Hell with it.

Maybe you know, maybe you care, maybe you don't either one, but my son has some autistic tendencies. No one knows what to do about this, least of all me.

In general, he seems like a normal, if somewhat eccentric, kid; he is somewhat delayed developmentally, but in my admittedly subjective opinion, it's not incredibly worrisome--he's just behind the curve, but progressing along at the same rate as everyone else.

I suppose I'm trying to compensate for my own fears and parenting failures when I say this, but is it possible that all the worries about "social etiquette" and "developmental delays" are just fear of deviation from the norm? Isn't it okay for D. to be a little different from the kids around him?

He certainly seems all right with it.

Of course, at his age, and in his school, there really aren't any bullies yet. I suspect he'll be teased mercilessly when they appear. The only thing he may have going for him is that he's all-American-looking, unlike yours truly; I think I read somewhere that blond-eyed, blue-haired kids don't get teased as much. (If not, well, I just posted it on the Internet and that makes it true.)

When do bullies appear, anyway? I remember they were in full bloom at kindergarten, but I don't remember being made fun of in nursery school. What's the trigger? When do these kids get the Mean Gene?

Does anyone else feel like that kid who got pushed around and beaten up all the time? Or, conversely, if you were the kid who beat other people up, HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELF, YOU SICK FUCK, AND I HOPE ALL THE PAIN YOU CAUSED ME FROM MIDDLE SCHOOL TO NINTH GRADE IS VISITED ON YOU THROUGH THE END OF YOUR PATHETIC LIFE, YEAH, I'M TALKING TO YOU, BILLY--ahem. Sorry. Got carried away there, but gosh, it felt good.

I used to imagine that at the very least they would have menial jobs and I could meet them later on and say, "Could you look under the Lexus' hood for me, Troy?" But, as has been well-documented in this space, I never had a career I was proud of even before I left the work force. So, so much for that.

Besides, maybe not all the high-school jerks, but certainly all the college jerks were jerks because they were rich and well-connected; so they're the ones with the Lexuses now. And probably the connections to the current administration, too (all the jerks were Republicans, though not all the Republicans were jerks).

I don't even want a Lexus, but it's the principle of the thing.

(Does anyone else think this blog has gotten boring since I went pseudonymous and stopped blogging about the bad times?)

(And why, even when I try to explore my feelings about my children, am I such a narcissist that I wind up whining about myself?)