Wouldn’t it be awesome if the “Little Tikes” toy company
made adult size toys? Remember the
little yellow and red car, the clubhouse, the slide and teeter totter, the
jungle gym? It would be so great if
these things existed in adult size! I,
oops, I mean my son would have so much
fun! Physical play is a big deal to my
son so a lot of improvising takes place around my house because he is unfortunately
too big to utilize the types of toys he is interested in. Couches become instruments of climbing and
scaling, stairs become bumpy slides, pillows and blankets become huge forts and
tents to hide under, office chairs with rollers become amusement park rides,
closet doors become vertical swinging objects,
exercise bands become huge fun rubber bands to shoot at people, the
kitchen faucet becomes a waterfall (whoooopsie), the coat closet becomes a
secret hideout, washing machine a personal sound discovery device, the power
tools become noises to parrot, and the vacuum cleaner becomes the evil villain
to run away from.
It’s really amazing how much I’ve forgotten, since the
son I’m speaking about is my youngest,
how many different types of things my son uses for “toys” that used to
be considered, well, not toys. It’s
nothing out of the norm in my house to hear as the family rounds things up for
an outing “hey, did you get some toys for the ride?” in which the reply is
usually something like “yeah, I grabbed the giant plastic spring, the vibrating
massage pillow, the dog squeaky toy, a blob of play dough and a leather combat
boot”. Oh good, that ought to keep him
happy for the ride! Then I get into
public and someone sees my son lovingly squeezing a combat boot next to his
chest and smiling happily and I realize “clearly this asshole doesn’t
understand the true glory of the smell & feel of a leather combat boot?”.
My son once spent over an hour in the shoe department at
the local “everything’s in there” store.
You should know that no one in my family was shoe shopping at the
time. We had gone to walmart purchase
things for the kids with the gift cards they had received in the mail for the
holidays. After a lot of meandering
around the store letting him touch and feel everything he passed, he came upon
the leather shoe aisle and this is when my husband and I decided that we better
buy something from that aisle with his gift card or permission to leave the
shoe aisle would never be granted. Ok, it’s
not just him. I love the smell of
leather too!
Another “take my son shopping trip” ended in a
not-so-beloved purchase of a rubber squeezable duck call dog toy. This one he found after only thirty minutes
in a sporting goods store while my husband and another son perused the ammo and
gun counter. I knew I was in trouble
right away when his cute little hand reached out exploring the objects hanging
from the rack in the duck hunting gear aisle and instead of settling on the
quiet stuffed duck, or the silent wooden figurine, or even the nice hat with
the duck on top, landed quite decidedly (almost like some sort of radar led him
there) on the squeaky, noisy, ear shattering doggy toy. He fell instantly in love. The first squeeze of the pliable rubber duck
resulted in a loud shrieking that sent him into a little bit of a shiver but
quickly gave way to a mischievous smile that kind of rolled across his
face. It was all over from there. For the rest of the duration of the shopping
trip I saw one fellow shopper after another running for cover! Thank God this was a sporting goods store and
most of these people are mentally equipped to deal with “duck and cover”
situations but at last the patience started wearing thin and I decided it was
time to leave as I saw quite a few more people than usual headed to the gun
counter.
My son has a few other favorites that he chose himself
from a careful and thorough search of the local department store. Up and down every aisle he goes carefully
touching, squeezing and sniffing every object that catches his grasp. The favorite aisle besides the shoe
department? The dog toy aisle! Of Course!
All of those rubber, squeezy, squeaky, smooshy things to really press
his hands into and pull and push on!
This is real fun! Yep! For him this is complete toy perfection! For me, it is a constant explanation waiting
to happen when the assholes I run into in public want to know why I’m buying my
child dog toys or even worse, why am I letting him play with a toy that might
of possibly belonged already to the family dog?
Hey asshole! You have your
favorite toys, he has his! Back off!
The donut of destruction will always be remembered in my
house as the most beloved toy. No match
box super highway racer set, no easy bake oven, no nerf football set. No, the one I will always remember the most
when I am old and grey trying to rekindle all the sweet memories of raising
children will be the “donut of destruction”.
Right now you’re scrambling trying to remember whether or not this cool
toy came out in it’s biggest glory before cabbage patch kids or after G.I. Joe
and power wheels jeeps. Well keep trying
but you’ll wear yourself out thinking about it because the Donut of Destruction
is actually a leather steering wheel cover that my son drug around with him
everywhere he went for about three years.
This was the favorite toy; hands down.
The Donut of destruction apparently could fight off evil forces and sometimes
an unsuspecting school teacher very easily if just slipped over the head and
arms and worn proudly around the waist.
