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Nervous Laughter
When I was eight years old, Uncle Russell came to visit. He was my mother’s cousin, but everyone called him Uncle Russell. He was twenty years old and had a severe case of cerebral palsy.
City Brights are prominent local citizens and experts with a unique Bay Area perspective that is often enlightening, sometimes infuriating and always thought-provoking.
Follow this link for original article
Follow THIS LINK to read my guest post for Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode blog in the New York Times
I sat on the sofa that looks out our living room window, my attention torn between the People magazine in my lap, and Matthew, who was sitting cross legged on the front lawn, inspecting — or was he dismembering? — a dead butterfly. A heap of laundry on and around the coffee table nagged at me – I was just too tired, too scattered. Peter wandered in from the kitchen, beer in hand.
“Where’s Matthew?”
“Right there,” I said frostily, motioning to Matthew.
An Excerpt from A REGULAR GUY: GROWING UP WITH AUTISM
A NEW MEMOIR REVEALS THE REALITIES OF AUTISM
It was Matthew Shumaker’s strange obsession with wheels and drains that spurred the first nagging doubts. While other toddlers tumbled down the padded ramps at Gymboree, or giggled under a billowing parachute during the baby games, Matthew toddled away to examine the wheels on a small rolling cart.
Other children conversed. Matthew echoed what other people said. He didn’t make eye contact. And his attention could be completely derailed by the sight of water swirling down the sink.
San Francisco Chronicle
January 15, 2006
Link to original article
Do you want me to come in with you while you get your haircut?” “No,” replies my 19-year-old son Matthew. “I want him to think I drove here by myself.”
When I suggest that he remove the junior sheriff sticker from his T-shirt before he goes in, he refuses.
“I want him to think I take care of bad guys.”
