places such as the lobby of the AMC movie theater, spilling, licking his shirt, chewing on his pen cap even though he’s been told 171 times in the last hour that he will pay for the replacement orthodonture with his own blood should another one of those metal things pop loose.

It is a generally accepted truth that a redeeming side effect of autism is that the afflicted also exhibit a special genius, the “savant” in idiot-savant. Hmm. The HFA, neuro-atypical boys that I know are no dopes and can get by with As and Bs in school. However, they are not geniuses nor gifted in any way, except in being blood pressure de-stabilizingly annoying.

Do I need to qualify this by saying that I love this child deeply, passionately, painfully, with every frazzled nerve-ending and worried molecule and the whole of my sometimes broken heart? I hope not.