Are You My Buddy?:

I know he's scheming about something, I just don't know
what it is.

  Most of the time David has a problem showing affection. No sudden smiles, impromptu hugs, or affectionate touches. The only laughter that comes from him is generally derisive and happens when he thinks we've done something silly (by his standards) like when I've broken the car or fallen down, cracked my head, or basically anything that makes me say 'ow'. Other than that it's sometimes difficult to figure out if Dave really ever notices that we're not characters in one of his games.(Sometimes I'm not so sure we're not) Sure, sometimes his movie/game quotes are uncannily apt, but mostly they have little or nothing to do with reality as we know it. (Dude's reality is unknown and unknowable) He only asks questions for things: 'Can I have some water?', 'Can I play the game?'. I've never heard him start a question with 'Do you remember...?' or 'When did you...?  And he can't answer any of those questions either. You can ask him, 'How was your day?' or 'What did you do?', or even 'Do you like...?' until you're blue in the face, and the only answer you're going to get is, 'Yeah' or 'No'.  98% of all the questions that David has been asked in his lifetime have been answered 'Yeah' or 'No'. The other 2% are answered with, 'More ketchup please!'.    There is one time when I'm fairly certain I have David's total focus. GameStop weekend. Especially when he knows we aren't going until Sunday. Saturdays are sooo wonderful when he's concentrating totally on 'being a good boy' until Sunday. Recently we'd had an entire week of Smileys in the book and Dave was, as usual, all fired up about it. He kept telling/asking me, 'We're going to get the games!', 'Yep. That's all of them!', 'We've got to get to the GameStop, remember?'. Over and over again. Nothing would do until I acknowledged that we were indeed going to GS. Thinking that something might be rotten in the State of Dudeworld, I would only go so far as, 'We'll see.' That seemed to be more than he was expecting though (which tipped me off even further), and he went off, cheerily repeating, 'Yep, we'll see!'

    Come to find out he had reason for concern. The 'Good Notes' policy had been (by necessity) extended to the bus because of certain over-enthusiastic behavior. So with School, after school and the bus ride covered by notes or actual Dad-presence he had to go somewhere else in his genetically-driven need to find the loophole in the good-behavior straitjacket. So he began breaking the 'Getting ready for school' code. Not a good idea. Because Raine is a narc. Behavioural issues are my bailiwick and she has no problem ratting him out to me when there's something (very little) that I should deal with.

Contimplative Dude

   My informant, informed me (that's what informants do)  that the prisoner (Dude) was resisting head coverings and the prescribed stately pace to the transportation. In other words, he refused to wear his hood, or snatched it off as soon as Raine's back was turned. And once the door was open he'd bolt out, run down the walk, out into the street, around and up into the bus. The problem with the hood thing was that it was often 10-20 degrees in the morning, and we didn't want a Dude-cicle, or have to miss work to nurse him through a cold. The running to the bus wouldn't be a problem with your typical teen. The problem is that David doesn't seem to care whether the bus has come to a complete stop... or any stop at all, before he bursts down out into the street. I've said it before but Dave has absolutely no sense of personal danger. The up-side of this is that he's rarely worried about anything. It's the people around him that are in danger of uncers, heart palpitations, stress-induced high blood pressure and aneurysm.

   Anyway, knowing his gaming future was in doubt Dave started to act really weird.... for him. He actually walked down the steps at 8:30 to tell us 'I sure am tired, is it time for bed?'. To which we instantly replied, 'NO!!', knowing he'd be up at some ungodly hour of the morning if he went to sleep that early. The next morning I got up fairly early (for a Saturday) and Dude was lying in bed, awake... and quiet. Normally this does not happen. If he wakes up before we do, he'll walk into our room (that's where the Game is), gust a big sigh at our recumbent forms and crawl into bed with us.... Waking us up instantly. This was kind of cute when he was 6... and small. Even then he would squirm around and end up taking up most of the bed. He's neither 6 or small anymore, so he takes up quite a bit of the bed just laying down. This has the preferred (by him) effect of immediately getting Dad's lazy butt up out of bed. Unfortunately for him, the only effect this has on Raine is getting us peremptorily ordered from the room.
  Eventually, however, even Raines wake up an come downstairs. Actually when Dave hears the sink in the bathroom start running, so does he. He bolts up the stairs while loudly asking, 'Can he have the game, please?', without even considering the possibility that I might say 'No.' All this happened in normal fashion, seemingly negating the oddity of earlier in the morning.
  Several hours later a strange clone of my son descended the stairway and asked if he could get a drink of water. Actually the strange part came when he was (supposedly) headed back up. He stopped in the living room, put his hand gently on Raine's shoulder and said, in a soft, warm, velvety voice I'd never heard from him before, 'I'm hoping you're having a really good day.' I turned toward the two of them with a confused scowl, thinking I couldn't have heard that right, then realising that I'd actually heard what I thought I had by seeing the shocked expression on Raine's face. She was baffled, but replied, 'It's okay so far, thanks for asking.' He then walked over to the chair I was sitting in, leaned over and hugged me asking, 'Are you my buddy?' Even more confused, I replied, 'Yeah... so far.'  He then patted my arm and said something (I was too stunned to actually hear it) that sounded like it came directly from a bad Chick-flick. He then leaned back in for another hug and, still using the same velvet-voice, said, 'I love you, Dad'. If I hadn't already been sitting down I'd have ended up on the floor. Never, in his entire 16 year career, has David said that where it wasn't solicited somehow. He just doesn't, EVER, initiate that sort of conversation.

