Life on the Spectrum by Konnie Enos

Not long ago I bought a case of spam and it was sitting on my kitchen table waiting to be put away. My youngest looked at it. “That’s going to annoy me.”

“What?” He simply pointed at the case so I examined it. Most of the cans had been arranged in the same way, making a clear pattern with the tabs. A few broke the pattern. “Oh. Yes, that would be annoying.”

More recently, I walked into the kitchen and found him making not one, not even two, but four hash brown patties. His reason? “I’m only having these and two just wasn’t enough.”

No, he did not consider having three. You see three is an odd number. Four is even.

See, for my dear son, things must follow the established pattern and things MUST come in packages of even numbers.

This is why he always cooks four hamburgers (he usually only eats two, two are for my husband and me) or makes two sandwiches. It must always be even.

Yet another incident. I was trying to pack my nebulizer with several individual vails of medicine. I told my son which bag he could dig some vails from. He handed me a fistful. I counted what I had and decided I should have at least seven more.

Son reached into the bag two more times, getting a few each time. I counted them as he handed them to me but I saw no obvious efforts on his part to count them. I told him how many more we needed as he pulled exactly that number out of the bag.

“I know that.”

“You’ve been counting?

He thought that was obvious.

I’ve lived with him for eighteen years and I’m just now beginning to realize his reliance on numbers and patterns, but it’s clear they are important to him in his everyday actions.

On top of that, he has an obsessive need to talk to someone about the shows he likes to watch, to the point of spoiling the story for anyone listening.

I know a great deal about all his favorite shows, which I’ve never watched because I’m his favorite sounding board. Probably because I’ll actually listen to him.

My son is also obsessed with technology.

I’m sure he knows more about computers than anyone else in the family. Something that is helpful to at least his senior citizen dad who has never quite gotten the hang of it. My husband is always asking our son for help doing something on his computer or phone.

It’s commonplace to hear my husband asking for help by saying, “Show me how to do this again.” He also regularly needs help with his passwords. I think our son knows my husband’s passwords better than my husband does.

My son has noted that, though my husband and I are the same age, I rarely need his assistance.

Another fun thing about my son is his need to show all his gadgets to strangers and talk incessantly with them. Someone comes into our house and he’s showing them all his tech and survivor gear and talking about his obscure bits of knowledge.

Not long ago he got upset with me because I told him to ‘leave us alone’ and ‘stop talking’. The gentleman my husband and I were talking to was here on business and I’m sure the conversation took twice as long as necessary because my son kept butting in with off the wall stuff he just had to share with someone.

Worse still, he has always had difficulty speaking in conversational tones. If you can get him to ‘whisper’, as he puts it, he won’t be giving you a headache just listening to him, but most of the time I have to remind him to talk quieter.

What I find both a bit laughable and really frustrating, is his insistence that he cannot read. It seems like a daily basis when he’s telling me he can’t read something, yet, on the same daily basis he’s on his computer and phone doing all sorts of things, all of which require him to read in order to do it.

Some days it’s kind of fun to watch his still childlike traits competing with his adult knowledge and skills. However, other days it’s unnerving to have someone so much bigger than I am reacting with such childhood innocence.

He is capable of taking care of himself, though now I have to convince him of that, my sweet, lovable oaf.

This is what it’s like living with a high functioning autistic young man. Of course, since no two people are alike, the autistic people you know may be completely different from my young man.

What stories do you have to tell?

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.