Descriptive Language

I don’t know what it is, but my oldest son had always had a way with words. For instance, when he was little he didn’t call sunset by its name. He called that time of the day the time “when the dark comes down”. Look at it sometime — the dark does come down at sunset. My friend Lori said that her Aunt Riesa says it that way too….I think this is just more evidence that folks with autism just see the world differently. Things I’ve supposedly seen my whole life I SEE better after J describes them to me.

This trait of his is more desirable when he’s describing something beautiful, of course, but everything in the world isn’t lovely, so we get his take on that stuff too, sometimes.

J and I walk the two youngest boys to school every morning. Generally, we like the walk. What he doesn’t like about it right now is that there is a bad odor somewhere along our route. Now, we’re just going to have to take it from J that the odor is there because my nose hasn’t been working at all, lately. (Thanks allergies…Hey, August in Missouri….yet another reason why we’re on the outs, you and me.) So, as we were walking and he was complaining about the smell I told him to breathe through his mouth and that this would help. So he did that for a while but forgot eventually and began breathing through his nose again. Then he would complain and then I would remind him of the solution that we had found. It was a cycle repeated several times. We were nearing the school when he said, “Ah! That smell again. It’s terrible. I think that it just MADE MY EYEBALLS THROW UP!” I said, “Do you mean that the smell is so bad that it is making your eyes water?” He said yes, that was what he meant.

But I was stuck with the previous descriptively stunning remark.

He knows how to put things, that one.