Where is all this coming from?

   Then he said, 'I think I'll be going now.'  And he walked up the stairs, stopped and said, 'He's being a good boy. Yes!'

  Ahh, a light dawns. It seems that the dual-lecture about being a 'Good Boy' in the morning has struck a cord. Devious Dude-Dads can use this to their advantage (and do).

   A couple of weeks later all three of us took a rainy-day journey to Ohiopyle State Park. Raine had nearly insisted we go somewhere before checking the weather report, and I didn't want to take a chance on missing the opportunity, even if it was raining. Any time this woman is willing to leave the cave I am going to GO. We where on and around the Youghiogheny (Yawk-a-gainy) river at the Ohiopyle Falls when I slipped under one of the observation platforms to get a better angle for a picture of the falls. Dude, who had been reasonably quiet and fairly well-behaved up to this point, mostly because he'd been plugged into my mp3 player during the drive, suddenly decided that he didn't have to listen to Raine anymore. He took off his hood, got out from under the umbrella, and walked over to the platform and didn't come back. Big mistake. I've explained before that Raine is, essentially, a narc. Once Dude gets passed a certain limit she's more than happy to bring down the wrath of DAD on his head. Raine had enough problems wondering how to keep track of my sodden body once I'd potentially fallen into the river to have to deal with autistic insurrection. So, once I'd returned from my potentially hazardous mission a Courts-Martial was convened and the ruling handed down was: No mp3 player for the rest of the trip without a major attitude adjustment. There was much sadness in the ranks.

Thank you for listening

   After that we drove to our next photo-op. Cucumber Falls, on a tributary of the Yough (Yawk= Youghiogheny) (don't ask me, I don't know how they get the pronunciation of half of this stuff) you couldn't pry David off of Raine with a hydraulic jack. He constantly walked holding her arm at the elbow, hood up, leaning under the umbrella, and wouldn't leave her even when it was potentially dangerous to walk side-by-side. Every once in a while he would lean even closer and softly say, 'Thank you for listening.' Dave has a problem reversing pronouns so it took us a couple of times to understand that he was actually thanking himself for listening to Raine. He had his suck-up engines cranked to Warp Factor-10 and was prepared to send them into Emergency Overload to get his tunes back. Once we got past the 'Just one more shot' stage and were at the car a Parole hearing was commenced and it was decided to return the mp3 on condition of continued good behavior. Which lasted pretty much until he got back to his games and didn't need the player anymore.

Silly People

   I think the leniency of the Parole Board can be attributed to finding out that Cucumber Falls Park (a silly enough name) was renamed from Keister Park. So basically we'd gone to Butt Park to look at Cucumber Falls. I'm not sure if that means anything, but it sounds ridiculous.

Who is this Kid, and What Have You Done With Dude?:



Computer Time!!



We had an IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting at Dude's school. The stated reason for the parent (insert: Guy who doesn't know anything) attending these meetings is so that they feel less in the dark and more in control of the process and the progress their child is making in the system. I'm not sure how they think a 1 hour meeting, once a year, is going to make up for the 4-6 years of college I'd need to understand most of what's going on. Look, I'm a parent. I do 'parent things'. What I'm looking for is a kind of Special Needs Parent-Teacher conference. I don't have the knowledge to guide my son's education. You want to know how to get him to stay with you in a parking lot? I got that one.  You want to know what kind of  Vocational Program he's suited for? No clue. But I still go... whenever I don't completely forget when the meeting is supposed to be. They always want to set these dates 2 months or so in advance, and that gives me way more time than I need to entirely blow it off.  I hear they've got these new things called 'calendar's, and one of these days I'm gonna have to learn how to work one of those things.

  This year my fear of having missed the IEP came 2 weeks earlier than usual. Meaning my panic call actually occurred 1 week before the meeting instead of 1 week after. Armed with the correct date and time I was actually ready to go on the right day... Then I woke up to 10 inches of snow from a freakish late blizzard and school was cancelled. Fearing that the Fates wouldn't allow my attendance at this important educational event I waited for the Scheduling God (Carol) to hit me with another date and time, hoping she would be kind and not put it beyond my calendar-deficient attention span. Luckily for Dude's continued education she set a date only 5 days further along and at the same time (she's learning), so I actually made it there on time.


Movie Exitement



   Naturally, with the rescheduling some of the participants were late, and others couldn't make it there at all, but the meeting itself was actually very good. Since Dave is 16 now, he's not only allowed, but encouraged to go to the IEP and participate as much as he can. Once he got past thinking that I was there to free him from his educational prison and buy him video games, he was actually quiet and at least listened to everything we were saying. Until Ms. Walkney's PDA went off. Then he said (fairly loudly) 'You have a new text message!' Which got a chuckle, and gave me a chance to tell the funeral story. His teacher, Mrs. Yarosz, went over everything they were trying to do, and also the why and how of what was going on. She also told me how wonderful Dude is about doing unsupervised chores and how he can be quiet and task-oriented. I couldn't even call the lady a liar, because there Dave was, sitting at the table, being quiet, and before the meeting was over he was just allowed to walk out all on his own to go back to class.(what sort of mind-control lab is this place, anyway?) His new Speech Therapist, Tammy, informed me that his last ST 'just couldn't stay away from David' and was basically Speech-Stalking him. (I also learned that Maureen reads the blog and I couldn't resist giving her some trouble) When I had something to say, I had the eyes of everyone in the room (except Dave's). And the new School Supervisor, Regan, (not sure what title this replaced) asked pertinant questions of everybody and tried to learn all she could about Dude in the time we had.

