What's the oldest thing in your fridge?
Jar of Marmite.
I
am faced with a moral dilemma of gargantuan proportions. [translation =
as well as a minor etiquette issue] Tis the season of school wind down
when invitations proliferate. Kindly folk at the school wish to offer
thanks to their volunteers and show their appreciation for inadequate
services rendered. I find this a particularly delightful element of the American psyche. British people generally believe that they have a complete monopoly in the polite department, in both quality and quantity. Yet I do not ever remember experiencing such an outpouring of well wishes for minor services. [translation = although things may have changed in that last couple of decades]
One of my favourite authors, "Mr.Bill Bryson" has also remarked, much more eloquently upon these perceived differences.
I now find that in addition to the above, I, as well as all the other mother’s, have been invited to attend a ‘Mother’s Day Celebration’ in Junior’s class. I am led to believe that the sub-plot to this deal, is cake eating. I have two difficulties here. Firstly, following jaw surgery and an extravagant amount of elastic bands, I am unable to eat solid food. Secondly, even if I were able to eat solid food, ‘cake’ would not be high on my ‘preferred’ list of gastronomic delights. [translation = it would come directly after chocolate covered cockroaches] Whilst I am more than happy to bake cakes, decorate cakes and give cakes away, I cannot even recall when I last had occasion to force myself to consume the dratted stuff.
Cake by it’s very nature suffers from several fatal flaws. Now don't get all distracted here, as I know that the ghost of 'fruit cake' has descended upon my erstwhile little American pals. Perish the thought! [translation = for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me, just the words 'fruit cake' are a cause for gurgles of hilarity on this continent.] Ban the vision of fruit cake and replace with American cake e.g. 'white cake,' or pound cake, especially as the latter is available on both continents and is the same. For those who are not bakers, pound cake is not dollar cake here, as the 'pound' refers to weight, not the rate of exchange.
The
first flaw, is that cake is sweet. This puts it in one of the highest
categories of ‘loathsome.’ Additionally, cake is often smothered in a
wide variety of sweet slime. [translation = frosting or icing, or
sometimes both if you a truly unlucky] Slime of course takes the prime
place on the ‘loathsome’ scale. [translation = slime and sweet
combined, would trump the latter, so truly aversive as to be vomit
inducing]
So
what is a mother supposed to do in such situations? Refuse the
invitation and avoid the whole issue? Attend, but refuse to eat the
cake? Tempted as I am by either or both solutions, I have to swallow my misgivings and attend anyway.
I sit on a chair the size of a Toadstool. To complicate matters still further, all my children are aware that I dislike cake. This particular son, favours chocolate cake with ganache, but never ventures from this preference.
We examine his cake offering. [translation = a muffin the size of Manhattan]“It is dah big!”
“Indeed it is.”
“It is dah vanilla which is being dah white.” [translation = unnecessary, he is clearly bilingual]
“Too true.”
“Dah frostin is dah pink.”
“Quite so, the very worst colour in the entire universe.”
We continue to gaze at the confectionery piece. [translation = joint attention, a rare and truly under valued quality]
“I am finking.”
“You are? Thank you so much for telling me that! Can you tell me what you are thinking?”
“Dat maybe you are not liking to be eating dis.”
“You are such a thoughtful little chap. Thank you.”
Who would have guessed at the depth of his magnanimous nature? [translation = "Sally- Anne" can keep her dratted marbles]
“What we be doing about dis problem den?”
Self generated problem solving techniques! Be still my beating heart.
“Not a clue. A real toughy! Do you think we should throw ourselves on the floor and scream a bit?”
"No! Dat will not be dah helping. I fink we be needin dah compromise."
It's official, 'compromize' is now my favourite word, enough to allow a 'z' to take preference! What has happened to my child? Who has zapped him? What did they zap him with? [translation = undoubtedly self initiated]
“Maybe……maybe I am eating it for you?”
“Really! You’d do that for me?”
“It will be being dah new food for me I am finking.”
