Flu shot. We all should get one, but as an social event it doesn’t rank up there with the big ones.

In such a mood we headed over to the local mall. The local mall is pretty much at its nadir right now. A Home Depot is moving in very soon, and there are promises of fanciful things in the future– like a public elevator to the second level, which is where the Public Health Flu Shot Clinic had planted itself in the present.

Instead we page security, and a team of monosyllabic young studs escorted us deep into the backstage mall bowels to an unlit freight elevator. From there to a dusty ex-store where they hide the mall’s Xmas decorations, with a few public health nurses herding injectees or filling syringes, and a mass of folks, some lining up to register for shots and some doing the required 15 minutes of post-injection loitering. Did I mention that Jon quite dislikes rooms filled with people? Their acoustic crush tends to overwhelm his ability to see and focus.

But the service was quick (to which my lad only said “Hey–ow!”) and landed Jon with a lollipop, and as we sat on a corner of Santa’s risers, doing our time, we noticed that the up-til-now quiet Jon was having a hoot.

From his perspective, he had just had a ride on a really cool, jerky elevator with manual doors and no light and big clunky sounds, and he knew another ride on it was in the near future. Then the lollipop, which he savoured uncharacteristically (no crunching), letting it take up our entire post-shot wait, its taste overwhelming the less than impressive visual surroundings. As for the crowd: there was barely any noise from the pre-needle agitated and the post-needle bored. He could look around with abandon. And happily chat with his parents. Are you kidding? This was fantastic!

So there you have it: An entirely worthwhile outing. He’d go for a flu shot weekly if he could. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

About three weeks ago, Jon announced he wanted to be a pirate for Hallowe’en. Bachan had brought him some pirate gear (hat, hook, eyepatch–standard pirate issue).

So, in true nautical spirit, we went a little overboard to incorporate his wheelchair. Puffy shirt fashions by Laura (she created the pattern and sewed it), and the shortened sails too.

Our previous Halloween wanderings have always been short–large groups of people are always hard for Jon. But this year he had been counting down the days and hours and we ended up hunting for swag for slightly more than an hour! Jon had several catchphrases memorized, too: who would not be terrified by the dread pirate chirpily yelling: “Arrrrr!” (which came out more like “Harrrr!”), “Shiver me timbers”, and the ultra-cute “Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Pop!”.

In order to win a little “free time” in the half hour remaining in the school day, Jon walked around his entire school in his walker in just 15 minutes.

And here is the unconscious lump that was deposited on our sidewalk an hour and a quarter later…

His head was bobbing ever so slightly as he sawed away. He slept all the way home on the bus, and about 15 minutes outside in the fall air before coming to.

As a tot, Jon never really played with toys, especially plush toys or dolls. There were a couple of reasons, but the most obvious relates to the nature of visual impairment itself: dolls and plush toys are visual representations of people or animals. Without the visual, they are entirely unrelated. Plush toys are weird pillows, plastic figurines are just oddly-shaped plastic.

Even as he slowly gained vision, Jon didn’t show much interest in toy cars or trucks, even as just as fun toys. For some reason, imaginative play was a lot of work, something he could do for only a few minutes, and with little interest. He did take to toys that taught letters and numbers, but nothing cuddly, nothing that took on a life of it’s own.

But in the past half year, Jon has suddenly taken to his Pumbaa (the warthog from The Lion King) doll, and it goes to bed with him pretty much nightly. I am expected to say goodnight to Pumbaa, sometimes kiss Pumbaa, and sometimes, Pumbaa says goodnight to me (with Jon shaking the large doll so that his snout flops up and down). Jon has also taken to “flying” Pumbaa, re-enacting what he and I do a minute or two before (before bed, Jon flies by lying horizontally in my arms, and I spin until we both get dizzy). This new bond is more subtle than strong, but it’s nice to see it arrive.

Jon’s teacher got wind of his transitional object, and invited Pumbaa to school so that he could meet some of the other dolls–and hopefully some of the magic would rub off on them (in teacher talk it’s called tranference). Jon and Pumbaa struck up a friendship with Puppy, so after a day with Puppy at school, Puppy came to our house for a sleepover.

The Three Amigos