Is It Time for a Lunch Counter Sit in?

I'm not sure why this one got me so incensed. Maybe because I feel for the mother. Or I 'feel' something different toward the good 'ole boy Chief of Police (who apparently knows the family and the situation). Or maybe it's the 'we want our quiet enjoyment of our meal and no re-tard is going to disrupt that' attitude I get from the article. In any event, anyone want to carpetbag into Jackson, SC with me and do a good old fashioned sit in at the lunch counter to protest the treatment some get for 'not being able to control their kids?

Family ordered to leave restaurant because of crying child

JACKSON, SC (WIS) - At first, Gail Martin says she wasn't sure who was yelling at her to leave the Buckhead Café in Jackson. It turned out to be Jackson Police Chief Dennis Rushton, asking Gail and her family to leave.
"I didn't know what he was doing," Gail's daughter Lauren said.
The family was just about to order when 4-year-old Alyssa began crying; she suffers from autism.
Gail says Chief Rushton yelled across the restaurant again.
"He said, ‘You need to pick her up and you need to get out of here now,'" Gail said.
Lauren is upset with the chief.
"That was very mean to say -- just very mean," Lauren said.
The embarrassment was too much for Gail and her daughters, who soon left the restaurant.
"I wasn't embarrassed of Alyssa's behavior, I was embarrassed of the way it was handled," Gail said.
Chief Rushton would not make a statement, but he did say he felt Mrs. Martin's daughter was being extremely loud and bothering other customers.
Even though he knew the child was autistic, he said he did ask the Martins to leave.
Gail says she feels like Chief Rushton should have been more understanding about what was going on with her autistic daughter.
"We can't just lock them up, they have every right to be out in public like everyone else," Gail said.
Now Gail hopes her story will bring more awareness about autism.
"If it can happen in a small town in Jackson, it can happen anywhere," Gail said.
Chief Rushton says he is open to going through training through the South Carolina Autism Society to help him better understand the condition.
Rushton also says his police commissioner has invited the Martin family to meet with them at City Hall.
The Martins say they are open to meeting with the commissioner.

My favorites are the responses from the general public after the article:

As you can imagine, people have had plenty to say about this story.
Viewer Roger said, "The family should have known better than to take an emotionally disturbed child into a restaurant. When customers pay to enjoy a nice meal the last thing they want to endure is an uncontrollable child."

Please people! Learn how to control your kids and yourself. It is YOUR responsibility to keep your kids civil while in public. If you are unable to and fail to leave and just expect people to understand... you are a bad parent, bad citizen, and basically a bad person. Don't burden other people with your problems.

Let's take a different tack at this and see how the 'Cheif' would be viewed if say, a child with cerebral palsy in a wheel chair was dining at the same restaurant. Would it be right to tell the family to leave because the child was drooling or making patrons 'uncomfortable'? Of course not. What about a child or adult with Downs who was clearly mentally disabled... do we kick them out, Chief? Boy, what would you look like a day after the elections? I guess it's OK that because this child's specific disability can be construed as bad parenting, so it's OK to just override their civil rights and tell them to leave. Maybe an 'undesirables only' section, yea that's it! They can even just re-use the disabled wheelchair pictographs to easily depict those we don't want to see or hear.

We shall overcome...

Let's Talk About Insurance, Shall We?

Always a bad mistake to be tempted into reading AutismVox. Not because she doesn't have some of the most balanced, insightful and thought provoking things being written about autism in blogdom, of course she does; but simply BECAUSE they are insightful, balanced and yada yada, I then have to spend all my time thinking about that topic!


Well THIS ONE was no exception, because it's about one of my favorite rants: insurance coverage for autism services. We are roughly in the same position as Kristina/Charlie but a few years behind in that Liv is probably going to need services and assistance in some way for life, so the idea of 'medical necessity', when it comes to insurance coverage, comes into our vocabulary frequently. The idea of therapy, in the minds of an insurance company, is a repair/recovery-then-back-on-the-street sort of thing; physical therapy on a broken leg and get it back to working order in 6 months and they're done. But what if repair/recovery is not '90% mobility' definable? What if timetables of therapies are not measured in weeks and months, but months and years?


I really think we are at a crossroads of services for the disabled and who should pay for them. If you recall, the private sector predicted the end of civilization as we knew it when they were told what the Americans With Disabilities Act would really mean. "Making the country disabled-accessible would be cost prohibitive and would not float; the economy will sink, small business would cease to exist and the county's economy would wind up at the bottom of the fiscal ocean" according to those in business. Well, 15+ years later the dingy is still bobbing and we have an unprecedented awareness and diversity and access in the workforce and in public places. Well, OK, so it's not as rosy as all that, but going from nothing to a little is still unprecedented!


