A little light-hearted (no, really) addition to this week’s posting that I’d forgotten to mention…

     There’s a Richard Scarry video where a character tries to juggle but the books go flying all over the place.

     Who says people with autism don’t learn by imitation?

     Regularly, we’ll be in the hotel room and, “Bang!” A book whacks the ceiling and Ben may or may not say, “Juggling!”

     We’ll be walking through a parking lot and we might hear a book fluttering to the ground from above.

     “Juggling!”

     Sitting eating burgers at Five Guys and whoosh-flutter-flutter, hopefully landing across the dining room on the floor and not fries.

     “Juggling!”

     In the car, a book slams the ceiling.

     “Juggling!”

     We always lecture him:

     “Ben, you’ll hurt yourself!” (It can be a hard-cover book as big as a dictionary.)

     “Ben, you’ll hurt someone!”

     “Ben, you’ll break something!”

     And maybe the only one that would really matter to him:

     “Ben, you’ll lose your book!”

     This weekend, it finally happened. We were speeding along a highway with the windows open and I heard a brief fluttering of paper and by the time Karen and I looked at him, Ben was sitting with a hand in the air, but no book in it, having been juggled out the window. The rear view mirror confirmed that Ben now owned one less book. And was guilty of littering.

     “See Ben, the book is all gone now! You juggled it out the window!”

     He smiled and found an alternative in his big bag o’ books.

     An hour later, back in the hotel room…

     “Bang!”