A Tale of Two Sandals

   The internet can be the best of places, the worst of places, .. etc. etc. For every heartwarming story of friendship and generosity, there's a horror story about greed and depravity. This can be especially true of the buying and selling websites such as Amazon.com, eBay, or Craigslist. Often times in search of a good deal, there's a big chance of running into someone unscrupulous. So I'm very careful while shopping on the 'net.
   A few years back, I picked up a really nice pair of sandals for Tim at the local thrift market. They were the thickest soled sandals I had ever seen. Turns out they were especially designed to be exercise sandals. Expensive ones. But i didn't know that at the time.
   Tim loved them. Tim is especially fond of being able to wiggle his toes, so he adores wearing sandals. Even during the worst days of winter we were hard put to get him to wear "real" shoes. Most of the time he wanted to wear his sandals with socks. When it was feasible, we let him, but wearing them almost every day for three years, They started to show signs of wear.  Those specially designed thick springy soles started to come apart, and the leather and stitching began to fray.  Knowing how much he loved these sandals, I recklessly promised to get him another pair of the same kind.  Then I did some research on the brand.
   Everywhere I searched, they showed up no less than fifty dollars a pair, and even then, it seemed to only be women's sizes available. I was stunned. How was I going to explain this to Tim? He does not do well with disappointment, especially when it's about something he really treasures.  So I ventured into the online auction sites, looking for a deal. I have a fair amount of experience buying and selling on them, but I'm always leery of being taken for a ride.
   I have several friends who have horror stories about the problems they've had with proxy paying services, like ING Direct P2P, or Paypal. Especially ones that are directly associated with the auction website. I've heard a lot of stories of people retracting payments, or falsely claiming refunds.  I've never had any of these issues myself, but it's always best to be informed. At least with most of these services, there's an electronic record of transaction with details that can be referred to in case of fraud. However, Tim is only thirteen, and not responsible enough to use these himself. This was a problem, because he suddenly declared he wanted to buy them himself.
   I had purchased a money order from our local grocery, for another reason and didn't end up needing it. The grocery was being weird about returning it, even though it hadn't been filled out, or separated from the bottom portion.  So I had this money order I couldn't use, a fussy, autistic teen to placate, and a pair of incredibly expensive sandals to find. Why not just deposit it at the bank? Because I don't have one. We live pretty hand-to-mouth, and there have just been too many extra fees in my past experience. So a bank won't cash it, the place of purchase wouldn't refund it, and I'm the owner of a forty dollar piece of paper.

    Enter Peter. As a former VIP at the actual sandal company, he had previously bought a bunch of overstocks, and imperfectly made products, and squirreled them away. He was now selling them at amazingly low prices on a popular auction site. He had a good selling history, and no complaints lodged against him, so I shot him an email.  He was offering a pair in the perfect size, in fantastic condition, for half the price of anyone else. They were missing a decorative button and has a fingerprint-sized stain on the interior leather. Who cared?! Not Tim! Best of all, the auction was ending in less than 5 hours, and the price with shipping would be almost exactly that of my poor, unwanted money order.  He responded in record time, to let me know he would be willing to accept a money order, as long as I understood that he would have to wait for it to clear the bank, which would slow shipping.  I expressed my gratitude, told him a bit about Tim, and agreed that was fine. I bid on and won the auction. I exchanged a few more emails with Peter to get the addresses right, since we weren't using the standard check-out service of the site. Then we had a holiday weekend. No mail.
   First thing after the holiday, Tim handed me his saved allowance, and "helped" me fill out the money order, write a note, address the envelope, and then he put it in the mailbox.  He immediately began asking if his sandals would be here tomorrow. After a bit explaining, he understood that they would be coming later.
   "Two hours later," he asked after a while.
   "No sweetie, maybe a week, or ten days."
   "That's too long! I want it to be faster!"
   This conversation was repeated a few times that night.  Imagine my astonishment when a package was delivered the next day in the official brand-name box, with not only Tim's new sandals, but a couple of exclusive limited edition socks from the same company.
   Peter had sent me a note, saying he had been thinking about Tim, and decided to mail the sandals before I had even mailed his payment, and included the socks as extras because he thought Tim might get a kick out of them.  I admit, I cried a bit. Tim rejoiced.
   "Wow, my sandals came faster, Mom!"
  The kindness of a relative stranger, in a market that is prone to scammers, had made my day, if not week, and made Tim incredibly happy.

Tim wanted a picture taken immediately in his new sandals.
Despite the cold weather. At least he wore socks.

   So for all you tl;dr -ers. Someone was awesome on the Internet and made Tim happy. His name is Peter, and he has my gratitude. Thanks Peter, you're one in a thousand. :)

Cupid Shuffle

   Tim's school has a neat program called the Davis Difference. Kids volunteer to spend time hanging out with the special needs students, helping them feel included. It usually meets an hour before any major "party" so they can have a fun little get-together before all the noise starts. Friday's theme was Luau. In the 27 degree weather. They said dress summery.

