I've done something this year I haven't done in a long, long time. I am taking summer vacation along with the kids. This wasn't entirely my idea, in point of fact it sets more at the feet of me youngest buddy. Call him Beam, just for a convenient handle. Beam is only eight, so of course summer vacation is part of his year, the school system sees to that. He's also one of the most interesting humans I've ever gotten to know.
Beam is Omega's boy, and he's officially deaf, and officially mid-deep in the autistic spectrum. That's the official story, but after living with him for several months now the evidence is mounting those definitions might not be totally accurate. I truly do not have a handle on his abilities. Every now and then, not every day but maybe once a week, he'll renounce his mach three hyper active house destroying behavior to position himself at the focal point of the stereo speakers and sit quietly in a chair for several hours for all the world as if he were listening to the music. The story goes he lost his hearing to an infection as an infant, which does leave open the possibility those nerves were not killed but were so toxin stunned as to take years to recover. Stranger things have happened. But talk about a strange thing for me buddy to deal with at his age! I do what I can, he seems to have a distinct preference for the music of Chopin and Beethoven. Classics are fine by me, particularly if they help him re-tune the ears.
When I met Beam five years ago he was totally aloof, according to Omega I was perhaps the third or forth person he'd ever acknowledged as another human being. In those days I was "Uncle French Fry" in honor of how we'd met: sitting in the back corner sharing a basket of fries at the diner while Momma was waiting tables and growing ever more annoyed at Daddy for being late to pick up the kid. Daddy was habitually late so it got to be kind of an afternoon thing, two or three days a week it would be him in his little people's chair and me kicked back across from him, sharing fries and chatting with Omega until Daddy arrived to take him home.
That was then, but now I have been awarded a new name in ASL (american sign language, a language I'm picking up on as a consequence of hanging with Beam). I am now officially "Old Bear", or "Grumpy Old Bear" according to Beam. Of course I returned the favor, he gets addressed as Mowgli when the mischief level is in the tolerable ranges. It really does fit, as often as not I'm playing Baloo to his Mowgli.
It is, to say the very least, a very educational relationship. According to Omega he fully re-hooked and re-engaged with reality perhaps 18 months to two years ago. That factoid totally explains a great deal about my buddy: a person's emotions can't really mature until they've engaged with reality, which explains why I pretty well had to take the summer off from my normal pursuits to fly chase on Beam's trajectory... no one adult can really keep up with him. He's running two of us up against the limits. His motivations are a fully classic case of the terrible two's, but supported by eight years of experience and an IQ likely somewhere north of the 150 range. To say he's a handful is the understatement of the year.
Anyway, it is now 24 days until school takes up again, and oh yea, they're getting counted down big time. Once school starts the grown ups will have forty hours a week without trying to keep up with a kid who is two parts Muad' Dib and three parts Dennis the Menace. Twenty four days and counting down to the return of adulthood... yup. Summer vacation, barefootin it just because what the whale... how are you supposed to properly enjoy sculpting a mud puddle lake with the Tonka toys if you have your shoes on?
Catch ya'll later.
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