It seems as though if you wear a “donut of destruction” nothing at all
can harm you, and your family can easily go many more places without upsetting
you than they can without. The term
“donut of destruction” was actually a stolen phrase from a children’s alien
movie my family and I watched that just seemed to fit the situation and became
our name for the steering wheel cover that my son loved so much. That is, until one day, without any written
notice at all, he suddenly decided he was done with it and on the search we
went for the next perfect toy.
Shopping for toys for my son can be an arduous task. Trial and error over the years led my husband
and I to the general type of things he prefers to play with, but then comes the
“destructible and indestructible factor”.
Just because my son might love the texture, feel or sound of an object
doesn’t mean he can have it. He might
love it so much he’ll pull it apart and eat it, or he might use it to bang his
head on. So as you can imagine, a lot of
things are a part of the decision process when choosing a new toy. It goes something like this: “oh honey did you see that? He would love to play with that squooshy
ball” My husband grabs the squooshy ball with all the little rubber furry
pieces and begins to pull twist and turn it with all of his might while I stand
as a look-out and try to scope out where the store cameras are. Well, after all, the toy budget is only so
big and the E.R. budget to remove inedible objects from the intestines is not
big either. So these things have to be
checked out before we waste money buying something he won’t be able to play
with safely. So I’m standing look-out,
my husband is still squeezing and pulling and POP! There goes the squooshy ball that my husband
now drops into the bottom of the bin and quietly says, “no that one won’t
work”. Then we move onto the next
interesting looking item and start all over again. My husband strains and strains to see if an
object will break, fray, come apart, release small pieces or be hazardous in
anyway; I stand guard to keep him from going to jail for vandalism. I would take this job but my son has become
pretty strong so my husband has no choice but to play the part. So on and on it goes until something is found
that after all abuse is inflicted is still in one piece, has all the attributes
my son loves and is affordable. One
thing's for certain, if you find a toy or an object that says indestructible on
the package, I can tell you right now they are lying. I’ve bought them all, and they were no match
for my son.
At thirteen years old my son built his first unassisted
Lego tower using the preschool large size Lego blocks. I awoke one morning to see about eight Lego
blocks laying next to him on his bed put perfectly together into a tower
shape. Laugh all you want, but I cried
just as much this day as the day he learned to walk. This was the first time he had played with a
toy and understood or decided to use it for its intended purpose. I was so excited I made him (after he woke up
of course) do it again and again and took a million pictures. This was a great day!! Up until this point, my son thought Legos
were for throwing at the wall specifically between the hours of midnight and 5
a.m. Apparently this particular evening,
the Lego fairy appeared and explained the situation and now, understanding his
mission properly, my son built a beautiful tower! Of course I called someone to brag about my
son and found the usual asshole answering thought this really wasn’t that big
of a deal and proceeded to tell me about their ingrown toenail like it was as
exciting and tragic as a shark attack.
Never mind asshole “I thought” as I hung up the phone and went back to
my son to build some more Lego towers.
The favorite toy to play with in the house outside of his
room is the vibrating foot massager. You
know the kind, you’re grandma might have one, or sorry, you might have
one. You plug this thing in and it’s
rubbery plastic bumpy massage surfaces vibrate and the little metal balls
rotate a million times a minute in some sort of a foot frenzy. Oh but wait!
It has heat too! And if you act
now, I’ll throw in a donut of destruction and a super rubbery bath mat to wear
on your head. Oh, sorry, got carried
away there. So the massage toy is his
favorite when he’s hanging out around the house. He starts out with this at his feet in the
kitchen chair, giggles and laughs while it tickles his feet and slowly, but
predictably works his way down until his bum is right on top of it. Now the real laughter begins. As you can imagine this is quite the
sensation and it’s a wonder why there aren’t one of these in everyone’s home! Soon enough though he has to be talked back
off of the machine as the motor begs for mercy and starts to wind down from his
weight. He even laughs at this part and
then back he goes for another foot tickle.
Recently my son has shown a new interest in
music. He has always tolerated it and
sometimes enjoyed it to some degree, but the teenager in him is certainly out
in plain view now as he continuously is taking my other son’s phone or my phone
when he would hear them playing music.
Well it is a happy thing in my house when he shows a new interest in
something. His dad went right to work
setting up an old MP3 that just happens to feel a lot like the smart phones the
rest of the family plays music on. Now,
his favorite toy is this MP3 loaded with all of his older siblings favorite
music. It’s a chore to get it from him
just before he goes to bed for the night.
I hear MP3’s are not good for the digestive tract so this one doesn’t
stay in the room at night just so I don’t have to push the child’s belly button
the next day every time I want to change a song. Who’s the asshole now? Well it’s anyone who tells my son that this
MP3 is bright pink and is indeed not a phone.A chapter from the book Autism and Assholes
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