Not only has the private sector bore the burden of legislative disability access, but the public sector has as well, perhaps more, especially at the local school level. It has gotten to the point where not only are schools specializing their education for special needs kids, but they are providing therapies as well. No one in the late 70's would have expected their child to receive speech, physical or occupational therapy from a school system; today, it is commonplace and required. Again, rosy picture, thorny reality, but let's go with it.

So, here we all are at the crossroads of the next 'disability' intersection, that of neurological differences. Science is providing more detailed information about disorders and their potential therapies. Government is signing laws to have these disabilities provided for. Localities are trying desperately to provide these services. Parents are trying to fill in the gaps left in therapies that they see as still needed but not provided. And in the distance we see the devil incarnate in the form of the insurance industry quietly walking away from the intersection whistling and counting the souls he has stolen, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one's the wiser.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those 'socialize medicine' types (well, actually, I am, but besides the point), but I just have this funny idea that insurance is there to protect me from devastating medical losses. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I consider helping my child communicate and learn how to better use her body to be part of that protection; I'm sorry, but I don't buy that this is a cost that should be borne by society. From what I've heard, using the excuse that schools should be providing these types of services is illegal (citing from the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe which was recently bought out by the firm Burnham and Ruhn). But, behind closed doors, they are saying that this is society's burden, not theirs.

Now you know I'm no where near being a defender of insur-a, but maybe they DO have a point. We have insurance, schools, state and federal entities passing this very expensive hot potato around. If autistics are integrated into society through better therapies and services, who's the primary beneficiary? State and federal governments will benefit in the form of a more productive citizen. Families will also benefit because they will bear less of the support burden. So why should insurance get involved in this when they are not the beneficiaries? Let's leave the leg broken, let's not provide preventive checkups; let's not attempt to take people where they should or could be; let's leave all that up to the people and entities most impacted. Fact is that insurance bears a primary obligation to the insured and a secondary obligation to it's stockholders and not the other way around (at least in my socialistic mind). I know I'm straw-manning it a little here, but I just feel that insurance will do anything in their power for cost avoidance; if you don't believe that, your mom or your spouse probably deals with your insurer.

What do we do then? How do we weave this safety net with government and private sector thread to catch poor unfortunates like my family just trying to give my daughter the life she deserves? I haven't a clue, but if the past is any indication, this battle is over money so it's going to get bloody. The only question is whether it remains a guerrilla war, where insurance and governments silently cut and run and work the denial of services covertly; or whether we can drag this out into the light and have a proper fight.

I Finally Found My Calling

It's been pretty much as I expected this past week and a half. I could get used to this: No driving; no lifting; much less housework; the ability to pull out the 'shoulder' card and get anyone in the house to do my bidding; Sleeping late at least four or five of these days ("I LOST COUNT!" he said in an almost half cackle). Yup, if it weren't for the pain; and being locked up in this house; and having a wife becoming unhinged because she has MORE work; and not being able to take myself anywhere; and these kids getting under my skin almost as much as I'm getting under theirs; and having work, both home-work and work-work, begin piling up...Yepyepyepyepyep, I coulda got used to this...



But it all kinda starts back up again tomorrow. I promised work that I'd start working from home full time tomorrow and go back to the office next week. The girls start their summer school tomorrow; shape of things to come, we have to get them BOTH out the door by 7:30 (any seismologists out there, please disregard the potential tremor at 7:25 AM EDT...that'll be Grace's tantrum). Linda's schedule looks more like a UPS route than a summer day: pick ups, drop offs, layovers. I get to play lazy dispatcher and watch the more perishable 'packages' so that they don't spoil in the car and drive her bonkers.


But, minus the shoulder recovery and this could be the ideal life. So if anyone wants to finance a six figure salary for me, I'll produce a regular post and raise a whole buncha kids...I could even have 'em wear T-Shirts to advertise your products. Give us a jingle and we can work out the details...

Deja Mew

Oh boy, what a sucker I am. I have exactly zero influence in my house when it comes to matters of the heart. First, let me take you back almost exactly one year, to my catiasco of 2007. Fast forward to today and it's more than a coincidence. Same issue with our eldest cat, bladder stones; same operation at the same vet. Same friggin phone call from the same friggin wife with the same friggin problem. To coin a musical phrase, and they call it- kitty love. My end of the conversation was reticent: "No!", "Absolutely not!", "They will not scoop, water and feed them right!" Linda took it blow by blow and promised to have the kids sign a contract to be in control of the cat duties. Linda was demure but steadfast...she wanted this kitten.

