My Autism Insights

Prompt and image from Manic Monday

“The moon’s an arrant thief, and her pale fire she steals from the sun.”

~William Shakespeare

“M-O-O-N that spells…”

~Tom Cullen from The Stand by Stephen King

That spells little thief is what it spells!  I think the coming full moon might have driven poor Gus a little mad yesterday.  More likely he was overtired and had lost what little amount of executive functioning he normally has.

We were having a lovely organic-apple picking afternoon, but by about 3:30 Gus was a bit fried.  We’d been out in the sun for over close to two hours; it had been a long day.  (Yes, I’m going to make every excuse in the book.)  We went to visit some farm animals - goats, chickens, a rooster - which was in itself a little angst provoking because Gus wanted to see the animals, but was also scared.

So there were some kids playing in the area and one of them was the owner of a kiddie car - you know the ones: a motorized 4X4 jeep kind of thing.  Said car was sitting under a tree sans owner, with owner’s caregivers.  You know where this is going.  Gus got it in his head to take the car for a joy ride.  Caregiver 1 and Caregiver 2 said no, stop, blah blah.  I yelled no, stop, blah blah.  Gus gleefully ignored us all and revved that bad boy right up!  Caregiver 1 tried to get in front of him to block, but pfft, he wasn’t stopping.  Dang near ran the lady down.  Then he banked left and tried to make a run for it.  Caregiver 1 almost got hold of the back of the car, but lost her grip.  I finally caught up to him and tried the same thing, but I was afraid the back bumper would break, so I had to grab him instead.  I pulled him out of there like a fisherman with a bluefish.  He thought the whole thing was great fun.  At least he did until he had to apologize and then go back to the car.

Moon madness or overtired?  Maybe a little of both.  There are two lessons to be learned here.  First, pay close attention to your special needs child on family outings.  Gus had been wandering and saying that he was getting tired for a while before we headed over to the animals.  We really should have called it quits much sooner or at the very least given him some down time in the car earlier.

Second lesson, never underestimate that moon madness and don’t schedule family outings within 3 days of a full moon.

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