"The man with the money"

I have a really poor grasp of the English language and my vocabularly is somewhat limited.  Sure, I know all the bad words and excel at how to use them; but in everyday conversation, I'm not much of a wordsmith.  My wife can attest to this.

Sometimes I know the word I want to say, but somewhere along the way of my brain telling my mouth what to say, those signals sometimes get lost because they stopped at the beer store.  For instance, if I want to say blender, sometimes the signals from my brain to my mouth to say "blender" are checking out the new beers and I'm stuck fending for myself, and I'll say "that thing that mixes stuff."  Then my wife just laughs at me (not with me, but at me) and says, "Really?"

I'd love to say I do it on purpose to provide some hilarity in Jennifer's life, but that's not the case.  Unfortunately, this is one of the many gifts I've passed on to Hayden.  For those who don't know, Hayden was diagnosed a few years ago with a mild case of autism.  His actual disorder is called PDD-NOS, which is kind of a catch-all.  Basically it means he's kind of normal but exhibits some (not all) of the red flags for being on the autism spectrum.

If you weren't around Hayden much, you'd not likely notice.  However, the more you're around him, you'd start to pick up on some of his issues, or as I like to call it, 'part of his charm.'

Hayden struggles a lot in two areas.  One is reading comprehension.  He can read fairly well, but has no idea what he's reading because while he's reading, he's thinking about eating a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel or something else not relevant instead of what he's reading.  This too is part of the legacy I've passed onto him.  Another area of struggle is his vocabulary.  It sucks.  It rivals mine.  He's wired a bit differently so sometimes the wires get crossed and he can't find the word he wants to say.  So, he improvises.  He overcomes.  He adapts.  (Those last three sentences are stolen from Clint Eastwood's character in Heartbreak Ridge.  I highly recommend seeing it if you haven't.)

A couple months ago, Jennifer and I had an annual meeting with the school corporation to go over Hayden's individualized education plan.  It's a meeting where we're told that our child is "special" and we go over what the school will do to help him with his studies.  Things like let him take a test in a smaller group so the distractions are limited, or have the test read to him so he doesn't start thinking about Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner while he's reading the test questions.

Anyway, one area of concern for the school corporation's therapists was Hayden's 'conversational speech.'  I'll quote:

"During the evaluation, Hayden, at times, had difficulty using the correct word.  For example, he was trying to say salesperson/cashier and instead said "the man with the money.""

In the meeting with these five or so other people, the room broke out with laughter when school corporation lady read this.  I've never been so proud.