♫ What do you do with a problem like The Booga? ♫

Lord help you if you take something that Booga is writing away…Even if you just want to show it to someone.
He is the same way with his artwork but not to the same degree anymore.
Sometimes people actually ask if he will draw something specifically for money and Booga loves money. So he’ll do that.

Booga has definite things that are personality quirks that come along with the autism.

There are times he is an eight year old, sometimes when he is thirteen. But, I don’t ever see him as a nineteen year old- ever.

He has specific things he does every day…Like go to the store at school and buy a pop (with sugar, which is verboten at home) and a snack food.
He has to wear his sun glasses and freaks out when he looses them; he wears them even when he doesn’t need to wear them.
He likes base ball caps and trucker’s caps and has to wear one every time he goes out.

Any length of time in a car or truck is accompanied by his mp3 player.
We have to tell him, “Booga! We’re just going to the gas station, it’s gonna take like two minutes….”

Booga also has no filter on his own internal dialog, your going to hear every thought he has in his head. He does the voices of individuals he has seen on television and in the movies. He uses their phrases as a bridge to communication with us mere mortals here on Earth.

At Christmas, his brother and sister bought him a shirt with Darth Vader on it and he walked down the hall saying, “I will never wear it”, out loud right in front of them…Again, no filter.
He can’t stand Star Wars and will plug his ears and run down the hall to his room if you are watching it on the family television.

There are certain movies, characters, and movie stars he completely; and for unknown reasons, have determined are bound for the eternal fires of hell.
Some of these include: Julie Andrews or Mary Poppins and for some reason, The Blues Brothers…..
Apparently only Julie Andrews AKA: Mary Poppins is bound to water-ski across the lake of fire. We don’t know why, maybe there is something we don’t know going on here? Perhaps he knows something we don’t? Who knows?
The disdain for the poor Blues Brothers I think has to do with his hatred of the local ice cream place near our home. They have two Blues Brothers statues in their ice cream shop and he associates those figures with that place. He would rather go to Dairy Queen in a nearby town and get soft serve because for some reason Booga can taste that they don’t serve the same kind of soft serve as Dairy Queen.

They don’t have fabulous and calorie laden specialties like Death by Chocolate sundae,
Blizzards, nor is there the chance that we might also see a movie ….

One night we were coming home from getting ice cream from The Dairy Queen and since we live near a lake we often like to look at the ducks or “duckies” as my husband calls them.

We slow down in the spring time and check and see if they are paddling around in the swampy areas getting ready to nest.
Apparently this particular night Booga had a movie he wanted to watch on television and we were taking too much time to get home.

As we slowed down to look for ducks he yelled at his father, “Dad! There is no time to look at duckies!”

It’s even funnier because of Booga’s almost manly, nineteen year old voice.

We laughed at him and apparently he didn’t see the humor at his parents sojourn into whimsy.

...And other obsolete observations from God's humble servant...There are creatures great and small...

Wings of gossamer, like a wasp covered in liquid dish soap...


Life begs to go on doesn’t it? It doesn’t want to end…..Not even when it’s time to end.

I was in my office tending to my plants.

This is a particular past time of mine these days because I am getting ready to put in my garden as soon as all fear of frost departs.

Anyway,

I was tending to my plants and I saw a wasp in the window. I considered swatting it with a rolled up Martha Stewart magazine and then thought, “Would I want to be swatted with a rolled up Martha Stewart magazine? Uh…..Pass.

Wasps have a tendency to be one of the angrier breed of flying, stinging insects and could, and probably would, come after me if I went after it and missed it or injured it.

Nothing worse than a hurt animal.

So I waited and waited trying to think up something to knock him down so I could deal with him on my level.

Soap.

I remembered something which I could be in errs about, but it seemed that something about soap took the wings off of insects …..I couldn’t remember everything about it, but it was a chance I could take with small chance of repercussion. So I went in the kitchen and got some dish soap and added a bit of water to it to loosen it up a piece and moved my plants and splashed it on the wasp on the window.

The wasp seemed slightly confused by its sudden immersion in liquid soap. It fell down to my level and I took the Martha Stewart magazine and gave it a good smack.

It fell to the bottom of the window sill.

I thought it was dead and was going to lie in my window and pass into the ether world to come back as a poodle with a grudge or something. Or go to that place in heaven where wasps go…Or is that a special place in hell?

