Neurotypical Sharks, Purple Cow Teeth, and Christmas

During an uncle's wake, a cousin with the aplomb of a blown tire announced to a small group of everyone there that I am autistic.  And my first internal reaction was along the lines of "What the fruck?"  At that point in my t.b.i. recovery I was still moving awkwardly and using a cane full-time.  I already felt like a dweeb, a non-typical swimming in a sea of neurotypical sharks-- there are some similarities between the first year of my post-head trauma being and what I imagine to be the experience of some folks who have been diagnosed with Asperger's.

 [Now that the Asperger's diagnosis in the new and upcoming D.S.M. has been removed, I perceive of a riot between the Asperger's Pride folks and the folks over at Autism Squeaks.  I suspect that now people will be even more able to ignore the reality of Aspies as well as the existence of auties that have grown up from the oh so cute autistic kid phase into adults who still have autism and perhaps aren't as tractable.  It's the whole three seconds after a period thing and two seconds after other punctuation thing that I was fortunately never exposed to.  That is to say,  I can understand why some diagnosed teens and adults rebel against that sort of thing.  Just as I understand why the conversation between most N.T.s appears to be stifling and superficial and boring.  But I digress.  My shrink who knows brain injury assures me that the reason why my multi-tasking skills are pretty close to non-existent is because I am highly distractible.  Seems I can't satisfy the stupid word fixer thingy no matter how I spell that word.  So carrying onward...]

I remember being tested as a preschooler.  I even remember where I was tested and recognized the building twenty years later when I went there for a different reason.  I remember my dad remarking once that I had been tested and that "they" had told him that I was retarded.  "She's bright," my dad had retorted disgustedly, "I can see it in her eyes." He left the office dragging me along to our next adventure.  In retrospect, I'm glad it worked out that way.  Her recommendation to institutionalize me fell on deaf ears.  My first words a year later was "Merry Christmas everyone" back in the days when the winter concert was still called a Christmas concert-- actually it was a small private school that I attended (I would have been lost in a big one)-- after the rest of the class had finished singing a Christmas song.  Whether the testing person had said "autistic" or "retarded" really does not matter to me now.  She could have said one or the other I suppose.  My dad always had told me "retarded."  Now my idiot cousin was telling the congregation around her at her father's wake that I was "autistic."  Whatever.  T'was an awkward and angry moment.

During this break right here, I present to you a YouTube video which I did not make-- haven't done that yet-- but which amused me:





Back?  Okay, well.  Sharing U-Tube videos is the blogger's easy way out I suppose.  Let me think about that for a micro-second.  Nope.  Don't care if it is.

I didn't say anything back to my cousin.  After all, her father's dead body was in the room right there.  Her mother was always outspoken to the point of social awkwardness for the folks around her.  That didn't seem to bother her any.  It wasn't terribly comfortable for the rest of us.  My aunt had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, but she showed amazing insight for her condition I've been told.  When she needed a med adjustment, she recognized this and would sign herself into the clinic for care.  She was not able to work but she had three kids (including the loudmouth that I have described to you), kept a clean and organized home (something which has totally escaped me since the t.b.i. but I was never real good at that before-- now it's worse), and had a husband (my dead uncle) who adored her.  I had figured that my aunt's super direct-ness was due to her neurological condition (uh, everything is neurology) but perhaps I was wrong.  Seems my idiotic cousin had the same trait in spades.

My dad was showing definite signs of cognitive decline back then.  The car accidents hadn't started up yet.  But he was in the condition that folks describe as "vague" that happens just a bit before someone is carted off to the doctors to find out that the something that is wrong is called dementia.  What kind of dementia is a bit of a conundrum at first and sometimes for years afterwards...ah, but I digress again.  He showed up for the wake shortly after that, towed along by his then third wife.  After less than a half hour, they left.  Another aunt said, "Oh, she keeps him from the family."  I'd known for awhile that she had done her best to keep him from me.  I hadn't known that anyone else had noticed it.  But then again, I had never asked or talked about it to any of them.

I went to see Dad today at the assisted living home.  One doc here has stubbornly insisted from the first time he seen him that Dad has Alzheimer's Disease.  The rest insist that it is indeed Lewey Body Dementia.  I hadn't seen any signs of the Alzheimer's myself until this summer when he was hesitant about stepping on a black mat at the diner.  But since then, his cognitive decline has also become more steady and noticeable.

Dad had been using toothpaste to hold up his dentures.  So I got him the right "glue."  I said to him, remember when you used to recite the Purple Cow rhyme to me?  His face lit up immediately.  "Yes!"  I recited the little rhyme to him.  "I never saw a purple cow.  I never hope to see one.  But I can tell you this right now.  I'd rather see than be one."  [Shel Silverstein I presume.  Many of the little ditties and songs my dad recited and sang to me as a child turn out to be from Shel].  "Well, the purple cow got big purple teeth," I told him.  "The tube for the glue is purple."  I could tell I had lost him at that point.  He was still chuckling over the rhyme.  At any rate, he smiled and put the denture glue in the proper place by his soaking cup.  I love my dad so much.

He kicks me out when he's had enough.  He will tell me that it's getting dark [I don't drive much at night anymore thanks to my t.b.i. induced photophobia and resultant problems with glare at night and every other time] or that my dog is getting cold in the car or that my husband wants me home or that he wants to get back to hanging with the crew.  That makes me smile.  Because I know he is enjoying having his own space and his own life separate from mine.  Today he was elected the president of the Resident Council.  Something that I figured was inevitable since his nickname is "the Mayor."  I left singing an altered rendition of an old song, "Happy Friday, Mr. President" and a promise to bring the Christmas cards on Monday for him to sign.  He wants to do this and so we do.

Now this whole Christmas thing.  I am an atheist.  If you wish me a "Merry Christmas" either because you celebrate it or because your employer tells you that is what you will say after waiting on me, that doesn't hurt my atheist sensibilities.  You aren't cursing at me or telling me to go to hell or endeavoring to take a swing at me or shooting me with your gun.  Folks who know me well and who choose to will wish me a "Happy Solstice".  One friend in recovery calls me every solstice and equinox to wish me a happy one.  I appreciate that but I am not on a campaign to get the whole world to say "Happy Holidays".  It seems almost dishonest to me.  For you to say, "Happy Holidays" if you celebrate Christmas.  People that I don't know well have started once again to say "Merry Christmas, I won't see you til after it" and hesitate.  "For crying out loud," I tell them, "It doesn't diminish me as a human being if you say 'Merry Christmas', that's fine."  If I sneeze and you say, "God bless you," I figure well you have the freedom to practice your religion or the freedom to carry on that tiny superstition that the soul leaves the body briefly when one sneezes.  Whatever.

The whole public school fiasco is a different ball of wax.  There's something called the Lemon Laws or possibly the Lemmon Laws-- not quite sure of the spelling there-- which is the legal reason why public schools are supposed to be kept secular and religious instruction left to the parents or guardians as it should be.  That too is a subject for another blog-- perhaps radical sapphoq-- if I ever get done with my investigation into the troubled teen industry.  

I've been devoting hours and hours every day to that one.  Every time I think I'm done with the first section, some more convoluted stuff surfaces.  I am both amazed and horrified.  And some more stuff surfaced tonight which I have to sign off and alert some folks to.  Now that I've zipped all over the place, I am signing off and heading out.  Ta ta folks.  Till next time.

sapphoq on life coming up for air.