Friday, December 17, 2010

Field Trip

Anthony is off on a community outing today, as they call it at his school.  He's going to our children's museum, it's really fun, especially at the holidays, as they have a giant Yule Slide and I know he'll love it.

He woke up so grumpy and sad this morning but his blanket had fallen off in the night and I think that was the problem.  Mike and I covered him up and I rubbed his sweet head for a while and he fell back to sleep for just about 30 minutes but it seemed to help his mood.

Last night I was at Costco and I saw this mom with two boys.  One, who was walking next to her, was maybe 10 and then the other one, who seemed older, was riding in the cart part of the cart, sort of tapping his fingers.  I thought he probably had autism, Anthony rides in the same place in the cart (he doesn't like to ride backwards) and - well, I just thought he had autism.  I wanted to speak to her, to say "how's it going?" or something but you just can't do that.  FIRST of all, if her kid didn't have autism I think it might be offensive if I asked if he did.  And secondly, you just can't talk to people like that, or at least I can't.  Maybe it's the NJ in me.  It wouldn't bother ME if someone asked me, but I guess I figure not everyone is as nice as I am.  Ha!

I was thinking maybe I'll start making tshirts.  I saw a funny shirt recently that said "Birth Control is for Sissies!", which I thought was funny and I also thought it certainly made the person's feelings on the subject known.  But can I do that?  Should I make a shirt that says "Ask me about my autistic son!"?  Lame.  I wish I could a) know the future and b) read people's minds and c) know the future.

Edited to add, of course they make Autism Mom tshirts.  I like the "Got Autism?" one.  Ha!  That is not a hint, I don't really like tshirts with messages, in practice, just in theory.  

1 comment:

Stimey said...

I know EXACTLY what you mean. I wrote a very similar post a while back about this very thing. We need a secret handshake or something. Sometimes you just want to be a friendly face that says, "I get it," but you can't.