Every day, the television was blaring bomb strikes in Iraq. The year was 1990, and the first President Bush was in the process of decimating the country. Night after night, the sights of war were being broadcast in our living room. It was almost surreal, like a movie that was somehow unrealistic. It was hard to believe that real destruction was happening, and people were being killed. Images of a then-mysterious, somehow evil figure named Saddam Hussein were becoming almost a part of the family, like a scary neighbor down the street whose house the kids would run past, afraid to see him in the window.
Our son, Scott, seven years old, was absorbed by the sight, trying to separate fact from fiction. With his limited language, it was difficult to tell how much he understood.
Midway through the second month of the carnage, we stopped at a local buffet for dinner after Sunday church. I was anticipating a quiet dinner with Scott, 7, Timothy, 3, and Shawn, 3 months. As we went through the line, picking out the food, I remember thinking how unusually well-behaved all three of them were. Shawn had just finished nursing, so he was in a pensive, contented mood, and all seemed well under control. Even Scott's behavior in Sunday School, we were told, had been unusually good that day.
Suddenly, my musing was interrupted by a loud outburst from Scott. He suddenly screamed, at the top of his lungs, jumping up and down, while simultaneously pointing at a bewildered-looking young man, obviously of Middle Eastern descent, "THERE'S SADDAM HUSSEIN! THERE HE IS!" He did it not just once but twice. The eyes of every person in the restaurant were upon me.
It was a moment where there was absolutely nothing appropriate to say. I remember muttering something like "he is autistic. This is his behavior sometimes. Sorry." (How incredibly lame!), grabbing his arm, and moving as quickly as humanly possible to the other side of the restaurant. If there had been a way to be beamed to a starship and another planet, like the characters in "Star Trek," at that instant, I would have gladly done it. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life.
And how did Scott react to all this? He spent the rest of our very quiet meal with a smug, knowing smirk on his face. He had seen the enemy, found him to be a "regular guy," and reconciled, in his mind, reality with fantasy.
Moral to the story: When working with anyone who has autism, expect the unexpected. And never assume that they are not absorbing what they see. They are smarter than we think! Don't sell them short.
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