Autumn Autism Mystery at the Mystic Aquarium
The following is a True story. It is told with much awe and admiration for its main character. I could only wish to be so clever.
Pie's mom lives in a small town in Connecticut. We have spent many sleeps at her home and we have always been treated with care and gentle hands. Breakfeast is usually ready before you wake to the smell of a fresh pot of coffee and some english muffins. Pie's sister Liza is usually there too and her warmth and kindness are something everyone should experience at one point or another in their life. But this story is not about them, this story does not have much to do with them except for the fact that a friend of Pie's mom's friend knows a woman who has an Autistic 11 year old child. He is a typical 11 year old from what scant evidence I have received by way of 4th party story telling but for the purposes of my diary entry I will say here that he is generally a happy boy. Anyway, the woman decided to take her son to the Mystic Aquarium last week. Keep in mind that he is high functioning but does not necessarily communicate with the outside world the same way we do. To put it bluntly he will never talk about the world in a linear fashion the way we do.
I digress though. Here they are having a wonderful day at the aquarium and all of a sudden when the woman turned her back the boy was gone. Whoosh, just gone. They looked high and low and could not find him; they called for him over the loudspeakers, they asked everyone to help them and nobody could find the boy. he was simply, gone. After what must have seemed like agonizing hours he returned, silently, without uttering a word with one thing different about him: he was soaking wet from head to toe. Dismayed they tried to ask him where he was and how he got sopping wet but the boy was not talking. So they did what any parent would do, they went home.
The boy retired to his room and was again silent- not an explanation, no story just this mystery of him being wet. His mom went upstairs to his bedroom to see what he was doing and when she got there she saw that the door was locked. This is against the rules and so she called to him through the door to unlock it immediately. this was different and strange behavior for her different and strange boy even and so she was curiously listening as they were in the process of opening the door. attached to his room is a bathroom and he was in this bathroom. In the bathroom is a tub and he was running water. The mom entered the the bathroom and upon entry glanced down at the tub and saw what had made her boy act so starngely. he had a new friend, a penguin.
in hind site and afer they called the aquarium to ask if tyhey were missing a penguin she thought about the ride home from the aquarium and how he kept on unzipping his back pack, looking in, then zipping it up again. The thing is, she just thought that because he was autistic this was kind of normal behavior.
Once again, I want to say that there are animal rights groups with chalk boars, secret passwords and some black market funding trying to organize a jail break that this boyu pulled off better than any cat burgler out there. Kudos to him and next week I will write this same story from the penguins perspective.
Love,
Matto