     This year I only had one semi-burning question. Earlier in the year the wheels had started rolling to get David into a Vocational Training program (I know that's not what they call it anymore but I can't remember the PC version). Those wheels came to a screeching, grinding halt when they came against the speed-bump that is me. PA treats VT like a regular job. And the law says that if you're under 18 and you want a job, you have to have a work permit. To get a work permit your parent (speed bump) has to fill out the form. To fill out the form the parent needs the child's (hopefully) birth certificate. So after taking off work, and walking entirely around the High School twice because I couldn't figure out how to get in, that's when I was informed, by the no-nonsense Work Permit Woman, that I could not procede without proof that my son was actually born. Evidently they thought he was some sort of lab-experiment that I cooked up on the weekend.
   I have the filing system called- 'Oh! That's where that is!' and after an entire afternoon of tearing apart my desk, computer room, filing cabinet and dresser the only thing I could find was the reciept from the last time I'd needed his BC and had to order it from Florida six years before. So that's what I did again. Now what I wanted to know was 'Is this program going to do him any good? Or did I waste an entire afternoon and 14 bucks to get something I'm not really going to need immediately?' Answer: Unknown to me the VT people had been do Dude's class and decided that it was a bit early for him to enter their program. But at least my filing cabinet got cleaned out an re-organized. And the state of Florida got more of my money. They've been missing that since I moved away.

Speech Therapy lessons

   After the meeting I visited his room and was immediately greeted by a loud, and familiar voice saying, "Oh no! Now we have to start all over!' So evidently my son is wonderful at school, unless I'm around. (my mother always said I was a disruptive influence) I talked briefly to the kids that I know and the teachers that I didn't until it was time for Dude to go to Speech Therapy. Dave is very enthusiastic about going to ST, in fact he reminds everyone when it's time to go. Partly because Tammy is another of his fans, but mostly because he gets to use the computer for most of his lessons. I was gathering my stuff from the office when I decided I'd like to check out the class (since I have none of my own). Regan offered to escort me, but about halfway there we met Dave, who grabbed my arm, hunched over and acted like he was dragging me to the room. Tammy then led me on a whirlwind tour of her 20 foot square office/room, Dave decided that school work on computers is much more interesting that that 'Dad-person' and promptly ignored the both of us for the rest of the time I was there.

  I wasn't quite prepared to find out how 'wonderful' Dude is at school, but not only was everyone telling me how wonderful they thought he was they were telling me how wonderful other people thought he was too. C'mon! I know this kid. Sure he's cute and charming, but he's also a stubborn, loud pain in the butt! But there he was, quiet and nearly well-mannered and not acting like a scrambled recording of 16 different video games. The whole time I'm thinking, 'Nice kid, but what have you done with my son?'

Moms and Dudes:

One of the questions I most fear/hate to get when dealing with visitors to Dude-world is, "Where is his mother?" I know it's mostly unintentional but the translation I always get is, 'What are you doing here?' I guess part of the problem is that I don't consider it abnormal that for all intents and purposes (other than quasi/legally) Dave really doesn't have a mother. Oh, he's got a mom. And he calls her 'mom', when he's not calling her 'Raine' (mostly when Dad has him down on the couch and is unfairly tickling him to death). The people that ask the question don't want to know where his 'mom' is, the people who know Raine don't ask anything, they just know she's his mom. So when I hear, 'But what about his mother?' I tend to get a little cheesed.

    Mostly I get asked this question by nosy social workers, and anyone who thinks they get to ask condescending questions and is a bit too certain of their own authority. Depending on how pretentious they are they either get the short answer or the longer version. Nice people get the short answer: She lives in Kansas City. The ones that are more obviously giving me the 'second-class parent' treatment get the Reader's Digest version of events as kind of a warning shot. And if that doesn't shut them up I unload the second barrel. Oh I'll go on for an hour about all the shortcomings my ex has as a 'mother'. I think what throws them is the tone of utter indifference I use when talking about it. So if this ever gets posted I want to make one thing perfectly clear (inadvertent Nixon reference... Freudian?). I just don't care about the stuff she did to me, or 'because of me' or using me as an excuse. The stuff she did to Dude is another matter.

     Okay then, with that in mind let's skip over a bunch of the rough stuff (after all I think you're nice) and just skim over some of the relevant data. One June, shortly after your intrepid heroes moved to Da' Burgh, while they were still broke from the move, and Dude not yet being a legal resident of PA, the Wicked Redhead of the Midwest (you know, what's-her-name) went to the Missouri Pillars of Justice to keep Pittsburgh from experiencing the wonders of Dude-ness. Since no one was there to refute her nefarious statements before the bench the Dude was wrenched back to the Homeland (effective the 25th of October). Utter darkness covered the land for most of the next 2 years, but eventually negotiations were begun to regain the Dude-right for all (or at least the Pittsburgh Metro area). But the Redhead, in her cunning, wouldn't write anything down, or redress any of her scurrilous lies about the Dude-Dad and so the negotiations faltered. Then one day, (a few months later) while at work, D-D received a phone call from the Brain-Bender for his Education Zone(School Psychiatrist) telling him of the unexpected return of the Dudeness. The conversation went something like this:

'Your son is here'

'Excuse me?'

