Big Daddy Autism

I was recently hospitalized. Nothing unusual about that. My stays at these lovely places are so common place that the family has fallen into a comfortable routine whenever I go. This is good because Griffin is deathly fearful of Emergency Rooms. He believes that even talking about one will somehow impede on his self-determined life expectancy of 93 years. Even if it is me, not him, visiting the ER.

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So our hospital routine usually involves Mrs. Big Daddy swinging the car in front of the ER and slowing down just enough so I can roll out and into triage. She then occupies the kids until I am admitted to a real room and they come visit. Griffin clearly does not enjoy these visits, but he tolerates them better than the ER.

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On my recent visit, the ER was really crowded and it took over 12 hours for me to push through and get admitted to the ICU. Yay overcrowded ERs!! Maybe due to the vomiting and pain I suffered, I forgot my phone when we set off from home.  I have a hospital-to-go bag always packed and ready.  But my phone is usually the last to be stowed since I use it every day.

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Mrs. Big Daddy had no way to get updates on my status and became concerned. (She’s sweet like that.) So, over Griffin’s strenuous objections, the family needed to come meet me while I was still in my tiny ER cubicle.

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When they arrived, Griffin went straight to a chair in the corner to ride out the visit. Mrs. Big Daddy and Lil Sis quickly got the low down and prepared to leave. As they were going, I knew I’d be lucky to even get a grunted, “Bye” from Griffin, but I reached out my hand for Lil Sis to hold. Just to let her know I was okay, but mainly because I like holding her hand.

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As my hand was outstretched, before Lil Sis’ warm little hand could reach it, I felt a big sweaty, clammy, floppy, dead fish of a hand plop down in mine. Unbeknownst to me, Griffin had darted across the room and wanted to be a part of the hand holding. It seemed like his way of letting me know that he was scared – not just for his own life expectancy but also for my well-being.

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Lil Sis joined the hand holding and for about 10 seconds, I felt as though I was not ill and could just walk out the door with them, hand in hand in hand. But they left and I stayed.

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I didn’t wipe Griffin’s sweat off my hand for hours. But, unrelated to the hand holding, I did go back to vomiting and writhing in pain fairly soon after they departed. It wasn’t quite as unpleasant as before the hand holding, though.

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Griffin’s elevator obsession is odd, but, thanks to the internet, I am confident he is not alone. Hundreds of people video themselves riding elevators and thousands (like Griffin) follow them on You Tube like 1 Direction fans.  Captain Elevator, Diesel Ducey, and others religiously post their elevator adventures and kids around the world watch repeatedly. Over and over again. Repeatedly. Over and over and over and over and over again.

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While I knew there were a bunch of kids (and adults?) on-line who shared Griffin’s “hobby”, I had long wished there was one nearby so Griff could have a friend who shared his interest. Maybe even have a play-date where they surf the web looking for videos of the elevator in the Engineering Building at University of Texas – Austin Campus.

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Little did we know that such a potential friend exists in our own neighborhood.  During a conversation out back where the parents of the special needs kids used to congregate to wait for early release, Mrs. Big Daddy discovered that a boy, we’ll call him Kevin, who had been in Griffin’s grade and many of his therapies for years, was also a huge elevator aficionado. He liked many of the same You Tube posters and enjoyed riding real elevators with his family on the weekends. Bingo!

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Mrs. Big Daddy and Kevin’s dad conspired, on the spot, to tell the boys the news and watch as they broke into an avid Captain Elevator conversation much like “typical” boys would carry on if they found out they each loved Ironman or Thor. As soon as the boys emerged from school, the respective parents shared the exciting news and nudged the boys together.

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Neither boy could care less. I don’t think Kevin said a word and Griffin looked off into the parking lot as he gave a half-hearted, “Hi.” After about ten minutes of the boys standing next to each other without so much as acknowledging the other’s existence, the experiment was aborted.  We tried several more times over the next few weeks. Nothing.

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When Griffin got home after the first interaction, he went straight to his room to check if Captain Elevator had posted any new videos. I suppose, less than three miles away, Kevin did much the same.

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Both my kids and I have dark brown eyes. Mrs. Big Daddy has gorgeous blue eyes that sparkle when she smiles. She smiles a lot because I am friggin funny.  She blames me for the laugh lines forming around those beautiful eyes.  But enough about her and her pretty eyes. This story is about me and Griff.

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Like many kids with autism, Griffin avoids direct eye contact. Like many 46 year old married men, certain ample chested neighbors make me avoid direct eye contact.  But I digress. What were we talking about? Is it warm in here?

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Every now and again I like to mess with Griffin and ask him what color he thinks my eyes are.  Forgetting about genetics, chances are pretty good that, every once in a while he would guess correctly. He never does. Even if I was looking directly at him earlier in the conversation, he always guesses blue. Then I make him look me in the eyes and we both have a good laugh when he discovers, for the five thousandth time, my eyes are dark brown.

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The other day, on a lark, I asked him what color his eyes were. He’s fifteen. He brushes his own teeth and dresses himself in the morning. He washes his face (occasionally). He has seen countless pictures of himself. I figured he had a pretty good shot at this one. Nope. First guess? Blue. I didn’t correct him.  I just told him to go look in the mirror. He returned with a giant smile on his face and the correct answer.

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He then proceeded to talk about the cold snap in Missouri in the 1930s. I’m gonna ask him again tomorrow. Odds?

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Griffin is more obsessed with talking about his own health than Richard Simmons and Jack LaLanne combined. The thing he is, he is all talk and no exercise or dietary restraint. Irrespective, he takes his health seriously. A great example of this is a recent father-son outing to Steak –n- Shake, that bastion of healthy eating!

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The milkshakes had arrived and the food was on the on the way. So, all was good with Big Daddy and Griffin. Then it happened.   He started to panic and blurted;

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“I will not die! I will not die! I will not die! I will not die! I will not die!”

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Since milkshakes are a regular part of his diet, I was surprised that he would, all of sudden, be concerned with cholesterol or triglycerides.  But no.  Once there was a brief break in the hysteria, I ascertained that his fear of immediate death was brought upon by getting a tiny piece of the straw wrapper in his mouth.

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Yup, the kid who eats Doritos by the case and used to dine on dirt, was now convinced his time in this world was about to end because a miniscule piece of paper touched the inside of his mouth. Though I was able to calm him down a bit, he spent the next several days wiping his tongue ferociously.

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I’m still not altogether convinced that he believes he is out of the woods from the accidental straw wrapper consumption. We are monitoring the situation closely.

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Although the Big Daddy Clan’s religious affiliations range from heathenism to secularlism to pantheism and beyond, we want to wish you all –>

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