Four Score and a Pirate

Well it seems I'm temporarily between full time employment at the moment due to various health issues, and so I've been neglecting my rambles a bit lately; for which I do apologize my dear reader. None the less, in looking back over some of my rambles I may have given the impression that having a child on the autism spectrum is nothing but trials and tribulations. Believe me, nothing could be further from the truth! Indeed, both my wife and I tend to have rather severe differences with at least one autism group that treats autism as a horrible disease that desperately needs a cure. My son may be wired a bit different from you and I, but but he's NOT sick or broken! Indeed, if someone could "fix" Wills tomorrow and make him completely normal I'd have to say no thanks.

Baffling? If you've never been where I am it probably is. Of course I would love it if Wills suddenly gained the ability to communicate with us clearly and could expect to support himself like his neuro-typical sister will, but it's his many quirks and foibles that make him what and who he is. To make him "normal" would remove all of that and he would no longer be the son I love more than life itself. Here, let me give you some examples of what I'm talking about.

Many, many young children will, if given a chance, will watch a movie they like until the parents are ready to throw it out into the street and run over it with a tank. Well Wills hasn't out grown that yet, and a couple of weeks ago the movie that had his undivided attention was the SpongeBob Movie. Next thing I knew he had made himself an eye patch that almost any optometrist would be proud of and was running around being Silence! the pirate, a pirate so mean he made his parrot walk the plank when the parrot ignored the command to be Silent! All in all, he made us laugh ourselves sick with his escapades that day.

Another time he found a YouTube video of a Hienz ketchup commercial where two tomatoes were arguing over the pronouciation of the word tomato until at the end a bottle of ketchup smashes down between them and a deep voice says very firmly Hienz. For about 3 days he kept repeating that commercial until, just as I was about to scream, he suddenly replaced the word "Hienz" with "Blender" and started laughing. Words just can't picture the event properly.

Another example would be his bed. Like many on the autism spectrum, my son has a degree of OCD. In his case, his sheets must be just so and his pillow cases absolutely must match the sheets exactly. If they don't then "something's wrong with my bedroom" and he simply cannot sleep in his bed. Now admittedly this drove us nuts for about a week until we figured out what the problem was. Once we did and made sure he knew where his clean sheets and blankets were kept, well he now changes his own bed when he's not happy with it and he hasn't slept in the family room since.

So there you have it dear reader. Admittedly these foibles of Wills would cause many people to pause, but they make him what he is; and if ensuring his ability to survive on his own meant erasing them I would refuse the "cure". Yes, his autism and his limited options for the future adds a measure of stress to my life that, especially now as I work through my own health problems, I could well do with out. But to change him that much would render him a completely different person and I love my son just the way he is. But for now I need to get back to looking for a job that my health issues won't interfere with, so I bid you farewell dear reader. Until we meet again in this little corner of cyberspace I call my own you take care; and remember, if it's worth doing it's worth doing with attitude!

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