'This is Mr. H isn't it?'

'Yes it is.'

'Well I'd like to let you know that you need come and pick up your son. But you should be here before 4:30, because that's when I go home.'

'Uhhhhh. Are you sure you've got the right guy? That can't be my son, because my son is a thousand miles away from here. And even if he weren't I don't know where you are, anyway.'

'Well this is Dr. B at the A High School, and your ex dropped David and some of his stuff here, and he's been waiting 2 hours for you to come pick him up.' She was starting to get a bit huffy, like I was the one who lied to her.
'Why the hell did you let her do that?'
 Let's recap to this point: Dude's 'mother', without any communication in over 6 weeks, or any notice whatsoever, drove 1000 miles, abandoned her autistic son with a woman she'd never met before and he'd only seen once, lied to her about me knowing about the whole thing but left her my work number 'in case he doesn't show up', left a very rude note in my mailbox (first line: Congratulations, it's a boy!), and without any communication with me at all, slipped out of town and went back home.

'Mr. H, are you coming to get your son or not?'

   Ah, and there she played the trump card. Believing that I was some sort of deadbeat moron who either didn't remember or care about my son and unwilling to be convinced that she'd been duped by my ex, she avoided the whole issue by instinctively playing on my unwillingness to use my son as a pawn in anyone's game. So after a bus ride to Raine's work to get the Mothership (Caprice), and much cursing at and about petty bureaucrats in general and psychotic Redheads in particular I regained my key to Dude-World. And quite frankly, he was a mess. For the next three months I was reminded of Patty Duke's role in The Miracle Worker repeatedly. His behaviour was atrocious. He'd lost his manners, half his vocabulary, and his potty-training. He was combative and frustrated. This was not the happy-go-lucky babble box I remembered. He was more like some feral-boy version of the son I'd lost years before and was raised by wolves. Rude ones. He was very nearly kicked out of both the special needs program and the school that implemented it. I've seen some of what they put up with on a regular basis, and to be beyond their help is some kind of accomplishment, let me tell you.

     Through all of this there was one constant. One thing that kept me from sliding over the edge and him from falling back into the abyss. His Mom, Raine. Unlike the tales that Hollywood likes to tell, there are no saints or sinners when it comes to raising an atypical child. There are people that strap in, buckle up, and get the job done, and there are those that don't. There are no 'Saints' in this house. There have been times when either one of us wanted to strangle him. (Luckily for him it's never both of us at the same time). Handicapped children aren't intrinsically wonderful, beautiful, or even very much fun to be around. They're love-sponges that soak up all the love you can give them. And by that, show us that we have ever so much more love to give than we ever even knew we had. 'Mothers' or 'Fathers' don't always understand, but moms and dads do.

     Through the efforts of Dude-Mom and ham-handed help from her trusty side-kick (me), there were some palpable improvements by the end of the school year. And by the time the next season started we had to work a bit to convince them that we hadn't just cloned a Dude of our own and substituted him for the one they'd had three months before. Each helping the other, we worked as a team (go team!!) to get David back to the frustrating, stubborn, noisy, wonderful Dude he is now. (it's a work in progress) I think we each thought the other one had the tougher job. I know for a fact I was completely baffled at how to get him re-potty trained. But she stepped right in, came up with a plan, gave me my script (which I followed diligently) and, other than some occasional backsliding, in an extraordinarily short time he was trained. I mean, he still doesn't understand what the big deal is, but he does it! Atypical or not, there are certain things where I'll take 'doing' over 'understanding' every time. Using the toilet is one... .Raising Dudes is another.

Different Boat, Same Creek, Same Paddle:

When writing here I normally stick to the lighter stuff because... well, basically I think I'm better writing with a humorous bent, and I'm pretty sure anything else would begin to sound like whining in short order. But, without a doubt, there are some not-fun things about raising a handicapped child. One of the more pervasive is isolation. There are plenty of people that understand regular everyday earth-shattering problems. Someone whose ear you can bend and be assured they know where you're coming from. But with even the ordinary things an 'atypical' parent goes through? Just a little tougher to find someone like that. But bearing that in mind, I was reminded recently that tears can't make a house sad where there is laughter. (no, I didn't steal that from Hallmark, I just made it up)

