Is That Right?

Anyone affected with autism sometimes has a different or funny way to say what they want to say.  A mom on her blog wrote the following about her son:

* We were at the supermarket and Bud got a superball out of the quarter machine at the door. It was a swirly, translucent, unremarkable superball. I hoisted him up into the shopping cart, and he held up the superball and said "Mama, what's this?" (This is one of Bud's favorite activities. He will make a proclamation: "I following the footprints!" and then test me on it, "Mama, what I'm doing?," either for his own edification or so that he can be sure that I get it. Regardless of my answer, I am quizzed for the next 15, 30, 60 minutes - "Mama, what I'm doing?" - I guess, to make sure I don't forget.)




So, I replied "It's a ball."


He said, "It's a hamster." (A hamster?) "Mama, what's this?"


"It's a ball," I said, slightly less sure of myself but feeling the need to hold my ground.


"No," he said. "It's a hamster." I started panicking. Was it a hamster? I held it up to the light to see if there was a hologram inside that I was missing, but it was just a regular old superball.


"I don't understand, honey. Can you tell me more words?"


"It's a hamster. Just like church." Then, like when all of a sudden the dots in a magic eye picture become the face of Dwight D. Eisenhower, it all fell into sharp focus for me and I got it.


We go to a tiny little church, where Bud is usually the only child in their even tinier "Sunday school" program. His favorite toy in the playroom there is a marble-run building set. But he keeps forgetting the word "marbles," and instead he calls them "gerbils."


The superball - round and translucent and swirly - is a lot like a marble/gerbil, only it's different.


And what else is like a gerbil, only different?


A hamster, of course.


Not even wrong. Remarkable, insightful, completely outside-the-box, but not even wrong.

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Don't you think that we could all use that phrase more often:  Not even wrong!


*Story can be found at the following link: http://momnos.blogspot.com/2005/03/not-even-wrong.html