Friends
In an email to a friend recently I wrote about something that happened at a car dealership and I thought I would share simply because I was reading it today and felt like I was going to blow coffee out my nose from laughing so hard, I don't know, maybe you would have to have been there. However, I included a couple other things I thought were interesting too that I have shared through email or blogging :
I am sending you a video of the car dealership I was in when I was talking to you- you don't get to see the lunatic, drunk dude trying to tell me that I looked "Just like my niece" like twice.
You know, once is okay. Twice and it's like your hitting on me.
I almost expected a Mariachi band somewhere to start playing....
I mean, I was so angry, of all the days for me to have to bring my car, why, why did it have to be the day that they were having their "HUGE BLOW OUT OF 09 CARS!" I tried to be nice about the homeless, drunk guy, but I was nearly ready to ask him why he was talking to me? (I know, rude…Couldn't help it, I was annoyed as it was) And that was before I talked to you; after I talked to you, I was thinking I was going to be able to leave because they had pulled out this loaner car for me, but a couple of things had to be done before I took the loaner car???
So I was staring out the window into the garage watching them do virtually nothing and this little, tiny 180 year old woman who had dragged her husband down the stairs into the waiting room (and had gotten mad at him for nearly falling because she was dragging him down the stairs) started talking to me because I got too close to her. I can't think of any other reason than that. (Other than her husband -who was likely 220 - was unable to carry on conversation in a meaningful way anymore). Any who she talked about her car and then she talked about her inability to remember where her hearing aide was and then she talked about the school systems and how she had been a teacher for five years. And then she told me about her granddaughters divorce and how her grandson-in-law was heartbroken and told them that he would really like to keep in touch with them and how rotten her granddaughter was.....And then about that time my loaner car was ready...Thankfully.
And it about killed me because before I could get in my loaner, their car was finished up and my loaner had to be moved so they could leave (which meant I had to wait even longer to leave; which ticked me off even further because they had gotten there after I did)...And I saw them get into their almost new SUV and struggle to see above the steering wheel and struggle to manage to drive away and I thought...."Muther of Todd! Why is someone who is 180 years old and barely able to hear with a hearing aide and is beginning to lack the ability to connect socially with other creatures of the human species, driving something like that?"
And we wonder why they are fishing senior citizens out of lakes, rivers and ditches…And why they are blazing into farmers markets and killing innocent bystanders.
_____________________________________________________________________
Sorry, I'm not getting into a bed that some random stranger that's getting paid less than they ought, is getting into simply to warm it for me. I have a hard time allowing myself to be massaged by someone that I didn't have a long meaningful relationship with or that didn't at least buy me dinner first.
I have this feeling that-like most services that bigger hotel chains offer-this one will be scaled down in third world countries to mean that the resort's owner's kids will come in, in their shorts and t-shirts and climb into your bed with sandy feet and warm it up for a Peso or Jay, depending on your choice of third world country.
<Insert Mariachi band here>
I know how that is, I crack sometimes under pressure too....
Police Investigating Shanty Break-ins in Otsego County
and the story starts like this:
Shanties are being broken into in Otsego County, now several ice fishermen are missing equipment.
Now here's my thing, fishing shanties in and of themselves are not by any means permanent structures, if they were they wouldn't survive the lake becoming a liquid again. So honestly, how hard would it be to break into one? Bigger than that why would you leave your gear in there? For one, the lake could go through a warm up, the ice could crack and melt and your stuff would crash through and be underwater. And it's like leaving the keys in your car and the doors unlocked, in a big city and believing no one will bother it.
I mean come on!
*sigh*
Family
When Booga was small and I was going through the process of finding someone to diagnose him…. (Because I had a hard time getting someone to give me a confirmed diagnosis of Autism) I went from doctor to doctor trying to secure a firm, solid, diagnosis. I was pretty sure I knew what I was dealing with, however, I had to get a doctor to say, it was what it was, otherwise no one could really treat him, or apply appropriate teaching techniques, or a host of other things that could be an opportunity for him by being diagnosed correctly.