  Dude and I went shopping at not our usual Jahnt Iggle (Giant Eagle to translate from Burgh-speak) a semi-local grocery chain. Shopping with David is always something of an adventure, but especially so when it's a non-GameStop weekend. You see, Dude has a strict 1 store-back home policy. Oh, he can be very patient about shopping when there's a game waiting to be picked at the final stop. But any other weekend he feels the pull of electronic adventure tugging pretty hard. I don't even want to talk about the times I've made the mistake of making GS our first stop. Let's just say he likes to hurry things along a bit, and leave it at that.
   We'd already been to Sam's Club and Dude was, once again trying to hurry me along, and after the fourth or fifth time he'd run into me with the grocery-cart I was getting a bit irritated to say the least. But despite the constant danger to my ankles we'd fallen into our usual shopping routine with Dave constantly babbling and Dad either commenting or ignoring him until he'd gotten too loud or exited. Not wishing a constant diet of Mac&Cheese and things covered in ketchup I usually ignore most of Dude's food requests unless it's something I'm specifically buying for him. One of the things I try to keep a constant supply of is little, individual sized bowls of applesauce. It's one of the few fruits/vegetables without cheese on it that Dave will consistently volunteer to eat and I'm all for that. As we passed the canned fruit isle this day, however, there was to be a change in the routine. David immediately started scouring the shelves stating loudly his preference for peaches. Not peaches and creme', not peaches in jello, but plain diced peaches in juice. This was more difficult to find than you might imagine as it seems that most consumers have gone beyond the need for mere plain fruit in its own juices. But found it we did and once it was safely in the cart and we were proceeding down the isle we were confronted by something else unusual.

   We had just passed a woman and her cart looking at the bottled juices and I as I started my own search I heard a fairly perky female voice break into the endless stream of vocalisation that is Dude.

"I think you ought to come home with me." Ok, that had my attention right there. I took a quick, startled look at a pleasant looking woman in her thirties pushing a cart with many toddler-food packages in it. "You have good ideas." It was obvious at this point that she was speaking to Dude.  Having grown up with it, I'm used to the easy, friendly way that Midwesterners sometimes accost total strangers with familiar conversation, but it doesn't happen very often in Pittsburgh and I get funny, startled looks from the locals when I have a flashback and start doing it, so this was amazing. Not only that, she was talking to David just the same way that I do, speaking to him like she would anyone else, and not trying to force or expect any sense out of him. This woman was no rookie. I did a quick ear-check and Dave was still extolling the evils of jello and creme' in any proximity to his peaches. She nodded and said, "Do you have any ideas for dinner? Because I'm fresh out." He immediately interrupted his dialogue to answer, "Mac and Cheese for dinner!" (Big surprise)  I noticed that the woman never looked to me for translation, which is unusual. Then I jumped in with, "You may not want to take this one home, he's a handful." She looked at me and smiled, "Aww he might fit right in, you never know." I laughed, thinking that this woman had no clue what she was talking about, and we each went on our way.

  Now if that had been all I would have thought that it was something of an anomalous conversation, wondered about it for a while, and then went on. But after we'd completed our shopping and finally found a line that had less than 300 people in it, it turned out we were right behind the very same woman. As we were waiting for the person in front of her to finish his transaction we started up our abbreviated conversation again. It seems that she was so comfortable with Dude because her youngest daughter, of three, has Asperger's which is an Autism Spectrum Disorder, similar to Autism but not exactly the same. (There is some dispute by Doctors and List-Makers about which is what and how much of one is actually the other, or if there's any difference at all.) Then she said some things that sounded eerily familiar to me for some reason. "People say, 'Why me?', why not me? It's got to be somebody." Startled at hearing my own words thrown back at me, I said, " I know exactly what you mean." It also seems that when her husband realized what the diagnosis actually meant he freaked, tried to tough it out, decided he couldn't handle it, and left when her daughter was 11 months old. That sounded vaguely familiar as well. I mean, change of sex and add red hair and... It hadn't been all that long ago, but she was remarkably equitable about it, saying, " He's a really wonderful guy, just a lousy parent." I chuckled and responded, "Well, you did one better than I did." She looked at me, confused. "At least your ex is nice." She gave me a smile of genuine sympathy.

  I could have gone on from there and gushed out my problems. It's the one thing that's almost compulsive about raising a handicapped child, when you find someone that actually understands the trouble you have it becomes almost a physical need to say all the things that no one seems to completely comprehend. Then I had a flash. This woman is just like me, trying to go at life with the same attitude and humor, but she's got it two kids and no Raine tougher, so shut that yap you're so fond of flapping and do the one thing you can do that really means anything to her. Listen.  And that's what I did. For the next 15 minutes I let her know that she wasn't alone, that there was at least one random individual that knew exactly what she was going through, exactly how tough it was and didn't act like she wouldn't just naturally get through it.

  She finished checking out, we traded 'Take care's and she went on her way, not ever knowing that she gave me as much by talking as I may have given her by listening. I never got her name, she never got mine, we never seemed to need introduction, because there for a few moments we were as close as many family members never get. Paddling different boats on the same lake, hoping they're not the Titanic, but making no apologies for doing a damn good job of it. Neither wanting sympathy, merely understanding, and finding it in the checkout line of a grocery store of all places.

Dude-Pass:

I lived in Orlando Fl for about 7 years, working as a stagehand/roadie. Somewhere in the basement is a stack of crew shirts, convention mementos, backstage passes, and other odd stuff from that surreal time. Working as a roadie is the kind of job that's cool to talk about after you don't do it anymore. It's fun to see the looks on people's faces when you can tell them, 'Elton John is a pretty cool guy' (but his manager is a pr*ck) or 'Jimmy Buffet is about like you'd expect him to be' or 'I've talked to Colin Powel' or even 'I saved my buddy from being killed by Barbara Bush's secret service agents'. (All true, btw)  But while you're doing the job you wonder what evil thing you must have done in a previous life to have to suffer such a horrible pennance in this one.

