This Year:
“I wasn’t doin’ anything!”
AsstCoach Cathy, AntiCoach Jeff
A Parris Island-like conversion
Year-round school for everybody
I hate kids less than most adults do
Lordy, Lordy look who. . .ain’t 39!
PECS bad boy and girl
2001: Autistic Family Odyssey
“The odd years are just too odd anymore.”
- Newsletter (1993) from the Autistic Family
Volume 9 November 2001
Those Who Can. . . Teach. . .And those who are really nuts teach adolescents.
After Cathy’s year at Alcoa, she was fool enough to sign up to a one-semester stint at Seymour High, just across the Blount County line in Sevier County. Fifteen year old neurologically typical kids. The ones who raise selfishness to an art form. I keep trying to tell her Special Education is calling. This year I switched from the lower ability SpEd kids to the more able ones of the 6th and 7th grade variety. These kids are a trip. They are probably as egocentric as Cathy’s, but they aren’t very good at it yet. If they weren’t constantly amusing, they’d be annoying. Other people's kids!
Cathy’s Biology/Ecology semester ends mid January, then I’ll have the SpEd Mafia make her an offer. By May, I’ll be finished with UT—probably only for now, not forever— adding an Ed.S. I’m toying with the Ed.D. notion, thinking I’ll go administrator track. But the teachers can be more annoying to work with than the kids.
Play Ball. . .
Those who are beyond nuts...coach.
Between two teams being added to Challenger softball and several coaches opting out of their contract extensions, Cathy became Assistant Coach of Kate’s Sox and I took on head coaching duties for Luke’s expansion team Rockies.
The Rockies ended up 2-4-2 (plus 4 rain outs). Considering that my first action as coach was to ban practice, that’s a successful year. “The game is practice.” Tommy LaSorda I’m not. Yogi Berra, maybe. Try this: “Winning isn’t everything. It isn’t even anything.”
Autistic Family FolliesI threw a surprise 40th for Cathy, inviting her Lyndhurst crowd (a group from various other careers who decided to get certified in high school science and math). The deceit worked nicely, but poker-face I’m not. After 3 months of planning I was glad to stop fibbing about it. The ends justified the lying.
Luke and I made the change to Orthodoxy this year, the religion of my paternal, Eastern European roots. In Pennsylvania, nobody would think anything about this switch. Here in Baptist Country, though, they think it’s some kind of cult. (“Is it a Christian religion?”) After about 20 years as a peripheral Roman Catholic, it’s good to belong at His altar again.
Luke and Kate are still as nonverbal as ever, though a lot less impulsive than they used to be. We’re trying to get them to communicate by picture exchange, but they aren’t sold on the positives yet. They’d rather ignore people than communicate with them. Having compiled the Autistic Family Newsletter for the past decade, I’m seeing their point. (Only kidding. I’m a real “people” person. Some of my best friends are people.)
No escape stories to tell for 2001. Luke even did Upward (“Holy Hoopster”) Basketball this year and earned the “most Christlike” star a time or two (notice his sleeve). We’ve just signed up him and sister for the 2002 season.
The kids did Easter Seals Camp again last June. There are a couple good pictures of Kate there on our website. Luke’s were okay, but not good enough for WWW posting.
The school year that ended in June was the first during which Kate measured a year’s gain. For you GenEds out there, let me explain that this doesn’t happen enough in SpEd. It’s a huge deal.
No pictures of them this year, but we still have the old greyhounds. Owning a retired racer is like being a Unitarian. It’s so easy, there’s almost nothing to it. It’s probably good they were named before coming to autism house, because collectively they’ve become Phrick and Phrack.
Peace to you in 2002!
lukate@charter.net