“I cannot believe your bravery, and all for me! Thank you.”
I watch him attempt tentative 'eating.' I resist the urge to nibble part of him and content myself with one hand entwined around his middle. He snuggled back onto my lap, his fingers tremble with the paper muffin case. [translation = tactile defensiveness people often hate the texture of paper, especially on highly sensitive little digits] I pull it off for him as he made his attempt and I don't want to tempt fate. The muffin rests on my palm, a plate.
The
tip of his tongue edges out to brush the frosting. He remains like that
for some moments before he slowly retracts his tongue. As he does so a
little electric current courses through his body and mine, but for
different reasons. I break off a piece of the crumb, tiny and hold it
for him. We repeat the exercise.He turns sideways to tuck himself under my chin and wipe his mucky mouth and face on my pristine white T-shirt.
That's it! I'm finished. [translation = done] Now I can die happy. [translation = all will be well]Greater love hath no neophobic child, than to eat cake for his mum for Mother’s Day. [Or any other day come to think of it]
When
I had been in the States a couple of years, I more or less had them
tapped, Americans that is to say, and their funny little ways. They
have lots of funny little ways, a source of great hilarity to
foreigners such as myself. I noticed that quite often, they would have
a box of matches in the loo. [translation = rest room] Being the
knowledgable person that I am, I knew that this was sound evidence of
closet smoking. Sneaky little Americans shut themselves in the loo,
together with the obligatory extractor fan for a quick fag.
[translation = nicotine hit] Possibly they were also members of the
mile high club, but on land, despite puritan evidence to the contrary.
I deduced, that Americans locked themselves in the loo to have sex and
then a post coital. What other conclusion would any sane member of the
human race conclude?Oh yes, what I didn’t know about Americans wasn’t worth knowing.
It was therefore with some surprise, that I learned later, much later, that matches in the loo, served an entirely different purpose. The purpose? You really want to know? They all have them you know, matches in the loo, that is to say. What do they have them for? Alright, I’ll tell you, put you out of your misery, you’ve forced it out of me. But you’ll have to suspend reality for a moment, as you’ll never believe me. You'll never guess in a month of Sundays. They light a match to eliminate unpleasant odours that are commonplace in the room of rest. Isn’t that the most hilarious thing you’ve ever heard? I nearly died of laughter when my pal [American] translated this for me. As the Muse handed me a tissue, [translation = Klennex] I couldn’t help but point to the extractor fan, mainly because I was incapable of coherent speech at the time. That one feature, has yet to be satisfactorily explained. Maybe it’s something to do with a belt and braces approach? [translation = overkill]
Meanwhile, early in the morning, the radio tells tales of the 1960’s, whilst I make oatmeal and other loathsome concoctions for the nutritional benefit of my children.
“What was so special then, back in the old days,” she asks innocently.
“Apart from the fact that that was the unmemorable year of my birth, it was also a time of political enlightenment.”
“Enlightenment?”
“Um…..breaking out of the social norms of the time.”
“How did they break out?”
“Well women did wild things like burn their bras in public.” I wonder if anyone did it in private?
“Why did they do that?”
“It was symbolic, escaping from male oppression, and so on.”
“What is male oppression?”
“Er….well, things were different in those days, women weren’t allowed to do lots of things that they shouldn’t have been prevented from doing.”
“Such as?”
“More of less everything,” I say popping her cereal in front of her. I notice that one of my sons is frozen to the spot. “What is it dear?”
“You are dah burning?”
“Warm, busy, but not burning dear.”
“What it is dah ‘bra?’”
“Underwear for women’s chests dear.”
“I am having dah underwear for dah chest.”
“No. Remember, I said ‘female,’ you are male.”
Although his pyjama bottoms seem to be adrift somewhere, he lifts his top and peers beneath, searching. “I am not wearing dah bra?”
“Correct. Nor are you wearing the bottoms either!” I admonish.
“Why you are burning dah underwear?” I pause, wipe oatmeal from a reluctant mouth and seek guidance.