  One of the more important things to do with the job is the backstage pass, with it, you get into the gig to make your money. Without it, you're just one of the nameless rabble looking for a concert shirt. Sometimes it doesn't even have to be the right one, and you can still get in the gig and see the show. It's also a kind of Badge of Honor in a strange sort of way. You're doing a job that not many people do, and not everyone you work with even gets them. They're a kind of walking resume' that you can show off to make other roadies jealous that they didn't work that show. And I've heard rumors that there are a certain group of females willing to do all sorts of interesting things to obtain them. (I can't say for myself, that's just what I heard) But in all those three hundred and some odd passes there's one that's just a little more special than even working The Who's reunion tour and that's my Dude-Pass.



X-Box 360!!!!



    As part of pre-natal care (as some of you may know) is the ultrasound visit. I've been to several and they're all the same. You wait in a tiny room stuck to the side of a hospital (ORMC), or something converted from a storage room (ACCH), or, for all I know, stuck out in a shed in the parking lot. No matter where it is, they seem to have the crappiest waiting rooms and either the meanest or most distracted receiving nurse depending on if your appointment was on an even or odd day. As I remember it the procedure works something like this: First you wait 30 minutes beyond your appointment time, despite the fact that they insisted that you show up 15 minutes early 'just in case'. Then they take the woman away for some strange female Voudoun (voodoo) ritual called the 'chilly goo torture' and leave the man out in the waiting area with 3 metric tons of outdated magazines and 10 pregnant women. And let me tell you, there's nothing in the world to make a man more nervous than a room full of natal hormones. Even the women whose condition you didn't cause look at you like it's all your fault. Once they've done whatever it is they do in there, the male is finally allowed into the room and despite the fact that the procedure has already been done they have to re-goo the belly, drag the machine over from the side of the room and basically start all over. During the re-run they ask the 'Big Question'. ie: Do you want to know the sex? (I thought sex was what got us here in the first place) Now when we answered 'yes' the technician skillfully, and quickly, gave us a split-view of our child's body, which was pretty freaky. Then she did some sort of twist/slide/wiggle and zoomed-in to a view that would get her 2-5 years as a child pornographer if she'd done it a few years later. Obviously this was not this woman's first time.

   So, there I am, staring at my (obvious to me) son's... well.... package, let's say. I'm just starting to get all stereotypically prideful male, (cause, let's face it, zoomed in like that the kid looked like a porn star) when from the general direction of the table comes a strange question. "What is it?". The nurse and I both looked down at the distended redhead on the table in utter confusion. I, having the highest IQ in the room, immediately asked the most intelligent question saying, "Huh?" Which drew an equally intelligent response from the table. "What is it? What are you looking at?". The nurse and I exchanged a look of near perfect

 incomprehension and simultaneously checked to make sure that she could see the monitor. She could. We checked to make sure her eyes were open. They were.  Thinking that perhaps we didn't understand the question, or impatient with our lack of intelligent (?) response, Ellie asked once again, slowly and clearly, " What. Are. You. Looking. At.?". Afraid that I was over thinking the whole problem, I chose the only answer amongst the thousands of questions bouncing around my skull. I pointed at the sonogram machine and said (and I quote), "Boy parts."  This absolutely cracked up the nurse. In her 10 years of natal viewing she'd never heard it put quite that way, and it took quite some time for her to gain enough control to continue on to the final portion of the visit.

  Now those of you in the parenting club might have been through this procedure and I'm sure that most of you have been given a printout of various images shown to you on the screen. Now at ORMC (Orlando Regional Medical Center) they had several innovations that I'd never seen, or even heard of. The first was that instead of getting a heat-transfer, like a bad 7-11 receipt, or a printout on photographic paper we were given a transparency, like an X-ray. Which I thought was very cool, because it looked all medical and stuff. The second unexpected innovation was that the technician/nurse could enter text into the image before it was processed.




Winter Goofball





   We were allowed to choose 9-3'x4' images (with text) that were printed out on a single sheet. I'm almost certain that my inadvertently humorous remark gave the nurse several ideas that enhanced her imagination when it came to choosing the text on those images. But, like any felon hearing the prison gate open, we just grabbed our 'personal effects' and bolted out of the building. I was in my own living room when I got my first real look at my son's first pictures. I almost dropped the sheet when I reached the final two and started laughing semi-hysterically. Most of the images either had no text at all, or your standard 'hi mom' sort of things, but the last two were a bit different. The first had my son's 'generative member' (that's right, his dick) bracketed by 7 or so carats (<) with the caption, 'I'M A BOY'.  I guess to make certain that Ellie wouldn't have to wonder what she was looking at. But the last one was aimed directly at me with a similar view of Dude's genitalia, fewer little arrows and the caption 'Boy Parts!!'. Sensitive to my wife's embarrassment, and having a gig to go to that evening, I immediately separated the 'Boy Parts!!' image, punched a hole in the top and placed it on my lanyard with that evening's backstage pass. All that evening, and for several weeks afterwards I explained to anyone who asked (and quite a few that didn't) that this was my 'Baby Pass', and that I couldn't get into the birth without it. I'm almost certain it was amusing the first 20 or so times I said it.

   I no longer work as a stage-whore (you pay, we play) so my backstage passes mostly just gather dust in the basement. None of them ever got me into anything as wonderful, strange, or wierd as my Dude-Pass.

