The Easter Bunny Hunt---A Story In Pictures

The quest begins.

 Those of you who have read this blog much mostly know we don't give Janey chocolate, because when we do, especially after noon, she doesn't sleep.  At all.  Whether it makes sense or not, it happens, and it's why I don't discount anyone's food issues or theories.  It doesn't seem like just a little chocolate could have that big an effect, but still, it does.  However, we make one exception.  There is nothing on earth Janey likes more than a chocolate bunny.  She often asks for them at random times, like the middle of the night in the middle of the summer.  So, for Easter, she gets a bunny.  We usually get it on Easter day, not to have it around the house ahead of times for her to find and eat at the wrong time.

Empty Rite-Aid bunny rack!

We set out this morning to get her the bunny.  The first place we went was the Rite-Aid.  It's where we get prescriptions, so we are there a lot.  The pharmacist said a big hi to Janey, and she smiled at him.  But...no bunnies!  The Easter area was completely empty of any chocolate rabbits.

Picking out salami

So we moved on, to the grocery store.  Janey and Tony often shop there together.  We picked up a few other things we need before we looked for bunnies.  High on the list, as always, was salami, Janey's hands-down favorite food.  Janey picked out some with Tony in the main salami area, and then ran off to a nearby auxiliary salami area to get another kind she wanted.  After we'd loaded up on salami, we got a few other things, and saw a worker who is always so sweet to Janey, and told her Happy Easter.  She has a grandson with autism, and it's always fun to have her talk to us.

Auxiliary Salami Area

Finally, we went to look for bunnies at the grocery store, but again, no bunnies at all!  It was like there was some huge run on bunnies!   Janey saw some Easter cakes that looked interesting near the cashier, but we resisted them.

No bunnies at the grocery store either!

Some interesting cakes

Salami choosing

 We went to the quickest line, and missed going to the line of a cashier who is yet another Janey fan, but we waved to her, and Janey gave her a smile.  Out by the car, Janey picked which salami to first try. 

We continued our quest at the Walgreens, and there, finally, we hit pay dirt.  We found bunnies!  Janey picked out the one she wanted---not the biggest one, but a smaller sweet little guy.  The cashier there didn't know Janey, but was so sweet to her, talking while realizing she probably wasn't getting a response.  She asked Janey to give her a high five, and Janey did.

The whole quest made me happy.  In our little part of Boston, where Tony has lived all his life, where Janey has lived since birth, we feel included.  Janey is part of the community.  She is valued and treated with kindness and respect.  What more could we ask?  Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate it, Happy Passover to those who celebrate it, and Happy Day to everyone!

Finally, bunnies!

Bunny time!

If you didn't know autism existed, what would it look like?

Yesterday morning, Janey and I stopped at the Rite Aid on the way to school.  Janey needed Cheez-Its, her preferred school snack, so we did a quick before school shop.  The cashier was a teenager who was friendly but seemed, to be frank, a little clueless.  Janey was in her silent mode---very quiet, very slow-moving, like she was walking through sand or something.  The cashier very much wanted to connect with her.  We were getting a heavily discounted chocolate bunny, so she asked Janey "Is that bunny for you?"  Janey of course did not answer at all.  The cashier said "Oh, she's tired!  She looks very tired.  Aren't you tired?"  Normally at this point I'd explain Janey was autistic, but I was tired, even if Janey wasn't really, so I just said nothing.  The cashier wasn't one to give up, though.  She asked Janey "How old are you? Where do you go to school?"  Janey---well, you know---stony silence.  The cashier said "Oh, she's shy!  She's very shy!"  I just smiled and tried to get done with paying.  Then the cashier said "Can you say goodbye to me, sweetie?"  Janey did talk then, but not to say goodbye.  She said in a run-together way, as she talks when she's in the slow mode "openthebunnyyesorno", meaning "Can you open the chocolate bunny right now, YES or NO?"  I said "We'll open it in the car"  The cashier said "Oh, does she get speech therapy?  I used to get that too!  It's okay, sweetie, you can talk to me!"  Janey---no answer.  Finally, as we were walking out, the cashier said "You'll be happier when you get to school and see your friends, won't you?  Have a good day!"

I didn't mind the whole interchange.  It was friendly and much better than staring, or ignoring.  But it got me thinking.  It's a big question in autism----if there ISN'T an autistic epidemic, where were all the autistic kids in the past?  I'm not weighing in on the epidemic or not question---I don't know enough to say.  But I do know that if you don't know what autism is, which in the past, many people did not, you'd approach it like the cashier.  You'd assign it to a category you do understand---tired, shy, in need of speech therapy---and then if those didn't work, most likely, in the past, you'd call it retardation.  To use today's correct term, you'd call it intellectual disability.

We have a whole day now called Autism Awareness Day.  And it's working---most people are aware of autism.  30 or 40 years ago, most people weren't.  But I do think there were plenty of autistic kids then, and kids with Aspergers, and kids with everything in between.  I remember some of them, now, looking back.  My parents do too.  Mostly we remember kids with high functioning autism, because kids like Janey probably weren't too visible.  They were in institutions, or they were kept home, because they weren't welcome in schools.  Even in the small town I grew up in, I was only vaguely aware of a few children that went to the special school in Rockland (strangely enough, called the Henderson School, the same name as Janey's school, although not named for the same person)  They were not much part of the community.

Autism doesn't always show itself clearly.  The Janey the cashier saw yesterday very well could have been a shy child, a tired child.  It's something to keep in mind when trying to figure out this whole autism mystery.