I could have vetoed the deal, really I could have. I probably would have been given the cold shoulder for only six to nine months. Secured my position in the Cold Heartless Bastard Hall of Fame. Instead, I get a cover story in IQ: Idiots Quarterly. I didn't even get a choice of names, by the time she arrived at the house Linda already had the name Amber picked.

I guess on the plus side is it's a baby that does not have diapers. The cat is perfect (that was one of my stipulations for ANY four legged animal that comes through these doors), she's fiesty AND loveable. She was bottle fed from one day old and is completely comfortable with people. Livie's high pitched screech did freak her out a little, and the shear volume in the house is obviously a source of discomfort; all I can say is "GET USED TO IT KID". Grace has got her name down pat already, and while there is no interaction between them per se, there have been several mid-living room near collisions between them. I even have several real poor Amber jokes:

What do you call Amber if she sticks her claw in an electrical socket? Ember
What do you call Amber if she pisses daddy off too much? Amberger
What will Amber say if she gets locked out in the winter? Damn! Burr...

So much for my shoulder surgery recovery. I'm last week's news, the latest chaos is a fuzzy brown kitty named Amber.

One of My Favorites...Trying to make St Peter Laugh

I can't let the passing of George Carlin on Sunday of an apparent heart attack go unmentioned. In case you haven't noticed, I try to be funny, but people like George made it look so damn easy! I remember sneaking into my sister's album collection in the mid 70's and pulling gems like FM/AM, Class Clown and Occupation: Foole out and listening to all those forbidden words. But he hooked me with all those references to my life; routines about getting a kid to laugh so hard in the lunchroom that he got Jimmy Smith to pass an entire tunafish sandwich through his nose: or the Spanish speaking Father Rivera and the confessional line that you saw moving and the way us 'catlick' boys confessed. Or Wonderful WINO radio and the broken clock or the weather forecast of "Tonight...dark, continued dark through the night, with widely scattered light in the morning". I must confess, I didn't get half the concepts he was talking about in those albums, being just 10 or 12 at the time, but I still laughed my ass off.

Funny thing was that those routines were ingrained in me, and I found them coming out years later, and as long as I would say "As George Carlin said" I could get away with using his stuff to make people laugh. As I got older, I found his brand of observational comedy irresistible. There's nothing funnier that looking at a bizarre or ordinary situation and finding that humorous twist to it; he was the undisputed king of it. He made people like Jerry Seinfeld look like they were observing the weather in comparison.

I just envision him arriving at the pearly gates and trying to talk his way into heaven, with St. Peter pointing out the various digs to organized religion he's done during his carreer. Let him through Pete, we can't let devil get all the laughs. He'll have you in stitches with a half hour on "what's with all the white up here"!

Thanks, George...

Outta Commission

I'm going in for shoulder surgery this morning. I can't decide which direction to take the next few posts. I could go with:

• The disability angle- realizing what it is like with some kind of disability.
• The wife/disability angle- Linda all of a sudden having 6 kids and one less adult...
• The I am in excruciating pain and need someone to b!tch at angle
• The funny, my kids are going to forget my shoulder out of commission and cause me excruciating pain angle

We'll see which way it develops. I'll talk to you later...

Take it From Someone Who Knows...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and expose myself and my internal conversations when it comes to dealing with society at large. It will hopefully not be like the foot in mouth that Garth from Wayne's World when he said "Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played a girl bunny?" I may have all the neurotypical people backing away looking for the door (or they may just agree with me, who knows?). But, since I am on the Hub and I at least have a fighting chance of a few of the neurodiverse reading, I'm sure they will find the rantings on NT society's foibles at least mildly recognizable and entertaining...