“What your mother means, is that burning your clothes or the flag or more or less anything else, is a way of telling everyone that you object, protest, break down rules that you don’t like.”
We exchange adult glances. It was better than I could have managed, but still has a few fatal flaws. We both know that the trigger world ‘rule’ was in there somewhere. The clock strikes the hour of 7 a.m. Maybe now we will be more awake with more brain cells available to us. Maybe we can rewind and start again?
“We have dah matches?”
“No! We have no matches.”
"But I am needing dem!"
"You do not need matches my love, hear open wide, just another spoonful.."
“We have dah matches for dah burning food.”
“?”
“Oh, they’re special matches, only for the barbeque.” [translation = Brits do not excel at the barbeque department, more of a wake or a cremation]
“But I am needing dem badly for my rules.”
“You may use matches when you are 18, er….21 the age of majority in California.”
“But I am only dah 6!”
“Indeed. Only 15 years to wait.”
“How many?”
“How many what dear?”
“How many are dah minutes in 15 years?”
“?”
Americans! What can you do with them?
To read more go to my main site at
http://whitterer-autism.blogspot.com
What are your three favorite snacks?
Submitted by Sunscreem.
Bombay Mix [extra hot]
Gentlemen's relish on hot toast
Marmite and tomato sandwiches
Anyone else?
http://whitterer-autism.blogspot.com
It's
one of those little guilty mantras that whirr around your brain. You're
supposed to be dealing with the hear and now [translation = chaos] but
your also supposed to be planning ahead for the future. [translation =
tomorrows chaos] It's very important that a parent should get the
balance right. If the parent fails to get the balance right, this tends
to result in random attempts at catch up, no matter how inappropriately
timed.Now is as good a time as any. If I start right now, then in a year, perhaps two they will all be capable of taking a shower and washing their hair. I'm not quite sure how I managed to exclude this from their list of current skills, or future skills. For right now, these skills have been skipped entirely. There is an entire blank page where there should be a skill or two, either on-going, acquired, or planned.
I herd them all into the shower having explained all to briefly, the benefits of showering; to be clean, sweet smelling and germ free, not that anyone listens.
It occurs to me that the act of showering, motivated by panic, is not a good synapse to be firing. “I have germs?” he squeaks in distress, “where they are?” he circles, a cat chasing it’s tail in search of invisible germs.
Oh dear. Perhaps I should have waited a year, or maybe even two, before starting this exercise? I persuade them to use the soap pump, to put a spoonful of soap in the palm of the hand and then rub themselves all over, especially the important bits, without thinking through this demand before uttering it.
“What are the important bits? Why are they important?” I definitely should have thought this through more thoroughly before starting. She rinses her hair, “is it all out?”
“No you have loads of soap left in there still.”
“How can I tell if I haven’t got a mirror?”
“Well, you can sort of tell by how it feels on your fingertips. It’s more squeaky when the soap has gone. You’ll be able to tell after a while if you keep practicing.” There are two many people in this shower. There are too many rapidly moving people in this shower and far too much soap.
Senior son grabs me by the forear
Self Care
It's
one of those little guilty mantras that whirr around your brain. You're
supposed to be dealing with the hear and now [translation = chaos] but
your also supposed to be planning ahead for the future. [translation =
tomorrows chaos] It's very important that a parent should get the
balance right. If the parent fails to get the balance right, this tends
to result in random attempts at catch up, no matter how inappropriately
timed.Now is as good a time as any. If I start right now, then in a year, perhaps two they will all be capable of taking a shower and washing their hair. I'm not quite sure how I managed to exclude this from their list of current skills, or future skills. For right now, these skills have been skipped entirely. There is an entire blank page where there should be a skill or two, either on-going, acquired, or planned.
I herd them all into the shower having explained all to briefly, the benefits of showering; to be clean, sweet smelling and germ free, not that anyone listens.
It occurs to me that the act of showering, motivated by panic, is not a good synapse to be firing. “I have germs?” he squeaks in distress, “where they are?” he circles, a cat chasing it’s tail in search of invisible germs.
