Should have stuck with the TLL

I was planning on taking the kids to the Toy Lending Library this morning, but once I woke up, I just wasn’t feeling up to driving that far, and I asked Jack if he’d be okay with going to the play area at the mall instead.  Turns out, he preferred that, so off we went to Simon Kidgets Clubhouse.  The kids were playing nicely there, though after the last time we went there, Abigail has been a bit freaked out by any little boys other than Jack.  There was one African American boy, maybe a little older than her, who kept hugging her and kissing her, and he just wouldn’t let her alone, and finally, she broke down screaming– for the next minute or two until we hightailed it out.

Today, there was a boy, maybe six or seven, who began agitating Abigail from the moment he arrived.  It appeared that he liked getting a rise out of ther, so he got closer to her face and started making scary faces.  I asked him, very politely, if he would please not do that because she didn’t like it.  He would hurry to get up the few steps to the slide, past Abigail, and once he got on the slide, he would inch down so slowly that Abigail couldn’t go down.  He turned and saw her, delighted that she was getting frustrated.  So I asked him, again purposefully loud enough so that his mother could hear, if he could please go down the slide so that the baby could have a turn.  His mother, not paying a bit of attention to her son or the goings-on of the play area, texted or played something on her phone the entire time.  Her son continued to torment the other kids as well, cutting them off and getting in their faces.  Each time he would disregard what I’d say, he’d look at me, with a smirk, as if to say, whatcha gonna do about it? I asked him nice and loud about five times to not do this or that to Abigail.  His final time down the slide, he hurried past her on the stairs again, almost knocking her down, then he purposefully kept backing up into her, with his elbow jabbing harder and harder into her grimacing face, so I quickly grabbed his arm to pull it away from her face and said, very sternly this time, as I was getting truly agitated with this mindless child and his neglectful mother, to leave my daughter alone.

His mother didn’t miss a beat that time.  She was standing right by me, yelling hysterically, “He is autistic!  I just watched you reprimand my son.”  She stood and just stared, dumbfounded at me for a few seconds.  “He is autistic!  I can’t believe people like you!”  Was this common knowledge?  I tried to interject, politely, again, that I was very sorry but I had asked him, so that she could hear five times but that she was paying no attention.  She heard nothing I said though as she was reaming me out, shaking with rage.  How was I supposed to know?  There was nothing about him that said autistic to me- he acted like a bunch of the kids I see at the Toy Lending Library every week, whose mothers simply grab a book and check out for an hour or two.  Perhaps I should have gone and jerked the cell phone out of the woman’s hand so she could see what was going on right in front of her.

As the lunatic woman collected her son, who had been just fine this whole time until the hyper scene she was making probably scared him, and he started to wail, I said, “Will you just listen to me for a second?” because she cut off everything I tried to say to her.  She just barked, “No!  I feel sorry for people like you.  You just yelled at my autistic son (I most certainly did not yell, but I talked with authority the FIFTH time).  He’s autistic.  People like you!  I pity you!!”  And the two of them ran out, with the boy wailing and banging the sides of his head.  The other people in the play area just watched.  They had heard me ask the boy several times to please not get so close to Abigail’s face and make scary faces at her, etc.  I could feel the hot tears welling behind my eyes, and I just tried to hold it in until we could get to the bathroom.  Sure, if I had known he was autistic, that would have completely changed how I responded.  Do autistic kids get to do whatever they want just because they have a disease?  If I had an autistic child, I sure as heck would be keeping a close eye on him and trying to steer him correctly, and I’d probably want to let other mothers know he was autistic if he continued to do things that warranted apologies.

There’s no telling what poor Jack must have thought while that whole scene was taking place.  I wasn’t really watching his reaction, but he knew something wasn’t right, and when I told him that it was time to go, he hurried out ahead of me, when he usually has to say goodbye to each individual piece of equipment.  Tears have been coming a lot more easily to me this pregnancy, and once we got to the bathroom, I was a blubbering mess.  “Do you not feel really well, Mama?  Are you sad?  Maybe hugs and kisses will make you feel much better?”  And they did.

I just needed more on the way home, when, in my absent-mindedness, I pulled in front of the entrance to some bank parking lot or something while waiting for a stop light.  I made eye contact with a woman in a van across the street, who was motioning her arms forward, trying to tell me something.  I looked confused and rolled down my window. She rolled her eyes at me, and VERY agitatedly said, “He wants to turn there!”  She motioned her arms again, like I should move forward to allow space for the man who was trying to turn into the parking lot (behind me, so I couldn’t see who she was talking about).  I yelled back, “Oh!  Sorry!” and moved forward, but it was too late by then, and traffic was already movng.  The woman rolled her eyes so hard at me, again, I thought she was going to snap her neck.  “Merry Christmas to you too!”

Rollier’s Hardware was on our way home.  I was really in need of some Christmas cheer, so I decided that we’d stop in for a few minutes to see the Christmas village display with the trains and lights and moving skiers and ice skaters, etc, which absolutely transfix Jack.  We walked back to the huge display, which is about four feet off of the ground.  Since my back has been really bothering me lately, I told Jack he could stand in the back of the cart just so he could see the village for a minute of two, but then, he’d have to walk again.  We were standing there, perfectly still, just watching the train with Santa go by, when an older woman came by and started giving me nasty looks.  So I smiled at her, and she continued her glare and shook her head at me.  “You know he could fall out of that cart and break his head.  They’re not supposed to stand up back there.”  I told her I was holding on tight to him and that he just wanted to see the train for a minute.  But I felt more tears coming, so we booked it out of there too.

I think it’ll be a few days before I can bring myself out into the public again.  Unfortunately, Mike will be in California the next couple of days, so I think I we’ll have to venture out for me to stay sane.  I need some love.