My light bulb went off a little while ago when someone on the Autism Speaks board made mention of how they needed to figure out a way to 'extinguish a behavior' in the NT world: specifically, the behavior that finds clerks, cashiers, government servants... NT people in general, ignoring you like you don't even exist. It got me to thinking of all the types of NT behavior that we'd might need put people through ABA for a few years for. Hey, maybe ABA could be done in jails to try and 'correct' some of those more extreme non ST (socio-typical) behaviors. I started thinking about times that I'm on a line, especially those in a crowded stadium or some other place where a somewhat haphazard queue gets created, watching those feigning ignorance about where the line ends and who's on which line, then inserting themselves well in front of me. I thinking the whole time what I'm going to say, how to politely confront them; then when it finally happens, I chicken out and don't say anything.
You people on the spectrum think that navigating the public social NT world is easy for us 'colorless' people not on the autism spectrum? Ha! think again! There are a handful of types of public personas out there that have this...this, shall we say, NT spectrum disorder and it takes a keen sense just to identify them...there are:

• the polite (people like me just mindin' our own business, a little geeky, self conscious, awkward, these are the closest to 'normal')
• the righteous loud (those like me and you with a sense of right and wrong... but with no fear)
• the weasel (those who rely on stealth to put one over on the crowd)
• the ditz (those, either by conscious design or by actual mindset, who think that ignorance IS an excuse)
• the bull (those who, again, either by conscious design or by actual mindset, actually believe that the world is their oyster and "you ain't freekin' tellin' me what I can or can't do!")

Upon closer examination, however, I find that these are just categories of types of NT's out there and that there are, interwoven in these groups, recognizable patterns of true disorders that may be treatable or at least categorizable and further research could be done. So, from the Faber College School of Sociology Research, here's a top 5 list of NT disorders that have been documented and no, this is NOT how all NT's are, we are just as appalled as you on the spectrum, but remember, it's a way of being for them:

1. Of course, the aforementioned line cutter. The righteous loud are the best antidotes to this behavior; if it's a big enough crowd, you can even pretend to be a RL and you can get a lynch mob started. Just make sure you say something within the 1st 5 seconds of the 'cut' or you might just get the "you ain't freekin' tellin me" speech...


2. The parking lot syndrome- There are so many sub categories in this, but most of these are a lot like the line cutters, only with 1000+ lb backing his or her desire to get the best. a)the shark, who circles the lot in search of the tender morsels of close parking spaces (even though there are 100 that they pass by that are only 10 feet farther away); b)the lurker, who will dive from the opposite direction if you are waiting for someone to pull out; c)the little red corvette, who park their precious piece of metal in such a way that takes up 16 parking spaces; d) the crayon over the line, who cannot park evenly between the line and it's closely related relative e) door smasher who park so close AND open their 1969 coupe De Ville door as if they are launching a land rocket, then feign not noticing that YOUR door is now wrapped around theirs. So many in need of a cure (oops sorry, recovery from), but i assure you that the above only makes up about 10% of the NT population...it's just that the 10% do a lot more driving and shopping!
3. The super market developmental disorder- You KNOW there are a few that need some intense therapy in here. Those who do the shopping cart in the middle of the aisle; those that park their cart and shop right across from it; those parents (with non autistic) bratty kids; oh the sale shelf clearers (I freely admit that's us!), the 3 cart family at the last register open (again... us). And of course, the classic, the 11-18 item person in the under 10 express lane (these people have such a strong lobby that they have actually CHANGED signs to accommodate them "Around 10 items or so".
4. Pervasive Driving Disorder- This category could possible be a book in NT disorders in it's own right. I will have to do some broad categories here, lest I turn a 5-10 minute read into a 2 hour one! So many symptoms, which ones are the worst. OK lets start with a juxtaposition: fast drivers in the slow lane and low drivers in the fast. The allegory of drifting: those who drift from lane to lane with no directional and those whose minds are drifting and forget to turn it OFF! Professions: the weavers who use all six lanes and the shoulder to get into the lead and the beauticians who are busy on their appearance, whether it hair, eyes, lipstick makeup. Oh, there are cell phone talkers and high beam flashers and kid yellers and sandwich eaters; enough dysfunction to fill a stadium.
5. Cell Phone Hyperactivity Disorder- last but not least in the disorders of the NT world, the obsessive need to be in constant contact with others and with the outside world even though they are in the outside world they need to get inside the outside world by getting on the internet and therefore in touch. NJ now has a ban on handheld cellphone usage in the car, I think cellphone usage has actually gone up, with just a slight decrease in those looking like Gary Owens with their right hand up to their ear. Yes folks, there truly IS no cure for this end of the spectrum, have a heart when they answer their phones at a classical concert, they are compelled to do so.

I hope this will give you a better understanding of some of the more specific disorders with the neurotypical world. If you have others just drop a line. If you would like to donate to the cause of eliminating NT from your world, I'm trying to buy the NTSpeaks.com website name, but some 14 year old is squatting on the rights... so until then, just donate to the elect McCain campaign.