Laughter is the Best Medicine?:

OK, it's scenic.... so what.


 Not long ago in a galaxy pretty close to where I live, there was a quest for the greatest (closest) waterfalls in Western Pa. This time our intrepid explorers had back-up. Raine joined our expedition for two basic reasons 1) She's basically crazy, and 2) I promised to take her to our favorite smokehouse to pick up some smoked bacon. (It's pretty easy to bribe her) Once in the car and 60 miles from home I pretty much had her at my mercy. I mean, it cost me a pound and a half of bacon,  a side of smoked BBQ ribs and a pound of smoked beef dogs, but it was totally worth it.


What kind of bird is that?



  Because not too far away from the smokehouse is a place called McConnels Mill State Park. The park surrounds a stream that runs through a deep V shaped gorge with shed to house sized boulders thrown into it by some giant's baby. We drove down into the valley between two HUGE boulders, and over a covered bridge. Which was cool. Even though the mill and river looked interesting we couldn't stop. Because tucked into the south western corner of the park on a tributary stream was the object of our search with the cheery name of Hells Hollow Falls. If I didn't know the name I'd have never guessed it, because the walk along the trail was very serene and lovely. And totally wasted on Dude who was 20 feet ahead of us and moving at a brisk pace. His attitude seemed to be, 'Let's get there, snap the pics, and hit the road back to the games. Move it along people (us) let's put a little wiggle in that walk!'. Then once we'd gotten to the falls, down a wooden stairway that would make a mountain goat pause, he started acting really goofy, I guess to fool us into thinking he didn't think it was cool because that might make us stay longer. After ogling at the falls and getting over the temptation to put a harness on Dude so he could pull us back to the car we decided that the covered bridge/mill area was just too cool to pass up, so we headed back.



C'mon!

 There was only parking for about 4 cars down by the mill so we had to park up on the ridge and walk down. And I mean down. Four hundred or so feet to the bottom of the gorge.

  There's something about an old state park. They didn't want to 'adjust' the land, so the path down was made to follow the contours of the land rather than worry about the safety and comfort of the walkers. (I'm sure they built a scale model of the canyon wall, whipped some wet spaghetti at it, and wherever it stuck, that's where they built their 'path'.) But we made it down (Dave muttering under his breath the whole way) and we were right, it was very cool. The mill pond and spill, the mill itself, a little class II white-water and I was in Nikkon heaven. After a medium-while I sensed that I was losing my audience and decided to take a few more photos and wrap it up. Dude and I were boulder-hopping next to the stream when directly after I told him to stop he (naturally) took one more step, slipped and landed directly on his butt. He immediately cried out, 'Oh! My back! Someone get a cell phone! We've got to go to the Hospital building!' I was initially alarmed, but quickly calmed when I realised a couple of things. The first was, even though


We are soooo excited to be here

  he'd been yelling about his back, he had in fact landed on his butt. The second was he didn't seem to be partially paralyzed, or even limping as we climbed the bank to where Raine was waiting. (now, several days later, I have to tell you, there's not even a bruise) the entire 2 minute climb was accompanied by the melodramatic 'cockroach-death scene' of my youngest child. 'Oh, make the pain stop. Oh that's going to hurt for a while. Please make it stop.' By the time we'd rejoined Raine I'd almost fallen three times from laughing. (Yes, I know I'm going to Hell)

  When we'd got to where Raine was waiting, and I'd told her Dave's Sad Tale of Woe, she was, of course, concerned and immediately made 'mother-hen' noises at Dude. At this point my son's pitifulness increased to warp factor 10. 'Oh the pain! The pain! Make it stop! Make it stop!' and he dialed up an even more woebegone voice from somewhere in his repertoire. It looked like Raine was going to fall for it until I told her about the cell phone/hospital building comment. Then she gave him that look that only moms can do, the one that says they know you're shining them on. Having decided Dude probably didn't need to be Life-Flighted out of the gorge, we put our mountain goat shoes on to climb the steep (and I mean STEEP) path back to the car. (picture climbing a 15 story building, then take out half the steps and replace them with a dirt ramp covered with rocks and leaves and you've just about got it.)Raine and Dude have the same training regimen, which is to say, none. I'm in decent shape, and I was wearing a tank-top on chilly day, but I was sweating and a bit sore by the time we'd gotten to the top.

  Dave was holding his right butt cheek and moaning and groaning the entire climb, and that's where the trouble actually started. You see, he was in the lead, with me in the middle, and Raine bringing up the rear. Every time he'd say something pitiful, ' Oh the pain! The pain! Please God, make it stop!' or 'There could be internal bleeding, please seek immediate medical attention.' or 'Oh yeah! That hurts. There's real pain there.'. I'd start laughing, then Raine would ask me what he'd said. Then, when I'd told her, she'd start cracking up too. And every time she'd start laughing, she'd run out of breath and have to stop climbing, or grow gills for extra oxygen. The funniest thing though, was that no matter how endangered her life was she just couldn't stop asking me what he'd said and then accusing me of trying to give her a heart-attack when I complied. (we've decided that we're both evil people and will be roomies in hell) We reached the ridge, gave Dude some Tylenol (in case there was 'real pain' there) and started home. Driving down the Interstate Dave would randomly call out from the back seat about 'the pain' just to get me to laugh, and then start cracking up when I had. So, we'd seen some cool stuff, gotten some smokey goodness, and no one (despite protests to the contrary) had to be Life-Flighted, or defribrillated... all in all a very nice day. Surreal, but nice.

