Big Daddy Autism

Having a 15 year old autistic son is a tough road to travel. But sometimes it is as sweet as it can get. Especially around the sweetest of all holidays, Valentine’s Day.

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A few nights ago Griffin asked me to be his valentine. He had already asked Mrs. Big Daddy, Lil Sis and probably every 8^th grade girl in his school before me. But I didn’t care. How many dads can say their 15 year old son wants to be his valentine?

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I got him some chocolates in a box shaped like a tiny soccer ball. Best part? He doesn’t like candy so I get the chocolates too!

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Have happy Valentine’s Day!

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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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Today is Griffin’s 15th birthday.  The boy is getting huge and I fall deeper in love with him every day. I could spend this time looking back at how far he’s come and our hopes for the future.  But what’s the point?  The past is already gone and the future is a mystery. So I thought I’d post an old cartoon which pretty much sums up Griffin’s transition into adolescence. Enjoy as Griffin will enjoy his cheesecake later today.

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Get used to it!  Big Daddy is over at dadditudes again today.  What can I say, they run a classy joint over there and this gives me an excuse to virtually go someplace else.  Technically, I’m still lying in bed.  But it seems like I’m being all active and stuff.  I posted Sound of Sunset over there.  It’s a rewrite of one of my more poignant pieces that ran on this blog a few years back.  Bring some Kleenex and come back here tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll be here, maybe I won’t.

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Do you guys need my stupid guest posting cartoon or can you figure out that you just need to click on the link above to get my brillian post at dadditudes?

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Oh just click already.  And leave some comments so I get invited back.

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I’ve mentioned before the buddy program which affords Griffin the opportunity to “play” flag football and soccer.  Right now we are in football season and Griffin is loving it.  He actually was involved in a fake handoff last week which is still the topic of many a conversation.  These conversations mainly consist of Griffin laughing at how silly the whole thing was.

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When you think about it, the whole idea of sports is silly.  But for kids it is fun and a way to get some exercise and kill some time.  However, the idea that professional sports are a multi-trillion dollar industry is as befuddling to me as a fake hand off was to Griffin.  Seriously, it’s just a bunch of grown men running, jumping and kicking or throwing some sort of object. It’s not that important or even interesting. (Women’s sports, especially Maria Sharapova, is a completely other story to be handled in a different post.)

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For my less savvy and European readers, a fake handoff is a play where the quarterback (the guy who leads the offense of the team) pretends to hand the ball to a running back (the guy who, duh, usually runs with the ball) in an effort to distract the other team such that the quarterback could then do something else with the ball while the other team fruitless chases the running back who does not have the ball. Got it?

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Last week Griffin was the running back in the first ever fake handoff in his team’s history.  It was great.  As is the whole game.  I would surely pay a hell of lot more to watch 50 autistic kids play flag football for an hour than watch one second of some spoiled tall guy throw a ball at someone or something. Seriously, it’s really entertaining. I think I’ve described it before as being a lot like watching a bunch of NT kids try to herd cats. Is LeBron even half as fun as herding cats? Didn’t think so.

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There is, by the way, nothing silly or frivolous about watching Maria Sharapova. Sometimes I even enjoy watching her play tennis.

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