Tim's idea of  luau wear. I eventually managed to get him to
"loosen up" and unbutton his top collar button.

   The Davis difference party had little games and snacks in a smaller classroom. Tim was greeted by several friends, and ran around introducing himself to every girl he didn't already know.

"Hi my name is Tim, what is your name?"

  I had to encourage him to talk to the boys as well, and to get into the games. He was perfectly content with just sitting in the back reading a college dictionary.

"These are my boy-friends." 

Tim made a few goals on himself before he got the hang of mini-foosball.

Magna-darts, Tim says he made 7,500 points.

Then we went to the actual luau. There was a dance, of course, and watching Tim jump around 

with his friends was great. There were several dances with choreographed dance steps that everyone really enjoyed. Lots of jumping. One was the "Cupid Shuffle" and another the "Cha-cha Slide".

Now jump two times!

In the same room as the dance, they had a green screen set up, so you could put on luau props, (grass skirts, panama hats, leis, etc.) and have you or a group's picture taken. Later, you can pick out a vacation background to insert instead of the green background. Pretty neat. 

Tim picked out the lei to wear.

  In the cafeteria there were popcorn and snow-cone stands. Tim got a cherry snow-cone, I had blue raspberry. Well, it was more like crushed ice in a cup with wayyyyyy too much syrup.  We laughed at how they made our lips blue and red.  A few more dances and it was time to head home for dinner. Tim was happy, he got to wear his sandals, got to talk to girls, and jump around. Also, cherry coke. Bonus!

Davis Difference

Feet forever!

   Tim likes feet. Even when he was really young, he liked to hide under the blankets and look at my feet. He used to play with my toes, and couldn't sleep unless he had one foot touching some part of me. He also used to beg his Grandma Suzi to take off her shoes when she visited, so he could check out her feet too. Now he talks about women's feet, watches YouTube videos of people walking barefoot in the snow, keeps asking girls at school to take off their shoes. He's been begging for years to be allowed to walk barefoot in the snow. He even draws footprints in the snow instead of making snow angels.  
   We recently bought him a pair of Fila Skeletoes shoes, so he could leave barefoot prints in the show without actually having cold feet. So far, he seems to like them, but they have really thin soles, so his feet do get cold, and you can't wear traditional socks with them. So he still wants to wear his sandals. With socks.

Camouflage doesn't work well in snow.

   More and more, I find myself harking back to when Tim was much younger and comparing his actions then to now. A lot of things seem to have carried over, or at least evolved from behaviors of his babyhood. He was always very good with spelling, and letter recognition. In fact, he spelled words before he said them. His first spoken word was "guitar". These days, he can read complex Japanese characters, as well as simplified Chinese, Korean, and is currently teaching himself Hebrew. He's taught himself all of these using books, comics, and the Internet.

Tim claims this is my name in Korean

   I've heard that autistic children can sometimes be hyper-sensitive to touch, texture, and physical contact. These days Tim seems to crave hugs and attention from me, but avoids his younger siblings. High fives are always acceptable, but hugs from "the littles" are forbidden. He prefers sleeping on the floor. We had a nice bed for him, but he would rather be on a futon. I think he feels steadier, more grounded when closer to the, well, ground. However I've seen him climb and enjoy jungle gyms and ramps, and have fun swimming, which is definitely not touching ground. So much of him is still a mystery.

Not a mystery; Tim is a ham for the camera. :)

"Can you make it non-fiction, pleasey-please?"

   Tim has a very literal mind. Sometimes he has a lot of trouble separating fact from fiction.  He didn't really start to "play pretend" until he was about six.  Lately we have had some trouble with him wanting desperately to make something he's pretending real. It's a bit difficult to explain why it's not real just because he wrote it. Many things, from being able to drive at fourteen, to his "laws" of his room, are absolute in his mind, because he wrote them down, sometimes hundreds of times.

AKA The One Hundred Commandments

   Words are very important to Tim. As I've said in previous posts, he doesn't internalize his thoughts at all. If he thinks it, he says it. So we hear about whatever he's thinking about. Many times he writes down what he's thinking about, especially if it's something he really, really wants. Tim also believes he should be in total control of his life, and the world. He tries to realize this control by writing what he wants, and declaring it a "law". So often we are shown long lists, or even booklets he's made of all the things he wants. Everything from "hurting people's feelings is against the law," to "I want the weather to be nice."
   We have to be very careful of what we say, and how we say it. One problem we had early on was "bad words". Of course in common parlance, this usually refers to cursing. It was confusing for Tim because how could a word be bad? What did it do to make it bad? Break the law? Did words go to jail? So in our house, there are no "bad words".

Was it a villain?

   We had to re-think the term "bad word". Okay, there are no real bad words, just inappropriate words. Or inappropriate times for certain words.  Like birthday parties, or grocery stores are not the best place to start hollering about bodily functions. However, if you are at home, and stub your toe really hard, it's okay to yelp "damn" or another appropriate exclamation.
    Sometimes, we have disagreements about things Tim has written. Just because he's made a sign that says "Walking barefoot in the snow is healthy," does not mean we're about to let him tramp out into the winter streets without footwear.
 