Btw, Hells Hollow was named by some early settlers because the wildcats that lived along the hollow would scream and 'sound like lost, damned souls'. Thought you might be wondering about that.

That's a Big Faucet:

Who left the water running?

 There's a tendency sometimes to assume that just because you know the most about something/someone that you know everything there is to know. 'Experts' fall into this trap all the time, they've been right so many times that they don't think anyone can teach them anything more. Travelling down this path can lead to new discovery (insert embarrassment) at a sometimes startling speed. Take myself, for an example. In and among my various talents, along with an IQ that's sometimes embarrassing to talk about, (yes, I know I'm an underachiever, get over it, I have) I am a self-admitted Dude-expert. There is no one on this planet (I thought) that knows more about Dudeness than I. Well, it turns out there is someone that can teach me even more about Dude. And that person turns out to be David himself. Who'd a thunk it?

  One Saturday recently Raine was suffering from a migraine of epic proportions. Once I'd darkened the room and come back from the pharmacy with coma-inducing medication my effectiveness as a care-giver was pretty much shot. I know that migraines make a person incredibly sensitive to light and noise. So, having taken care of the light I decided the best thing I could do was get rid of the noise. So I grabbed Dude and headed for the door. Us being the two noisiest things in the house.

  A few days ago a friend of mine on Facebook asked if I had any waterfall pictures, and that got me wondering if there were any named waterfalls in the area, those being the easiest to find on the Internet. Come to find out there is one not too far away from here. It's called Buttermilk Falls. No idea why it's called that, because the water's clear and there isn't a dairy anywhere around, but it's an oddly pleasing name for a waterfall. Evidently many other people think so, because there are at least 3 other waterfalls in PA with the same name. Anyway, even though the sky was cloudy I decided to at least find the falls and check them out. Of course, being part of a bizarre Japanese genetic experiment I basically have my camera welded to my hand whenever I leave the house.



Buttermilk Falls. One of them anyway

 So, once again without any directions of any kind, (other than a quick look at MapQuest), Dave and I forged our way into the untracked wasteland that is Western Pennsylvania. Ok, actually we drove up a State Highway about 12 miles and found it right along the road between the edges of two towns. I'd like to tell you of the long, arduous journey by foot along the forest trail, but it was really only about 600 yards. Even Dave didn't complain about the walk. Actually the trail went through an old rock quarry that had been cut into the side of a very sharp, narrow rocky ravine it wandered a bit but stayed pretty close to the boulder strewn bank of the creek. This tended to add visions of my son's broken body lying on the rocks to my already flaming paranoia about Dave walking near water, but Dude was unfazed.
 Now understand, Dave is basically with me because Raine's head would explode if he were left at the house. I know for a fact that he has no interest in the outdoors (other than that's where all the open water is) his venue of choice is the floor in front of his TV. Maybe, if he's feeling especially 'outdoorsy' he'll ask me to open the windows so he can regale the neighborhood with his current babble. But parks, trails and other natural settings are definitely not his cup of tea. Or so I thought.

  Buttermilk Falls (the one I was at anyway) isn't really all that impressive a waterfall. It has a very nice semi-circular ledge, about a thirty foot drop, or plunge, and the undercut makes it possible to walk entirely behind the falls without getting wet. But it's autumn, so there's not much water falling over it, about a 2 foot wide stream at the crest. 



That's a big faucet!



 Once we'd crossed the little rise before the falls, the first thing I heard was 'Wow'. I turned to see Dave, mouth agape, staring at the falls. I chuckled a bit, and said, 'Pretty cool, huh?'. As I turned back to take another picture he said, 'That's a big faucet!'. From then on everywhere I walked, Dave had to go. All the time talking about 'someone forgot to turn off the faucet'. Climbing over rocks, passing underneath the cap rock to completely circle the plunge pool, even walking the rocks to cross back over the stream at the outlet.   He then, evidently, wanted to 'mountain goat' our way back down the gorge, climbing from rock to rock to follow the stream all the way down the valley. Now who's the wimp? You guessed it: Dad. There was no way I was going to go leaping from stone to stone with a camera in one hand and Dude's hand in the other. Call me a wuss, I don't care.

  As we walked back to the car (on the trail, thank you very much), Dave was turning his head from side to side, looking at all the rocks and trees and talking about them rather than his video games. When we got back to the 6 he actually seemed reluctant to go, taking one more look around and talking about the 'faucet' again. I was so stoked, I almost took off across country to see if I could find more 'falling water'. But lunch was to be had, and our patient had to be checked on. So after a stop at the Arches and a scenic ride we pulled up in front of the house. Dave, full of 'Royale with Cheese' and me, full of hope that I'd actually found something that my son enjoyed that might drag him away from his video zombie-ism.
  This hope (like many others) was quickly crushed. As I was getting out of the car I heard Dave say, 'That Raine better get out of bed. Gotta play the video games!' Yeah, good luck with that, kid. Luckily for Dude, Raine was feeling much better, and did indeed get out of bed and he did get to play his video game. But Dad still hopes that next time it'll be a little easier to drag his son from his virtual world..... Yeah, good luck with that kid.