Data and knowledge and what I know

What you learn as the parent of an autistic child…

Knowledge is an incredible thing. There are vast troves of information out there which can add up to a body of knowledge, if one has the inclination and perseverance to assemble it. Sometimes knowledge is highly centralized and singular in topic, and amassing it can lead to becoming an engineer or proctologist or other such specialist. Sometimes knowledge can be very diverse and general and is helpful if you wish to become a CPA or a minister or a councilor. Some knowledge is rather obscure and one can learn more and more about less and less until you know everything there is to know about nothing. Other times you know just a smidge about everything without knowing much about anything and you are destined to be either an administrator or an elected official. Many people have some knowledge, some people have deep knowledge and a few are truly wise with what they know. The two smartest people I know of are Stephen Hawking and Alex Trebec.

And then there is the knowledge that you gain by being the parent of an autistic child… Highly individualized and obscure to the point of being extremely trivial, unless you have a child who is at once profoundly disabled and borderline genius (which many young Autists are) you may never have the opportunity to develop a body of knowledge on the par with what I now hold.

For example…

I know that you can take a commode off the floor, remove the tank, carry it through three rooms of your house to the back yard, turn it upside down and shake to dislodge a Matchbox car and replace it in full working order in under 15 minutes, granting you get several practice runs and keep spare wax rings in the house at all times.

I know that you can tell what a child has eaten in the last 2 days based upon the colour, texture and quantity of movement he makes in his pants.

I know that every surface in any given house is in reality a blank canvas screaming to be drawn upon in permanent marker by an artist who has images inside him that simply must come out.

I know that you will not really go insane if you watch the same video 100 times in consecutive plays.

I know that the best place to hide things you want to be lost is the upstairs cold air return ducts.

I know that despite what the people at Microsoft may say to the contrary, it is indeed possible to log onto a common pc as a limited-account user and change protected items on the desktop of the principle administrator of the local machine.

I know it takes 9 days for a 2x2 Lego brick to pass through a 9 year-old’s digestive track.

I know that when you are remodeling your bathroom, leaving a bread bag duct-taped over the primary stack of the sanitary drain until you can run to the hardware store and buy a boot to couple it onto the stink pipe is no guarantee that slats cut from the plaster wall will not teleport into the pipe in your absence, necessitating that you immediately test the efficiency of the new clean-outs you plumbed into the line.

I know that loose change will indeed fit through holes in the defroster vent that would appear to the untrained ruler to be too small to admit them and it only takes a nickel to stop the squirrel cage in your car’s heater from pushing air.

I know that a basket of dirty laundry is indeed the best place to nest if you want a nap uninterrupted by people shouting your name and tearing through the rest of the house.

I know that you really can grow accustomed quickly to avoiding crowds, noise, mayhem and gatherings with the out-laws.

I know the average medical professional can’t tell the difference between a marble and a dime when looking at an x-ray.

I know that tub is a fully acceptable stage in the process of toilet training.

I know that television ads really are highly suggestive and that, no, putting peanut butter and chocolate into a computer’s cd drive will NOT result in Twix bar popping out, even if you try twice.

I know that the relative centers of gravity make a HUGE difference in exactly who will win in the eternal struggle of immovable object and irresistible force.

As I said, the knowledge I have been granted in my tenure as Dad to a beautiful red-headed autistic son is at once arcane and trivial, but it is still knowledge none-the-less. If any of this strikes home with you, Dear Reader, how about giving me a big “H3LL YEAH!!”