In Honor of Tim's 15th Birthday....

Living with an Aspergers Teen

Tim set up and had me take this pic. I think it looks cool.

I am always on the learning curve, but not to the intensity that he is. He is continually absorbing and processing or rejecting data. He showers me with incredible tidbits of miscellaneous and here before unknown information, and he is fascinated by patterns (in music, in art, in daily life). Music, especially neo-metal, soothes and orders his world. He is seldom seen without headphones. They are semi-permanently attached. Friendships are important as well as drama. On the stage he can pretend to be someone he is not. His worldview is pretty much good versus evil, right versus wrong. It can be a bit black and white, not much gray. Black and white especially in terms of how he thinks the world should operate/function. A crack or rift in this reality severs the nerve endings (especially someone who thinks all things related to the computer should work flawlessly and in the user’s favor). It is inconceivable and blatantly wrong for things to work in opposition to the Aspie's thoughts. Things should work as they are supposed to. Ambiguity is stressful. Wrongs should be righted. Evil should be punished. Truth, as it is seen by this Aspergers teenager, must be spoken and defended. Rights should be protected. This means that he has an incredible sense of justice, but also not a great deal of patience. His thoughts get stuck in a rut and play over and over like a scratched record on an old-style record player. He is merciful and kind and very much wants to learn about the people he likes’ feelings and how to appropriately respond (unless, of course it’s his own brothers, whom he likes, but places in a totally different category all together).

I thought I’d let you see a glimpse of his ideas on Apergers. These are some excerpts from a list we compiled for “You Might Be an Aspie if….”

• Your favorite attire is comfortable jeans and a t-shirt – for school… for PE… for the beach… for sleeping
• You understand and can express the thoughts of your dog better than the thoughts of the girl sitting next to you in class
• You want to know “Why” all the time
• You wear headphones to and from school to block out everything else and spend your time before class circling the basketball goal
• You are intimately familiar with the Marvel Universe
• You prefer to go out in a foreign country where people don’t understand your language than in America where they know what you’re saying
• You’d rather starve than talk to the person at the counter of a fast food restaurant.
• You’d rather go out to your friend’s house and look in his window to see if he’s home than call him on the phone (risking talking to another family member).
  
• You wonder why people aren’t logical.
• You can’t explain your mental math and you certainly wont write it down.
  
• You can create a family tree connecting the Adams family and the Munsters as well as several other families of Gothic villains.
  
• You have very decided opinions.
• You think your classroom smells like a restaurant.
• “I can’t think in this light.” (Environmental distractions are very real.)
  
• You’d rather go out at night than during the day.
• You’d like to revive Victorian clothing because it’s so cool.
  
• You think arguing is a sporting event.
• You like acting because you can actually be somebody else outside of your head.
  
• Your favorite item to hold when thinking is a strong thin wooden stick or sword.

As you can see Tim is an extremely creative and at times thought-provoking writer. He also is a semi-cartoonist, but doesn't have a lot of confidence in his drawings.

He also has a soft heart and curiosity for the underdog, the poor, the unusual. I think this relates to how he feels the world should work and to his identification with them in ways. He has been a challenge and a blessing in our lives that we could never have imagined, and now would feel incomplete and a loss of a great treasure without. I should mention here, he speaks strongly against curing autism. He wants help in areas that he knows are his weaknesses, but also to walk in and be appreciated for his many strengths, especially his unique ways of thinking and seeing the world.

We love you, Tim!
HAPPY 15TH BIRTHDAY!

Zhongqiujie, 中秋节, Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival

The Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival is fast upon us being the 15th day of the 8th month on the Lunar calendar and 25th of September this year on the Gregorian. You can google "Moon Festival" and find all sorts of information about ways to celebrate: eating round fruit, gazing up into the sky at the luminous orb, saying odes to the moon, and especially eating mooncakes. In our city people tend to go home to family and be together over a meal. It really is a special time in this way. They also exchange all sorts of elaborately boxed mooncakes. This area is especially notorious for its ham ones which Josh likes. The rest of us tend to prefer the fruit filled; though you can get some with bean paste and egg inside as well. Among the foreigner community, we have this theory that mooncakes are much the equivalent of our Christmas fruitcakes which get passed around and around the relationship circle. We think we have detected a good bit of mooncake regifting. I myself do like fruitcakes; but in this season, I am holding out for the over 200 kuai giftset of Dove chocolate mooncakes. Yeah right:)

ham mooncakes

Another nice link to Moon Festival information can be found here.
Also the Moon Festival comes right before another huge holiday, National Day, which is October 1st. This is the remembrance day of the formation of the Peoples Republic of China which took place in 1949. Many people will take a week or so off from work and travel or play. Like May Holiday it is consider one of the Golden Weeks.

Er Kuai 餌塊 ("R-Kwhy")

Well, Josh is very sad because his erkuai guy, who stood under the big red umbrella by the bus station, seems to be gone. Every morning before school Josh would get up, shower, get his stuff together, and go buy erkuai for breakfast before getting on public transportation. Now there is a huge, gaping hole in his morning routine and stomach. Some of you may remember from earlier posts that he even dreamt about this particular food while we were away at the beach. So what makes erkuai (a thick kind of rice flour pancake or tortilla) so special? First of all, it must be said that the guy by the bus station was the best at making it. In addition he was always smiling and seemed to have a rhythm to his work.... Take your order, put the thick rice flour pancake on the grill, turn over a few youtiao (a deep fried twisted dough stick) that were already crisping there, turn over the erkuai, pick up one that's done, move a youtiao, fill the pancake with sweet or spicy stuff, put in the hot youtiao, more sauce, roll it up (all the while flipping and turning others), put sauce on the top opening and sprinkle on some crushed peanuts, put in a plastic bag, take the 1.50yuan (20 cents), and off you would go with a rather filling breakfast. He never ceased his vendor's symphony, until all of his ingredients were gone. Josh's favorite type was spicy. Inside it contained bean sprouts, lufu (spicy fermented tofu), spicy ground pork, chili paste, and youtiao. Personally, I don't know how anybody can stand anything so hot. I liked the non-spicy with it's sweet sesame paste, crispy youtiao, and crushed peanuts. This vendor knew his customers and, if you were a regular, could fix your order without a request. I believe erkuai is unique to our part of China and originally comes from the Dali area where the Bai or White minority people live (white being an important color in their culture). This is probably why our friend is gone. He may not have had a permit to sell on the street or he may not even be a legal resident of our city. Anyway, the whole family misses him. I'll still try to get a photo of this treat for you, as there are a few other vendors around town. But it wont taste as good as what we've been used too. When you've eaten from a master, nothing else is quite the same.