Autism Vox

The Humpty Dumpty Challenge

by Kristina Chew, PhD on August 3rd, 2008

On Day 3 of summer vacation, Charlie woke at 6am chattering and was soon up and about. He’d gone to bed late the night before and, not surprisingly, he fell asleep around 10am, his long form smooshed against the back of the couch. I saw beside him and worked on my book and Charlie must have really needed his sleep, as Jim and me talking and Pandora playing did not wake him. When Charlie woke up, we went swimming and then a lazy summer day got a little more interesting.

We’d been invited to a surprise birthday party and told to show up by a certain time to await the arrival of the birthday guest. However, the night before, we’d gone to another friend’s house and Charlie had spent most of a few hours pacing the front yard and porch; he sat down for a hamburger with an apologetically lot of ketchup in the backyard then made a run for the front. Our friends were lovely and took the party to Charlie, the hostess bringing him a nice bowl of cornbread and raspberry sherbet (which he sampled, though he’s never had either food). By the end of the party—when all but two other guests had departed—-Charlie ventured inside, and checked out a tank of fish and the staircase. It did occur to Jim and me, though, that Charlie might be equally unlikely to go inside the house of the friend hosting the surprise party; not wanting to spoil the surprise with Charlie pacing on someone’s front lawn, we arrived late.

This house had a long driveway and the party was set up in the yard right beside it, and Charlie seemed instantly at home. He was less sure about the food, all “Hawaiian themed.” We’ve been tapering Charlie off being 100% gluten-free while still avoiding anything dairy; I did offer him macaroni and cheese, and he said a firm “no.” He was quite at ease but getting hungry and we said good-byes (it’s not how long you stay at a party, perhaps, but what a good time you have, and we all did).

“Bangkok, brown noodles,” said Charlie, referring to a noodle restaurant we used to patronized every week that’s since closed. Jim suggested Charlie’s favorite hamburger place and then mentioned a certain Spanish restaurant in Bayonne. “No,” said Charlie and requested the burger place. Then he started talking about fries and chips and shrimp—the Spanish restaurant serves plates of fried potato slices and delicious paella. “Bayonne,” said Charlie, and onto the NJ Turnpike we went, with a view of the Manhattan skyline displaying itself on the left.

The same elegantly graying waiters have been at this restaurant since we first went to it some six and maybe more years ago. Smoking was still allowed in New Jersey restaurants then and we’d inevitably leave smelling as if we had a pack a day habit—-the main reason we stopped going for some years was when we worried about the ceramic dishes getting swiped off the table, and then on the way in once, Charlie threw himself backwards on the floor between tables.

Though clad in blue shorts and t-shirt, he was every inch of Charlie the Gent last night. He attacked the bread basket with happy gusto and slurped up lentil and vegetable soup without our asking, helped himself to those asked-for fries-chips, ate several spoonfuls of rice tinged rich yellow with saffron and shrimp, and then, having eaten his full, sat while Jim and I finished.

End of a nice busy day out and about with Charlie?………..No!

I didn’t post a photo of a ferris wheel above just to suggest we had some good times: We got back on Rte 440 and the Turnpike and went to a local  carnival that we used to go to all the time. It was the last night and we had an epic wait to ride the modest ferris wheel. We were treated to a good view of NJ teenagers dressed up for the carnival passegiata and a good dousing of smoke for the Oriental BarBQue. Charlie put his hand over his ears and grinned beside Jim as the ferris wheel went up.

I heard a cry of rising anguish as the ride was ending: Charlie got off with his head down, hands locked over his ears. Jim gave away the rest of the tickets he’d bought and we went home. Charlie ran to his room and was happily engrossed in his CD collection and making sure the little purple Little Tykes chairs that he did his first ABA sessions in were lined up against the wall. And then he came out with two Disney Classics CDs, saying “help, fix” in a very concerned matter. We got out Scotch tape and I taped up the cracks in one CD case and Charlie looked at them and then he did what might be called groaning in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time but it was higher-pitched, like keening, and accompanied with strong shakes of his head.

We didn’t say anything. Charlie sat on the couch and then he threw the two CD cases onto the floor and ran beside them and knelt, bent over, moan, moan, moan.

I got a sofa pillow and pushed it gently onto his knees, making sure it was inbetween his forehead and the floor, and went to sit a few feet away. I picked up my journal and started writing, at least one eye on Charlie. His vocal distress continued for a half-hour, in the midst of which he called out, “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall!”

“Yes, he did,” I said. Charlie buried his forehead in the pillow and I heard the rest of the rhyme as said by the Teletubbies in a video we don’t have anymore (it ended up in the garbage, at the end of one awful summer afternoon) in a scene in which they’re sitting at their Tubby table to eat Tubby custard and they all fall off, ha ha ha, just like Humpty Dumpty and

all the king’s horses and all the king’s men
couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Humpty, like the CD case and all the photos that got ripped in half, was broken. Gone, cracked, frazzled, fragmented, never the same ever again, and I thought, what a travesty that kids like Charlie were thought, are thought, not to have an internal life of thoughts and musing and worries and memories, and all because their language and communication skills can’t articulate what they are thinking. Charlie scores whatever low number on an intelligence test, but there’s some ultra-perceptive understanding in him, and how does he feel that he can’t blurt it out the way Jim and I trade sentences and converse?
“Charlie, we can get a new Disney CD tomorrow,” I found myself saying suddenly. “We’ll always get you what you need.”

I finished my journal entry for the day and slowly, slowly, by minute degrees, Charlie was quiet, hugging the pillow, and then he got up, grabbed his backpack, and told me, untense and smiling, “good night.”

Good night indeed; good day. And a great boy, with great smarts, trying to piece it all back together again.

Share This

Related Stories

Britain’s Missing Top Model
Tough Reading about Lexus Fuller
Please Think of Nik
America’s Next Top Model Contestant Heather Wins a Challenge and…..
‘There are autisms’ (Suzanne Wright)

POSTED IN: Charlisms, Family, Music, New Jersey, Parenting