Overheard in the Wolfe House #106
Sam: What was that all about?
Peggy: Susan was helping me re-arrange the furniture so that it looks a little better when the real estate people come around
Sam: When does that start?
Peggy: Maybe as soon as next weekend.
Sam: We’re doomed.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #105
Sam: I miss Michael and Paige.
Peggy: Me, too. What do you miss the most about them?
Sam: Well, I miss Michael, of course. He’s been gone the most.
How Paige Sees Home
First Things First
Sam and I spent a good portion of last Saturday afternoon talking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The house is going up for sale and he’s very upset about it.
We are about to become another in what is sure to be a long exodus of refugees from the Barnett Shale. An operator has built a gas processing plant next door. I’m not sure we can even sell the place, but I have to try.
My brother-in-law is an attorney for a pipeline company in another state. Even his eyes popped when he saw what we’re being asked to put up with.
(image borrowed from Wikipedia)
Sam has known this has been coming for a long time, but struggled to see the new order of things once we leave. I’m not surprised. People with autism can barely understand our cryptic social orders to begin with. Upend the whole thing and he doesn’t know what to do.
Well, the wise Mr. Maslow said that first comes things like breathing and food and water. Breathable air is already in short supply around here, having a next door neighbor dehydrating gas, blowing off relief valves and burning raw gas to run thousands of horses every hour to keep that 16-inch line compressed adds serious insult to injury.
Not to mention, if that 16-inch line ever goes, we go with it.
Seeing it on the pyramid, along with things like food and water helped him understand.
He’s fretted for more than a year about what would happen to friendships if we aren’t living in the same place we’ve always been. Half his school chums are graduating, too, and getting jobs far from here. Somehow, Sam saw himself as the anchor in this changing storm.
But friendships are much higher on the pyramid. As a visual aid, Maslow scores for us. Sam finally understands why the exodus is necessary.
First things First.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #104
Michael (via phone, after his car broke down at the merge of I35W and 820): When you’re a little kid, you cry and then you do it. After you grow up, you do it and then you cry.
Peggy: That’s brilliant, Michael.
The Second Biggest Mistake Ever. Or Not.
For a graduation present, I bought Sam an iPhone.
Second only to buying him an old car for Christmas, it was shaping up to be the biggest mistake I ever made.
Family members, friends, and all the AT&T retail sales reps and guys from the Genius Bar at the Apple Store down in Texas have been getting an earful about the Bad Decision Apple Made, one that makes it impossible to assign properties to your contact groups.
It was something his old Nokia phone could do, and he warned me (and has reminded me repeatedly the past four days that he warned me) that without that feature, it was a deal-breaker.
It didn’t matter that he could turn on the navigator to help find an alternate route to the airport today, or to the Apple Store. It didn’t matter that he could play his favorite music on it. Because he couldn’t tell his phone to ring one way for a call from a family member and another way for a call from friends, the phone might as well go in the trash can.
He tried finding apps. He tried work-arounds I found on various help sites. He could create the groups in Outlook, but Outlook wouldn’t cooperate with the sync. Even if he gets that to work, he’d still have to program each individual contact with his preferred ringtone.
A waste of time, Sam said. He’s right, of course. But I told him that if it’s really that important, he’s spending an awful lot of time figuring out the work-arounds. So much time, in fact, that he probably would already have had all 60-ish of his contacts programmed.
Yes, he said, but why should he have to waste his time because of this Bad Decision Apple Made.
Then it dawned on me. He could write an app for that.
We had an animated discussion on the way home from the Apple Store about it. I told him a lot of people learn to make a good living by solving problems people want solved.
His perspective changed. Or he at least stopped saying I made a huge mistake buying him the phone. He recognized developing an app as a project, and one with some big hurdles, but he’s on his way.
When we got home, he made his first “alert tone” in Garage Band, one that he used on his Nokia that he’s upset wasn’t on his iPhone. And we looked up resources for app developers.
This could be an interesting summer, especially as the job hunt begins.
Autism Awareness Floofie
I am surrounded by some of the most talented people. Maddy Mathis created this furry little guy in autism awareness colors.
She will attend art school in California. In about a decade, this young woman will be a creative force in the art world.
Terms of Endearment
I first moved to Texas as a college freshman, straight from the Dairy State. There were all kinds of culture shocks for me, including the one where every woman on campus called me “Hon” or “Honey.”
No one ever called me that before. But here I was, trying to learn how to eat jalapenos and chicken fried-mistake and the lady behind the serving tray wants to know “do you want grits with that, Hon?” I heard it most was when the staff member and I were in the middle of something difficult, like dropping a class or cashing a check. It felt very patronizing.
And that is because it probably was.
When you get dropped into another culture, or subculture, it’s easier to pick up on those kinds of things. And that brings me to the word “kiddo.”
Now, I’m not going to blow this out of proportion. One-to-one, it’s a term of endearment. It’s not the r-word, which mercifully, and finally, the Texas Legislature has banished. All our MHMRs must be renamed.
And this isn’t something that requires a People First refresher.
But I’ve heard this sort of thing so often — “It was a tough day for the kiddoes,” or “I’m trying to find out whether it will help my kiddoes,” or “Who’s going to stay with the kiddoes?” — that I’m starting to wonder about the usage.
Unless you’re using it one-on-one as a term of endearment, then just don’t use it.
It’s sounding patronizing.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #103
Peggy (while washing dishes): Gee, looks like someone dipped an Oreo in this glass.
Paige (grinning): Oh, yeah.
Peggy: I guess that must taste pretty good.
Paige: You’ve never dipped an Oreo in milk? What went wrong in your childhood?
Just a bit more at NCTC
The vice president for student services bent Sam’s ear at a graduation reception for NCTC’s TRIO students earlier this month, and convinced him that an associate’s degree was within his grasp.
Sam had given up a few years ago and started pursuing the certificate, rather than a full degree, after he took American Government (more on that in a minute).
We learned that he no longer needs American Government to get the associate’s degree. NCTC has since changed its core class requirements and the history class he took fulfills that humanities requirement.
Just a few more computer classes, probably all online, and he can file for the associate’s degree. In Texas, that degree is some serious higher education currency. With it, he can transfer all 30 hours to any public, 4-year institution and be halfway to a bachelor’s degree.
And that might mean something some day.
I was devastated when he made that run at American Government two summers ago, because it was the last non-computer class — the last real hurdle — to an associate’s degree. Similar to college algebra and one of his other core classes, I thought he would take it all the way through to the last possible day to drop, drop the class, and try again.
It’s not the best way to go at a class, I suppose, but it worked for Sam.
When he got to the last day and dropped, I asked him when he would take another swing at American Government.
Came his answer: “I don’t care how many times I take American Government, Mom, I’ll never understand it.”
Amen to that, Sam. Amen to that.