Dinner Out

Sometimes with my brother it's not all trying to jump out of moving cars, or stripping naked in public places (oh, I haven't written about that here yet? That'll be a whole different blog, but lets just say that when my brother gets upset he tends to strip off his clothes, sometimes ripping off my mom's, or mine, or my sister's, or a complete stranger's, as we try to wrangle him into stopping. Because being naked? In public? That makes everything better. Ask my mom. She looooooves it. She loves it the way I do when people threaten me with larva, or ticks. Little woodland ticks, in my b*#thole. That specific threat was in response to me threatening "Oh I'll show you a bush." Then, "That was the first time I've ever been threatened with pubic hair!" Oh yeah, "Give me a few months, it won't be the last!") (Then some crying.) (Yes, I was drinking, but the crying was from laughing. Mostly.)

Ok, so he's not stripping off his clothes because he likes the feel of the fresh morning market air on his skin, he's usually doing it because he's horribly frustrated and confused and upset, and he's tried all, ALL he can to communicate what he wants us to know. But he can't communicate, because he's autistic and disabled x1000, so he's staring at us, and we're staring at him - both equally frustrated with the fact that we got height instead of the gift of mind reading, because good lord would that help us right now, and height, height didn't get us a pro-basketball career, height forgot to piggyback a little skill with it; and it sure as heck isn't helping the fact that no matter how hard Michael stares into my eyes the answer does not appear suddenly written across his retinas. (Totally freaky but that would be awesome! I'd probably have nightmares and/or scream but I'd still wanna see it like, "Michael say something. . . AAAHHHH!. . . . Ok, say something else. . . AAAAAHHHHH!")

Usually, or at least hopefully, before he reaches clothes-off or jump-out-of-moving-car levels of frustration something will happen, something will click in our brains and we'll remember, or we'll figure it out, and I'll go ahead and dot the 'i' on the grocery list because Woman, you can't spell 'tortilla' without the i dotted!, or I'll run back in the house and grab the Classified section of the paper he forgot in there because How'm I supposed to pick out my mansion if I don't have the Beverly Hills homes for sale section?!

And when our brains aren't in mind-reading mode we rely on his word book. My mom (the mother to beat all mothers, especially when it comes to ignoring the doctors and letting them know her son was going to be able to read goddamnit) made this word book for him, that he carries around and points to things he wants, or uses it to make us sing to him on command. (Who's the sucker now? I'm going to go ahead and say it's probably the girl singing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious seventeen times in a row while in line at the grocery store.)

But the last time we went out to dinner we forgot to grab a word book, which sucks because it's helpful to know that he wants to hear us talk about the Texaco station, or the Arco station and not have to guess at it (What, you don't love gas stations? Maybe not, but say Texaco a hundred times and watch your brother light up with a smile stretching from here to Idaho - you'll love everything about gas stations. You'll even start doing your shopping there in the little mini-marts so you can grab some napkins with the logos on them for him.) Anyway, we forgot the book like I said but decided we were too far to go back for it, and hoped that maybe handing him the menu would suffice. It didn't. He was not fooled. No matter how many of the i's were dotted.

So, my mom pulls out a blank notebook and a pen and we just start rattling off things he might like, and when we say something good he points to the pad and we write it down, thus creating a primitive version of his word book. Or what I like to call, his vacation-book, because in this version it was all just fun things he likes to hear us say or sing, it didn't have anything to do with chores, or jobs, or any of that boring stuff his real book has.

That woman - my mother - is a genius. Because there was no jumping out of cars, and there was no public nudity, it was just pure communicative happiness. Like, he saw her pull out the paper and the pen and was like, "Finally! Now you're on to something people. Now someone get me some milk to go with these tortillas."

Here he is with his makeshift book while my mom still poses the benefits of the menu's wordage.



Finally putting down her menu, Michael lets my mom holds the book and then he asks her things. Lots of fun things that make him laugh, which makes me laugh, which makes E laugh, which makes the people around us start laughing - and the infection of him spreads throughout the restaurant and no one is really sure why.



And here his is admiring my amazing penmanship, and the fact that I love him enough to do the logo for Texaco, AND the logo for GE. I'm so glad he doesn't like Starbucks cause that mermaid girl would be hard to draw on a whim.



So anyway, it turned out to be one of the best dinners in a really long time, for no reason really. The food wasn't anything special, they messed up part of our order, and I sneezed into the community salsa bowl - but the smiling, and the laughing that came from hearing me sing the theme song from Sesame Street eight times before launching into a botched version of Muppet Babies was enough to make all of our hearts swell and burst and flood the restaurant, out into the street with such good feelings that the air around Michael actually sort of glittered. Or glowed. Something shiny.

And then I sang the Mickey Mouse Club. Because he asked me to.