So I learned how to quickly fill out forms at the kitchen table. I learned his social security number by heart. I could tell you every test, every medication, every therapy tried on him. And I had gotten to the point where the crying was intermittent. It happened when I filled out forms that made me remember his early toddler years and made me relive in vivid detail all the signs and signals that lead me to believe that something was terribly wrong.
So one Sunday afternoon while the chaos burned around me (which was- and still is- the constant state that was my parent's house on Sunday afternoons) I sat at their kitchen table and began filling out another form for a neurologist that I would see down state the next day.
No one, aside from a parent of a disabled child, knows what it is like to fill out one of those questionnaires. You sometimes feel as though you are opening up a wound in your own heart with a dirty, dull carving knife and twisting it around. Every emotion that you felt at the moment you were having this event happen, swells up inside of you and before long you are trying everything you can to hold back the tears.
Now, in my family, unless someone has died, you don't cry. Unless you are a wuss, and you don't want to be a wuss in my family, so if at all possible you leave your crying for when you are alone or in the car, or at a funeral. So our funerals are full of people in my family, crying for not only the loss of a loved one but for every painful thing that has happened since the last funeral. (To this day if I cry in front of my husband because of a song, or because I am stressed or because of a movie, I feel like I should be ashamed of myself-which is why I don't like Country Music.)
So here I sat in the kitchen, playing back the videos in my mind of all the things that Booga had gone through in his life time to get to this point and all the pain came back and I felt myself start to dissolve.It was about this time that my teenaged niece, Karin, came in and happened to glance at me, trying to be stoic and failing miserably. I could feel the tears trailing down my face, just like I do right now. (Thankfully no one is home but me.) However, I couldn't hold them back and I was very angry that this doctor was so insensitive as to make me tell him the story of my son's life. How dare he make me cry!
Just about the time I was ready to gather the papers up and move into some room where no one could see me filling these things out and falling apart at the same time, my niece came around the table and sat down next to me and put her arms around me, and held me for a few minutes, and it was then that I let loose. I didn't want to but I did. It was a lot of things and not only the fact that I was writing down these hideous memories that was driving me to allow myself to cry, but it was also the fact that finally I knew someone in my family actually knew that this was racking me emotionally and that this was one of the hardest job any parent had to do.
Its one thing to admit your child is sick because they came down with Leukemia or had gotten Polio or something like that. It is another thing entirely to wonder if this thing that has happened to your child might be your fault for something you did during your pregnancy or that is genetic or that may affect them for the rest of their lives, like it will be with Autism and not know what it is…You can't help but wonder if there was something you could have done or if there was something you could do right at the moment. You are not to the point where you are finally okay. Where you can go, "Okay, this is who he is and that's okay."
I was always worried my family would shun Booga because my family is full of very educated, opinionated people. It was after this that I realized that my family was full of people who were going to love Booga anyway. And that Booga would educate them in a way that no amount of classes would.
My nieces and nephews, my older son and daughter, grew up doing papers on Booga for college; they considered careers in psychology specializing in special needs because of Booga. They defended special needs people, sometimes physically, because Booga is in their lives. Their understanding of this special human being has enhanced their lives to make them even better at what they do and who they are as adults. I'll never forget the sound of my niece Bethia's voice as she walked toward my parent's house and saw Booga standing in the yard.
She yelled his name and greeted him with such happy anticipation that I knew that he never had to be worried that his cousins wouldn't understand or love him.
Even when he dumped all the fish food for Micheal's fish into his fish tank and at Micheal's confirmation party, and Michael had to do an emergency cleaning of the fish tank. Even then I knew it was going to be okay for Booga to be Booga and that they would love him anyway…Michael would just have to keep the door closed or put the fish tank higher or something….Laugh Michael, it's funny….
I can't help but think that only good has come from him being in our family and there is no other family I can think of that would treat him better or love him more than this one. If you are to be born into a family full of love and acceptance, then there is no better one than this one…At least that is my opinion….
~There is a certain pleasure in weeping. (Ovid).~
0 comments:
Post a Comment