Oh dear. Perhaps I should have waited a year, or maybe even two, before starting this exercise? I persuade them to use the soap pump, to put a spoonful of soap in the palm of the hand and then rub themselves all over, especially the important bits, without thinking through this demand before uttering it.
“What are the important bits? Why are they important?” I definitely should have thought this through more thoroughly before starting. She rinses her hair, “is it all out?”
“No you have loads of soap left in there still.”
“How can I tell if I haven’t got a mirror?”
“Well, you can sort of tell by how it feels on your fingertips. It’s more squeaky when the soap has gone. You’ll be able to tell after a while if you keep practicing.” There are two many people in this shower. There are too many rapidly moving people in this shower and far too much soap.
Senior son grabs me by the forearms, to face me, a snowman of bubbles and soap suds, “hey Mum! My finger tips are telling me that it is all gone.” He blinks and his fingers tips rush to his brow to mop away lava flows of soap suds.
“What’s on your hands dear.” He looks at the ends of his arms to where his hands, alien beings, are attached, although you can’t really tell that they are hands because of the soap suds. He startles and jumps back, deeply offended by the betrayal “my finger tips they are lying.”
Self Care
It's
one of those little guilty mantras that whirr around your brain. You're
supposed to be dealing with the hear and now [translation = chaos] but
your also supposed to be planning ahead for the future. [translation =
tomorrows chaos] It's very important that a parent should get the
balance right. If the parent fails to get the balance right, this tends
to result in random attempts at catch up, no matter how inappropriately
timed.Now is as good a time as any. If I start right now, then in a year, perhaps two they will all be capable of taking a shower and washing their hair. I'm not quite sure how I managed to exclude this from their list of current skills, or future skills. For right now, these skills have been skipped entirely. There is an entire blank page where there should be a skill or two, either on-going, acquired, or planned.
I herd them all into the shower having explained all to briefly, the benefits of showering; to be clean, sweet smelling and germ free, not that anyone listens.
It occurs to me that the act of showering, motivated by panic, is not a good synapse to be firing. “I have germs?” he squeaks in distress, “where they are?” he circles, a cat chasing it’s tail in search of invisible germs.
Oh dear. Perhaps I should have waited a year, or maybe even two, before starting this exercise? I persuade them to use the soap pump, to put a spoonful of soap in the palm of the hand and then rub themselves all over, especially the important bits, without thinking through this demand before uttering it.
“What are the important bits? Why are they important?” I definitely should have thought this through more thoroughly before starting. She rinses her hair, “is it all out?”
“No you have loads of soap left in there still.”
“How can I tell if I haven’t got a mirror?”
“Well, you can sort of tell by how it feels on your fingertips. It’s more squeaky when the soap has gone. You’ll be able to tell after a while if you keep practicing.” There are two many people in this shower. There are too many rapidly moving people in this shower and far too much soap.
Senior son grabs me by the forearms, to face me, a snowman of bubbles and soap suds, “hey Mum! My finger tips are telling me that it is all gone.” He blinks and his fingers tips rush to his brow to mop away lava flows of soap suds.
“What’s on your hands dear.” He looks at the ends of his arms to where his hands, alien beings, are attached, although you can’t really tell that they are hands because of the soap suds. He startles and jumps back, deeply offended by the betrayal “my finger tips they are lying.”