I went out and folded some clothes and came back in to check on the little bugger and it had moved to the corner of the window.

He/She (I didn’t look for girl/boy parts…I wouldn’t know how to do that on a wasp anyway…) was flailing on its back trying desperately to get up.

How did it survive being hit with Martha Stewarts Easter issue?

Holy cow!

I figured it was in the throes of death and for a minute I thought about putting it out of it’s misery but I couldn’t do it.

It laid there desperately trying to cling to life.

And I thought, “Wow, everything breathes, everything that has life wants to keep it no matter how small and insignificant it is; it will fight for every piece of its existence on this plane.”

I left again and did something else and came back and it was gone….At least I thought it was gone and then I regretted not taking it out with one of my pencils.

It was probably making a wasp line for me. (It was a wasp; they don’t make a bee line).

I even changed my shirt like that was going to fool it in some sort of manner.

But it had to be somewhere, where could it be?

I came back in after a while and found it clinging desperately to one of my pot holders (an actual holder of pots that holds plants).

I thought for half a second about dispatching it again with the Martha Stewart Living magazine….However, I got a different idea.

I grabbed up the pot holder and took it outside and let it go on the bench to find somewhere to meet its demise outside my view. I was not going to allow it to simply sit there and suffer. If it was dying it could die where it wanted to die…If not it was going to be the cleanest wasp around.

But it struck me as amazing at how hard it was working to survive. As much as we humans fear death and get crazy at the thought of our own passing, I couldn’t imagine that something with a brain the size of a pin head would be able to comprehend the end of existence.

Whether it was instincts or a conscious effort it astounded me that something that small would work so hard to keep on keeping on.

Life wants to continue even when it’s the end….Life wants to go on….

The strange dichotomy of Booga

I tape movies I have on my DVR. If you don’t know what a DVR is, it’s kind of like TIVO….And if you don’t know what TIVO is, look it up…

I tape them for my two older children that live out of state.
Missy and Chewie are 21 and 23 and live five states away from the state of CHAOS!

Chewie was nicknamed after Chewbacca on Star Wars and Missy was given her nick name before she was even born.

The movie I was taping off my DVR was called “Quarantine” and it was about zombies and fire men and news people trapped in a building under- you guessed it -quarantine.

Booga loves scary movies and when a real scary part came up I would say, “Don’t look!”(I personally don’t want to have to crawl into bed with a nineteen year old autistic man just because he’s scared *shivers*) and he’d hide his eyes under his hands, with his fingers spread like they could cover the worst part of the worst parts. He would sneak peaks through the sloppy masking and I would repeatedly ask him if he wanted to go to his room and watch something else. He just kept putting his hands over his eyes and saying, “No.”

I finally asked him if he wanted to watch “The Day the Earth Stood Still” which is his favorite 1950’s movie (and most recently he fell in love with the version with Keanu Reeves) but he waved me off like Queen Elizabeth waving off a servant who was trying to serve her tea she didn’t want –for the third time.
Go figure.
He also loves to watch the Catholic Mass and The Rosary on the Catholic channel.
And, we’re Lutheran, so…

Being Lutheran is like being Catholic-lite….All of The Savior and none of the guilt.
This is a strange dichotomy (word of the month).

This is what Booga likes- horror movies and Catholic Church services….hmm?

Speaking of words: Booga loves them.
He loves movies and loves to write the words on the movie jackets on pieces of paper and repeatedly asks you to read the words to him. It’s like he’s memorizing them- and he does memorize them. He knows all the actors and actresses in his favorite movies; along with directors and screen writers….His favorite director is Steven Spielberg.
If Booga doesn’t know a movie actors and actresses name he’ll tell you, “I don’t know but I can find out.”
I think he would work wonderfully at a Blockbuster or at any video store.
“Booga, go find __________.”
And he’d go get it.
He knows where every movie is in our house.
I pondered one time where he got the predisposition for movies…. and then when I went into my room one day and I noticed all the VHS tapes on the top shelf in my bedroom and went…. “Oh….” giggle, “Yea….That would be me…..yep.”

HORSE!

Booga often notices horses in a field.
And when he does, he says, "Horse!"
And if there is another horse he says, "Nother horse!"
As if this is something we all should be well aware of...

We took him to the county fair last year and he was fascinated by all the animals and he particularly was astounded by a huge rabbit in a pen and said loudly, "What have you been eating!?!"

More on Booga and the animals later...

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