Plunger and Puppet

Oldest Son wore a puppet on his left hand to preschool every day.  I remember it being a raccoon.  I was talking to MomC about it recently, and she said that she thought it was a rat.  At any rate, he called it Cute.

I drove him to preschool on Valentines day, and he told me that Cute would get Valentines, because he was a member of the class.  I told the teachers that and they set up a bag for Cute and put Valentines in it.

The other unusual item that Oldest took to preschool was a toilet plunger.  He took it for show and tell.  He had been interested in our plunger so we bought him one that he could play with.  When I stopped to think about it, it was kind of fun--a plunger is basically a giant suction cup.

The day that he took it for show and tell I walked him up to the teacher so I could talk to her.  The handle was sticking out of his backpack.  She asked what he had in there, and I said "oh, you'll never guess.  He's got a toilet plunger in there."  She cracked up laughing.  I told her that it was a "virgin" plunger that we'd bought him to play with.  I remember later seeing pictures of him showing it to his classmates.  He had stuck it to the floor and was pulling on it with all his might.

Some book that I read about autism said that low-function children live in a world of their own, but high-function kids live their own way in our world.  My own experiences bear that out.  Middle Son lives very much in his own world.  I sometimes describe him as being at right-angles to consensual reality.

Oldest son lives in the same world as the rest of us.  And sometimes, in preschool as today, he does things very much his own way.