I
make reassuring noises when she tells me this, that someone asked her
if she was? What? ‘Is she hermaphrodite?’ Senior daughter is a long way
away and my protective abilities are waning. ‘Pity the poor schmuck and
put them right,’ I advise. What kind of idiot uses hermaphrodite when
they mean androgynous anyway? The fact that someone lacks the social
skills to know that such a question is inappropriate, says more about
the speaker than the person addressed. I quell my ire, knowing that
such a question comes from the ignorant, the narrow minded and sexually
insecure. This was not some esoteric query where the questioner
believes that your male side is dominating your female side. This is
someone who doesn’t know that snails can produce off-spring regardless
of which sex they are designated. I want to jump on a plane, march up
to her accuser and give them a good smack around the head, but I cannot
justify the defence of a 25 year old child with such behaviour, and I
would be a poor role model resorting to such tactics. The fact that the
questioner was also an American, where pink denotes ‘female’ devoid of
any other clues, makes me rile. But I’m too distracted to give her a
proper reply because I have a zillion things to do and junior is
standing on my feet, rocking from one to another, so that my
metatarsals make crunching noises against the floorboards.I have sudden recall of a similar query that I experienced myself. I used to walk home every day, [translation = regularly] in my navy blue sweater, navy blue jeans, discrete black boots, with my hair tied up in a knot: “are you a boy or a girl?” he asked one day. I was taken aback, I wanted to correct him: “do you mean androgynous?” or, since I was in my feminist phase at the time, “do you mean ‘am I a woman or a man?’” But of course that’s not what I said at all, as I was young, aggressive and hypersensitive, so I simply shouted “female” at the top of my lungs as I stomped past in a state of high dugeon, clutching my macramé sack to my side, even though it had been fashionable the decade before I was born.
Reflection with adult eyes, makes me wonder why a young man in his early twenties would say such a thing to a teenager, as I must have been about 15 at the time. We were in the street in broad day light with no-one else around. There were so many other socially acceptable ways for him to have discovered that nugget of information. I had seen him every day for a few weeks as I walked home. I wouldn’t describe him as lurking, he was merely walking in the opposite direction at the same approximate time as me every day, which meant that at some time during the 7 minutes that it took to walk from the entrance of my road to my house, I would meet him coming in the other way. Perhaps I encouraged him by greeting him with “good afternoon” every time we passed, although he never returned the greeting. He looked very ordinary, he did not look ‘hip’ or ‘with it’ for the times, he looked safe because he was dressed like my father on a casual day, slub coloured clothes, the garb of a respectable middle aged man, although I didn’t see the mis-match at the time. The short back and sides hair cut made his head and face open, no lizard eyes peeping out under a shag of hair. He was not a lout. [translation = thug] It was not a taunt or a tease, or a come on. [translation = sexual invitation] I cannot remember before or since, ever being asked such a forthright question? Although people may have had the same query, they never voiced it in such a direct manner to my face.
I can see him now, me on the path [translation = sidewalk], him in the road [translation = pavement] but that, in and of itself, was not odd, 30 years ago in a single track cul-de-sac road. No, it was something more intangible, the way he stopped so abruptly, spoke so simply and directly, not an accusation or a threat, but a question which he wanted to know the answer to, quite a simple question really, but a rare question in the tight lipped Island known as England. Such buffed toes on his tan leather shoes, neat lace-ups rather than trainers. The shirt and tie should have alerted me, to say nothing of the crease in the trousers, the empty hands without baggage, the person with no physical adornment.
If I examine myself with a critical eye, it is easy to see the confusion. In that summer when I was fifteen, I was shaped like a plank, straight up and down, no in and outs. Tallish and lanky, without make-up or other visual clues, I didn’t assist a casual observer, I could easily have passed for male teenage youth, which perhaps was what I was aiming at?
When I think of the harshness of my response, feathers flying, although I didn’t stop to watch the effect, I know that the following day, whilst I was braced for a rematch, he never re-appeared. I hope I didn’t do him permanent psychological damage?
Better late than never!1. Kill anything living in the refridgerator before it goes forth and multiplies.
2. Endeavour to regularly rotate the piles of clean laundry stacked on the sofa.
3. Fully evaluate cost/benefit analysis of moving to Canada.
4. Train cats to appreciate that children are their friends, not the enemy.
5. Train children to appreciate that confining cats in small places means that they’ll visit the Humane Society [the cats, that is to say.]
• Curb enthusiasm for tumble drier
• No! The tumble drier is not ‘big.’
6. Read paper daily to improve brain capacity
7. Seriously consider advice re
‘you deserve it.’
