Wampum

A Busy Afternoon

School has been back in session for a few weeks now. In our county, Mother's Day was August 9. While we had a great time last summer, both my wife and I are relieved to have Bobby back in school.

Bobby loves to discover new objects. Upon finding something new, he will immediately subject it to a number of tests. He holds it in his hand, fingers it, turns, twirls and spins it, all to guage its shape and texture. He will drop it from one hand to another to assess its weight. He tosses it in the air to see if light will shine through it. He smells it. He tastes it. His taste test is infallible. Finding something new, he will carefully place just the tip of his tongue on it. If it is food, he discards it. If it is not food, he eats it.

Dirt, pebbles, tree bark, grass, soaps of all kinds, silver polish, pencils (he eats the erasers first), checkers, playing cards, books, candles, and many, many other things have been subjected to standard Bobby testing. If the testing finds the item acceptable, it becomes a treasure. If not, he throws it to the ground and moves on to something else.

Bobby's propensity for eating non-food items, as well as his habit of makking a mess by throwing stuff onto the floor, requires us to supervise him constantly. That constant supervision wears on us after a couple of months of summer. Let me explain more fully by way of an example.

About a month ago, Deb had some errands to run and our older son was elsewhere. I was on Bobby supervision duty for the afternoon. Bobby and I were having fun when the phone rang. The call was from my office and I really needed to take it.

Now, Bobby is autistic but he is not stupid. He knows that if I am upstairs on the phone, I am not able to supervise him downstairs. As I said hello, Bobby headed in the direction of his room, but soon I heard his footsteps on the way downstairs.

After five minutes on the phone, I knew I was pushing my luck. After ten minutes, I heard the sounds of far too much glee coming from downstairs. I began to extricate myself from the conversation. By the fifteen minute mark, I knew I had make a serious mistake in taking the call. I promised to call them back, hung up, and headed downstairs.

While on the steps, I noticed a strange odor coming from the kitchen. The smell was not unpleasant but I could not quite place it. As I turned the corner, I found that the odor was a mixture of spices.

Bobby, giggling with delight, was holding an open bottle of lemmon pepper. He was pouring it out onto his hand. He sniffed it and tasted it. Finding it food, he flung the spice it into the air, tossed the bottle to the floor, and grabbed another full bottle of spice.

He had emptied our spice rack. About 20 empty bottles littered the kitchen and Bobby was sitting on the floor in a mound of mixed spices.

I took the bottle from him, returned the four remaining full spice bottles to the rack, deposited the empties n the trash, and reached for a broom.

It quickly became apparent that clean up would be impossible while Bobby was in the kitchen. He was having far too much fun playing in the spilled spices for me to be able to sweep. I hustled Bobby off to his room and returned to the kitchen to finish cleaning up.

Now, I mentioned before that Bobby may be autistic but he is not stupid. When he heard me coming down the stairs, he figured that his time playing with the spices was limited. To prepare for the future, he hid a bottle of ground cinnamon in his pocket.

After sweeping the kitchen, I went to Bobby's room. Bobby was sitting on his bed in a pile of cinnamon. He liked the taste and had licked his hands, run his fingers across his face, through his hair, and all over his clothes. His bed, the floor, and most surfaces in his room were smeared with cinnamon. On the bright side, Bobby's room had never smelled better.

I took Bobby to the bathroom and put him in the shower. Returning to his room, I stripped the bed, vacummed the floor, and wiped down the surfaces.

When I got back to the bathroom to get Bobby out of the shower, I found that I had not noticed that someone had left a bottle of shampoo in the tub area. That is strictly against house rules. As was completely predictable, Bobby had emptied the shampoo into the tub (no doubt sampling the taste along the way).

At least the mess was in the tub. The shampoo created a slip hazard, so being careful to keep Bobby in the room and out of mischief, I cleaned the tub.

Who left the shampoo in the bathroom remains a mystery. My wife remembers that I had used that very bottle the night before while giving Bobby a bath. My older son notes that no one ordered him to take a bath the previous night and argues that the chances of a 10 year old boy taking a bath without a direct parental order are minimal. You may think that is suggestive of a culprit, but I think the evidence is far from conclusive. The Swift Boaters claim that John Kerry could not have been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968, because he was actually sneaking a bottle of shampoo into our kids' bathroom. I find that highly credible.

Finally having paid the full price for my 15 minutes of inattention, I got Bobby dressed and resumed our play. About that time, my wife returned.

"How was Bobby this afternoon?" she asked. I really did not want to recount the events, so I evaded her question. "He is fine."

"Good, I am going to start dinner, make sure to watch Bobby, ok?"

A little while later, she returned to ask, "honey, where are the spices?"

"I think we are out."

"We ran out of all of the spices at the same time?"

I still did not want to detail my afternoon. "I guess so."

Deb gave me a hard look, then softened her eyes. "Well, dinner may be kinda bland."

The rest of the evening was uneventful, and eventually the kids were in bed and we could relax.

I was in bed, reading newspapers on the laptop, when I heard Deb turn on the shower. A moment later, she stuck her head out of the bathroom. "Where is the shampoo?"

"I think we are out."

She gave me a very long look then shrugged her shoulders. "Yu'all had a busy afternoon, didn't you?"

Oh yes, we are very glad school has started again.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at August 26, 2004 03:06 AM | TrackBack