Teen Autism

The Scene: A Boy Scout meeting inside a church hall. About twenty scouts are in attendance, and their parents and siblings, as this is family night. A game, like TV game shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, is in progress. The room is rather boisterous, with people shouting out answers, and the mother of the autistic teen is always amazed at how her son is now able to filter all the sensory stimuli and can handle being in the room. Not only can he handle it, he is participating, calling out answers, exuberantly displaying his excitement when he is correct. His mother is seated next to another mother of a scout, a preteen with Asperger’s. The two boys are also in the same social skills class together. When the game ends and the winning team is the one that the autistic teen is on, he stands up, does a little dance a la MC Hammer, and sings “Can’t touch this!” People in the surrounding area laugh good-naturedly. Suddenly, the Aspie gets up out of his chair, walks across the aisle to the autistic teen as he is singing, and touches him gently with an outstretched index finger. Thwarted, the autistic teen says, “Aagghh!” and sticks his tongue out at the fleeing Aspie.

Their mothers laugh out loud together.

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Friends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.