Find some useless, expensive pastime to indulge in. Short list possibilities;
a. Book club [remember that you’re teetering on maximum brain capacity!]
b. Tennis [you’re clothing would never be white enough and you would also increase pile of laundry on the sofa]
c. Become a ‘lady who lunches.’ Reconsider post jaw surgery and braces.
8. Commence new beauty routine to ward off advancing decrepitude;
• Cleanse, tone and moisturize twice a day OR
• Wash face with Dial [translation Fairy Liquid!] if you manage to remember.
9. Research self improvement courses;
check availability for 11:30 p.m. to 2 a.m.
10. Invent labour saving device to continuously suck all dirt from house. [Consider consequences for self prior to commencement e.g. unemployment]
11. Avoid lawsuit from neighbours; train children to wear at least one garment of clothing [preferably around the nether regions] by Summer. [2007 not 2008] Nakedness is no longer acceptable now that we are all Americans. N.B. hats don't count for the purpose of clothing categorization.
12. Keep large hall cupboard permanently empty so that all ‘mess’ can be hurled inside at short notice to achieve instant ‘Homes and Gardens’ effect.
13. Count on fingers [and toes] blessings.
[Limit this exercise to once only, in any 24 hour period to avoid becoming too much of a fluffy bunny {translation = American}]
Perish the thought!
In
American, or more particularly in California, we are encouraged to
nurture our inner child, to hold onto that innocence, especially if we
wish to maintain our mental health. And who doesn’t want to do that? As adults, we try and remember that even the most wizened and cynical of us, can
learn from children. But does that still hold true if those children are autistic? Probably not. Not going to glean a lot of insight from those little chappies, and they are mainly chaps, depending upon which set of statistics you care to favour.
Personally, I like the one that suggests that as many as 1 in 166 children are diagnosed with autism. I love statistics because you can prove anything with them by careful manipulation. I thought that I was the only person locally, or even nationally with two autistic boys, but now that they’re both at the same school, I find that other families with two. [Ref 1]
What does that mean? Well, it means that together, we three families, have six children, autistic ones, of a similar age, in one school. If there are thirty children in a class, that means that each class will have an autistic child. And why would that matter? It means that your child will be in close proximity with mine. In fact, because my boys are only 17 months apart, they could be in the same class together.
They separate twins, but the same doesn’t apply to siblings, I’ve checked. That means that your child might sit next to mine, perhaps one either side. In fact those other autistic children, the two that are the right age, might end up in the same class too. My two and four more, because it’s largely a matter of chance. Wouldn’t that be super! Your child with four or six little autistic kids, all pals together in the same class. It would be even better if the class had only 20 children, although it would mess up my statistics a bit.
Your child would be a great role model for my children. Mine could copy yours, then they’d learn how to behave properly, just like yours do. Children learn more from their peers than their parents by the time they’re in school, a sort of transfer of allegiance if you will. But that’s fabulous for me, because you’ve taught your children a great set of moral values, things that mine might not understand, like non-discrimination and inclusion. You know, like the Barney song: 'we include everyone!' I bet your kids can sing every word perfectly. Doesn't that warm your heart?
Don’t worry, I lied when I said that our children would meet. My children are in the special ed class, separate, protected and nurtured, because it would be ghastly if they were all in together. They might be bullied. Wouldn't that be dreadful? Mine of course, not yours.
Fancy a play date? Pick up the phone and give me a tinkle.
[Ref 1] and don't forget 'George and Sam,' by Charlotte Moore, but they're on a different continent so we won't count them. Then there's Luke Jackson and his siblings {Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome} but they're on the same tiny little island, so we'll ignore them too.
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Melissa said:
[this is good]While I cannpt possibly sympahtise with the hatred of cakes, I can love the self-sacrificing child!And I too have many... read more
on Let them eat Brioche! -
Hi there! Thanks for the comment on my blog! You're welcome anytime! I don't usually blog here, I'm here for... read more
on Let them eat Brioche!