"I want it to be easy."

 Tim is in seventh grade this year.  This is the first year he's had to struggle with school work. Up until now, he was breezing through the actual paperwork. He has special classes for physical education, and the arts. Much of his classwork is specially designed for him to help him in his specific goals for the year. ( It's called an IEP. ) This year, I've been hearing a lot of "work is hard," and "I want it to be easy," when I ask him how his day was.  I recently found out he pretends to be asleep ( including fake snoring ) when he doesn't want to do an assignment.

I doubt they allow pillows in school.

   Tim has big plans for the future. His current timeline reads something like this: high school, college, achieve "professor of genetics", invent real Pokemon, become president, change all the laws he didn't like when he was a kid, second term, be a policeman, retire, live to be 1000. Big plans. So whenever he starts on about hard work being, well too hard, I remind him of his plans. "Tim, if you don't learn at school, you won't be able to create Pokemon."
   Working is hard. So Tim has decided that everyone should be paid to have fun outside. A googol amount of dollars a day. It's rather impossible to explain that there isn't that much money in the world, or that if we earned that much, the economy would be in the toilet. "Oh, apples are on sale! A dozen is only 7 Million dollars today!"  He does understand money on a simple level. He knows how much his allowance is, and if he saves it, he can buy something expensive. He saved for two years to pay off some library books he destroyed. During that entire time, he pinched every penny.

That is waaaaay too many zeros.

Tim loves to save his money. Whenever we are shopping and he asks for something special, I tell him, "Sure, it's your money."  His response is usually "Oh. I want to save my money. Use your money to buy it for me."  I usually decline this offer.

"I'm too smart to think!"

 Having a teenager is an adventure. Having an autistic teenager is an epic adventure. 

   Timothy was born in 1999, back when people worried about the shape of their abs, Y2K, and the cost of land-line long distance calls.  Thankfully, those issues pretty much fizzled out over the last 13 years. Tim is a new and interesting worry almost every day.

First day of Seventh grade.

   Tim is very vocal about his likes and dislikes. In fact he talks a lot. Repeating favorite phrases almost like a mantra. He seems to think if he says something as often as possible, as emphatically as possible it will become true.
   "I want to lower the eligibility to drive age to 14," is something I hear at least three times a day, if not more.  He has opinions on what he thinks he should be allowed to do (everything) and is not afraid to talk about it as loudly as possible.  So getting him to quiet down and listen is a tough job.  How do you explain why it's not appropriate to ask girls at school if he can look at their bare feet, when he's shouting, "I want it to be appropriate!"

Looking up "interaction" in the dictionary.

   Often, repetition is not only the symptom, but also the cure. Or at least a treatment. Tim at least knows what I'm going to answer his statements with, because I'm careful to make it the same every time. The repetition of my answer has at least helped him in remembering what that answer will be. That does not mean he doesn't still make his statements. Or that he has changed his mind from his original beliefs. Just that he understands what Mom's answer will be, when he drags the statement out again.
   This also does not mean he won't argue his point. He will defend his ideas, in the most bizarre and convoluted ways. At least, they seem that way to me. I'm sure they make perfect sense to him. That's really the whole problem. He thinks so differently.  Not wrong, just different. Sometimes I think of it like this. My thought paths run along straight lines most of the time. Picture a street map of downtown NY City.

   Tim on the other hand, is more like, say a street map of downtown Boston. If you want to get from point A to point B of the map, you can do it. The streets connect, but it may not be as straight forward a path as it would be for me.

   So understanding the way he thinks is an uphill battle. Getting him to understand something the way I think it is something like this:

   What seems straight and simple to me confuses him, because it doesn't follow the paths his mind has defined the world by.  What seems redundant or backwards to me is perfectly clear to him, because he has shaped his thinking around how he sees the world, which for him has connections in places I just don't see.
This doesn't mean we can't communicate. Just that sometimes we have to re-think how we communicate.

A literal XD if I ever saw one.

   Laughter sometimes bridges the gap. Often something I say seems hilarious to him. He'll laugh and laugh at what I might see as a lukewarm joke.  Often he'll say something in complete seriousness that sounds so off the wall that I can't help but laugh.  So while driving around last night with him babbling next to me shotgun, I hear all kinds of things about his newest obsession. Space and Time. More importantly, Tim's ideas about new stars he has "discovered" (completely made-up) and how long people should live. So this star he's talking about is supposedly "halfway to forever, according to the cosmic clock that will strike midnight at the end of the universe." After a half dozen repetitions of this phrase, I ask him to "think about it in your head without saying it with your mouth."

   "Oh," he says "I'm too smart to think." Instantly my annoyance is dissolved into amusement.  I think about what he says, and how it effects not only me, but the rest of his family, people around him, schoolmates, teachers, strangers.  I should find a way to share this, the hard times, and the laughter. Not only as a record for him to read someday when he's older, but with friends, family, and anyone else who wants a peek into a slice of life with a teenager with autism.

   And this blog was born.