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.

Jon’s teacher called us this afternoon in a high state of excitement. A few weeks back she started doing creative writing exercises with Jon, meaning he looks at a picture and comes up with a few sentences about the picture. His first story, upon seeing a photo of a cow was:

This is a cow.
It is black and white.
It is saying moo.

Keep in mind that he dictates the sentences to the teacher, who writes them down. Later Jon types up the dictation.

On Monday Jon was so excited about Hallowe’en that his teacher decided to try something a lot more advanced, as an experiment only (she originally wasn’t going to try this until after Christmas). He was using Intellitalk, a software program that reads a word aloud after it’s been typed. This allowed Jon to type out his own words, see how close he came, and self-correct if necessary. This is what he typed out all by himself, punctuation and all:

Hi mom and dad ,
I liked haloween . Trick or treeting was fun. I went to lots of hoosis. Are sed the pirat. Then I went home .
Jon

(He meant “Arrrrrr said the pirate.” So how the heck are you supposed to spell “arrrrrr” anyway?)

He was only prompted “what would you like to say?” or “what happened next?” by the teacher; otherwise he maintained full sentences in his head as he typed them, spelling familiar words correctly and trying to phonetically spell out new words. He remembered to put spaces between words and only had to be reminded about putting capitals at the start of sentences. Wow – This certainly blew everyone away big time!

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

Jon’s teacher just phoned in with a tale of Jon’s day. Usually she sends it home in a book that we exchange news and notices in, but today demanded a phone call.

He got 100% on his spelling and reading tests, and has moved on to the next book and typing list. Super.

But wait, there’s more. Jon called for a bathroom visit (known as “Health Care” at the school) just before lunch, and since he was there while the rest of the school stampeded–well, mostly roll-peded– to the cafeteria, the school halls were like a ghost town. His teacher decided that now would be a good time for someone to practice wheeling his own chair.

Now, Jon is not known for wheeling. He refuses to do it for us and will do little practice at school, but has been observed to do it from time to time in cases of extreme–um– desire. One of our first visits to the wheelchair clinic saw Jon, bored with the discussion, wheel towards an unexplored exit by expertly slaloming around a number of people and two wheelchairs parked in the centre of the room. Many slack jaws. The other night at a booklaunch he suddenly pulled a 180 on Mom and headed for the door, perfectly aligned. There was the time at school when he and a classmate “disappeared”…but I digress.

Anyway, today was practice. Jon slowly made it to the cafeteria under the heavy encouragement . He made it and dug into a big lunch. And given that they were late for lunch, the teacher allowed him to stay a little later…meaning the halls were once again clear! And off they went to the library, about another 80 yards away. After library, hey! The halls were clear again. Jon wheeled back to class, at the far end of the hallway, looking a wee bit tired.

Today was Picture Day, and just as he arrived at the classroom, the class got the call to go for their photos, in the enclosed courtyard all the way back near the library. The teacher swung Jon’s chair back around, facing the long hallway. At which point Jon looked up and groaned “Oh god.”

His first epithet. (At which point they reassured him that they’d push, he didn’t have to do it again.)

This week Jon’s teacher has been sending him home with copy-typing exercises: A list of 10 words to be read out loud, for Jon to spell and type out on the keyboard.

The first word: “the”. First Jon sneers (and types) “T—H—O“, and later on, “Z—H—E”, adding “It’s a silent ‘Z’!” He makes sure he pronounces it “zee”, because he knows it bugs the hell out of mom and dad. Every single word on the list is mangled in this obstreperous fashion.

The next day Jon’s told that if he messes up the words on purpose again, he won’t get a particular bedtime privilege. When I read out “the” Jon sullenly says “T—H—O“, but this time types it out correctly. Almost every word is spelled incorrectly aloud, but all are typed out just fine. He knows for damn sure what he can get away with!

What kind of wiseacre are we raising?