note: This first story was observed several years before the others were

"Naca"

Today, I watched as Missy went on a family trip with her adoptive family. They visited a water park which I will refer to as "Naca." Once at Naca, Missy did her usual trick of yelling "We're at Naca! Yeah! " then asking adoptive mother where they were again. Fortunately, it only took fifteen times today before she stopped asking, as she became distracted by the bright colors of bathing suites.

Missy was mesmerized for a good ten minutes with the colors, then finally asked "Why are people's skins colored different?" Naturally, her adoptive parent replied, "Human skin tones range from a light bash or white to a dark brown, even black, but it doesn't matter if you're a light tan or dark brown. It's what inside that counts." Missy looked back at the people and replied, "Then they aren't human. Look! That non-human has a green skin around her middle."

Her adoptive parent pointed out they were bathing suites and that Missy was in a yellow one, her favorite color. Missy asked why they were in their bathing suites if they planned to swim, and how do they know that yellow is her favorite? She didn't even know what a color was. Her adoptive parents gave up.

I watched as Missy swam, and a first there was little trouble. She nearly 'drowned' in the ankle-water, she suddenly was covered in a 'mysterious' wet stuff, she was confused about why someone would put a yellow object in the sky when the blue was pretty all by itself, why wasn't the sky yellow and the sun blue, what is the sun, why didn't anyone tell her yellow was her favorite color?, what is yellow, why are her adoptive parents trying to go away, what is this wet stuff, why is she the only person who doesn't think water should be wet, the usual kind of things.

I was concerned when she attempted to go on a slide. I was relieved when she safely made it to the bottom, asking how did she get wet? And why was her skin yellow? Luckily, by then the rest of her family wished to go and they left Naca.

"The Pen Ordeal"

Today, Missy tried to write with the pen she received yesterday at the self- improvement course. Unfortunately, she couldn't get it to work. She went on to school, where she is assigned to the group of children who volunteered to look after her. The girls known as Liliputa, Bernice, and Agatha were on 'Missy duty' that day, so they were forced to try and help her.

"It's stuck close," Missy explained and held out the pen. Liliputa raised an eyebrow and Agatha asked Missy to show them exactly how 'stuck' it was.

They carefully watched as Missy pulled, tugged, pounded, and even took a jackhammer to the pen. (The jackhammer ended up hitting her head because she held it up-side-down). After four hours of hard work on the pen, the girls were not surprised to see Missy not able to get the pen to work. Finally, Bernice held out her hand in demand that the pen be handed over. An hour later, Missy finally understood the term "handed over" (she didn't understand the hand part, but it took her about the same time to figure out the 'over').

"Hand me that paper," Bernice said, and to avoid yet another delay, Agatha grabbed it before Missy could mistake the request as meant for her to carry out. Bernice cleverly tilted the pen, and rubbing it gently over the paper, ink came out. "See?" Bernice asked. "You just tilt the pen and rub. Understand?"

Missy nodded, and hopefully by tomorrow, she will have mastered the tilting part. 

"Miss Jass Did It"

Missy went to a birthday party today, Agatha's. It was a murder mystery, and she played the role of murderer (the drawing was random). She killed the person known as "Mr. Smith" in the play/game/party.

The party started out fine, until Agatha's gifts were opened. Missy attacked Liliputa with the pretend murder weapon she was suppose to hide and demanded all the gifts or Liliputa would die. Okay, she actually wanted the gift wrappings, not the gifts themselves.

The girls played along, and once Missy had the paper, the girls asked if her character killed Mr. Smith. Missy replied, "I'm supposed to keep it secret that I killed him, so, no."

"Aha," said Bernice. "You killed him!"

"No I didn't," Missy replied. "Miss Jass (her character) did!"

"So Miss Jass did it?"

"When you talk to me, say 'you', not 'Miss Jass'; It's incorrect," Missy reprimanded. It was the most intelligent thing she said all evening.

"So you did it?"

"No, Miss Jass did."

It took the girls the entire party to make Missy understand she was considered Miss Jass, but only for the party (Missy demanded to know why she was called Missy if she was Miss Jass).

END OBSERVATION

RELATED OBSERVATION (Several Months after) :
Today Missy finally admitted she killed Mr. Smith, "out of guilt of her crime." She demanded to be arrested and put on trial. 

"Walled Report"

Today at Missy's school, her teacher, Mr. Digressorjester (DIJEST), assigned a project. Naturally, this caused problems for her. Luckily, (for her) Agatha and Bernice were on 'Missy duty' and had to help her.

First was the problem of a subject. This was easily solved, for as Missy walked into the 'Missy Special Education Computer Room', she saw an amazing thing she knew she must write about and spread the word of its many uses: a wall. She thought it was a great new invention.

Second, she had to learn what a chair was. Again. Her guides, Agatha and Bernice, finally decided it was best they dropped the idea of showing her the difference between chair, table, and computer as long as she sat in the right spot.

After the few hours it took to explain why there was a glowing thing in front of her, the guides managed to open the word processor made especially for Missy. The drawer in the table she sat at. Inside, was paper and that mysterious pen thing. Fortunately, by this time she had learned how to tilt it*. Agatha and Bernice wrote for her.

After paying careful attention to what she said and writing it down, the guides knew what Missy wanted them to do. However, stripping down and clothing in paper would not earn an A. So they thought of a plan:

"Oh, look Missy! What's that flat thing?" cried one of the girls.

"Wow," Missy said. ""I change my mind. I want to write about that!" and she eagerly pointed to the wall opposite of the previous one and rattled on about how great it was. The girls quickly wrote down notes, and without consulting Missy again (her consultant price was high because she was efficient at saying nothing), they wrote her report as best they could remember. Later, after rattling a day about the great, magical flat wall thing, Missy asked what a wall was and why did they dirty that paper.

Missy recieved a 'better than can be expected from Missy but not from a rock' grade and she was pleased at it. After all, everyone else only got one word of praise on their paper, A. Oh yeah, and a weird crossing line thing.

"Missy Metrics"

Today's Science Class was a disaster. Mr. Buttler, the teacher, decided to tach about the metric system. Though he tried desperately to put it in simple terms (this stick is one meter, Missy. The long, wooden thing is one meter in length), Missy could not understand. (How can it be one meter, a meter stick, one meter in length, a wooden thing, and a meter stick all at once? One object can't be five.) (NOTE: We were impressed by her temporary ability to recall FOUR names)

Missy took the meter stick, held it, read (remarkably) the large letters designating it 'One Meter' and did not comprehend. She did, however find an excellent use for it. (I will not divulge into her use for it. Sufficant to say the girls on 'Missy duty' had to act fast to prevent her from seriously injuring more than one person, like she did when they tried to teach her how to NOT throw her shoe into Mr. DIJEST's head for speaking in class. By keeping it on her foot.).

Finally, they got Missy to stop, and after repairing a few windsheild wipers, Missy undertood METER. It was the thing that she kept running into in the place of car storage. Digusted by her ignorance, Mr. Buttler grew so angry at her inability to maintain ideas in her head that he grabbed a piece of paper with all the metrics notes on it and shoved it in her ear.

It worked.

Missy scored her first ".0000000000001" on a test, the highest score she had ever gotten. (Ooh, look at all those zeros.... Can I have more? I'll trade you the one.)

Later Note: Unfortunately, that method did not work on other subjects, such as Kindergarden Arithmetic she was struggling to learn, because immediately after the incident, Missy found out she liked the taste of paper and began to eat it. See 'Missy's Trip to the Hospital' (to be published at later date), to learn about how she dealed with the paper cuts on her toungue.