It's Blue Shirt Day

Heh? Blue shirts?
Autism Awareness, people.
Not many people really know what autism is. Truth be told, I'm not totally sure myself. Nobody actually knows what causes it, but it's basically a developmental disorder that effects social interaction, communication, and behavior. I'm sure everyone knows someone with autism, or with some form of it, like Asperger syndrome. You might not even know. Plenty of people live with it very successfully.

When I was about ten years old, I was in my backyard with my dad helping him brew beer. All of a sudden this kid came running down our driveway in a pair of swim trunks, no shirt, no shoes, and what looked like a dog tag hanging around his neck. He looked distressed and like he'd been running for a while. For a split second I thought it was my brother, who'd been at a friend's house, but I knew it couldn't be the second he started climbing our chain-link fence. We weren't allowed to climb the fence. This boy looked a little bit younger than I was and didn't say a word when my dad called out to him. "Hey there, buddy!" No response. I just stared in awe, expecting him to say something. He opened our screen door and headed into the house. I exchanged a look with my dad, and then a teenager with shaggy hair came jogging into our driveway. "Have you seen a little boy around here?" My dad told him he'd gone inside. The teenager, who was on a cell phone with the little boy's mom, struggled with our gate latch for a minute and then went into the house after him. Dad told me to go inside and make sure my mom wasn't in the shower or something, so I did. Mom told me she thought the kid was looking for a dog or something and had gone upstairs. Soon after, he was wrangled and his mom was there. His name was Vincent, and he was autistic. Vincent lived a few blocks away from us and apparently loved our house. The teenager had been babysitting him when he escaped and ran all the way to our house. He used to draw pictures of it because he loved it so much. There's so much about that day that was somewhat shocking to me. My dad named the beer he'd been making after Vincent.

--Something to chew on: I talked about my dog in the previous post. The excitable, 10 going on 2 black labrador. He was outside that day, and instead of flipping out over our new guest, he sat uncharacteristically calmly on the sidewalk and watched. Trippy.--

I'm continually fascinated with autism. I don't know why. I just kind of am. Anyway, It's ten o' clock already, but put on some blue pajamas for the last two hours of Autism Awareness Day.