Anyone who is sensitive to politically incorrect things may want to avoid reading this one!!
While Shane was going to Thunderbird, he met a man there who had a two year old daughter. This little girl was so familiar with her geography already, that all you had to do was name a country (ANY country) and she could point it out to you on a globe. He'd say, "Where's Uzbekistan!" and she'd whip the globe around and point to Uzbekistan. "Where's Paraguay!" and she'd spin it around again and stick her finger into the center of South America on Paraguay.
When he came home that day, he told me all about this little girl. He also said that he told the man that we'd feel lucky if we could get our daughter to locate her nose. I looked at Isabel (who was two and half years old) and said, "Isabel...ISABEL. Look at Mommy, honey! Can you show Mama your nose? Your nose, honey. Point to your NOSE. Where's your nose? Your NOSE, sweetie. Where's your nose? WHERE'S YOUR NOSE?" She finally poked herself in the eye.
When I started this blog, I told Shane I was starting a blog about our family and asked him what he thought I should call it. He thought about it for awhile. As he was thinking, I stared at him. I just knew that he was pouring all of his hard earned intelligence and sensitivity into a thoughtful, provocative, and meaningful title for my new blog. He finally looked at me, beaming, and said, "How about The Chronicles of Retardia?" I almost fell off the back of the couch.
Shane knows how to take it right over the edge of wholesome and politically correct and drop it straight down into outright sick and wrong. This is why God gave him to me. To lighten me up. I'm not hard to lighten up. But, when left to my own devices, I get wound up as tight as thread on a spool. Shane smiles all the time. ALL the time. And its not one of those fake perma-grins you occasionally see on people. It's genuine. He laughs at anything that's inappropriate or gross. He's actually brilliant. Give him any test and he'll ace it without studying. I met people at Thunderbird who paid tutors and studied for the G-Mat for two years before they took it. Shane flipped through the book a few times before bed and did well enough to get into Thunderbird on the first try. He knows his I.Q. score but refuses to tell it to me, insisting instead that, "Those stupid tests don't really tell you anything." He's a twelve year old boy inside. He giggles at boob jokes EVERY time. Occasionally, I'll catch him trying to teach Alden how to spell poop, "Okay now, son...it's P-O-O-P."
Shane has people in his family that are institutionalized because of their Autism. And my son Cale, is getting so so so hard for me to handle physically. I don't know what all this means, but I know my mind tends to go to the worst case scenario. The criteria for the agency that I'm trying to get us help through is "immediate risk of institutionalization" and Cale is gonna qualify. I'm very scared. We have to laugh at them or it breaks our hearts too much.
