Me and Boo Radley

At the beginning of the summer, I promised I would share entertaining stories from work, and so far I haven't done such a great job at that. Let me indulge myself and share todays adventure. I work a lot in Salem with a family I absolutely adore and I love escaping to the little country town. The girl I work with loves to just stand on one spot in the kitchen so her mom always tried to leave some sort of project for me to do to help the time to go by. Lately it has been baking projects. At first it made me nervous because I have not baked much and everything she makes turns out to beautifully and delicious. Her recipes have turned out to be simple and so yummy! Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, zucchini bread, and chocolate zucchini cake have been this weeks entertainment. I am loving learning how to make all these things and am feeling confident that maybe one day I might be able to be somewhat domestic.
After working in Salem, my boss asked me to take a boy for a few hours because his usual staff had to go to some training. When I picked him up I was a little nervous because he is so much bigger and stronger than me. He has autism and is non verbal so that didn't make things any easier. At first he wouldn't get in my car because he was convinced we were getting in the wrong one (he had never been in my car and had no idea who I was) He just kept grabbing my hand and draggin me around the parking lot. I finally lured him to my car with a cookie. We headed to the park to try and pass the time and I figured I could keep a close eye on him because he also likes to dart (he is one fast skipper). His staff warned me that he loves bathrooms so as soon at I saw the huge bathroom sign on the building in the middle of the park I tried to distract him away from it and get interested in other things. No dice. Once he locked his sights on it there was no turning back. Before I knew it, I was half way hanging into the mens restroom hoping there was nobody else in there, trying to coax a huge teenage boy to pull his pants up and quit flushing all the toilets.
I finally got him out and we started walking around the pond at the park. You know the SNL skit where the cheerleader sticks her hands in her arm pits and then smells her hands when she gets nervous? Well imagine that except with a butt crack instead of arm pits. Yeah. My hand sanitizer was very well used today. Don't worry, the story has a happy ending.
The more time we spent together, the more I realized I didn't need to be nervous, I needed to figure out how to reach him. He liked to run because he liked to be chased. So I flipped the tables around. I started running. He laughed as he caught up to me but then stopped when he realized it wasn't much fun chasing someone. After a few times of this, he no longer tried to run. He started having more eye contact with me and interacting more. I had some bubbles in my purse from a wedding reception I went to. He loved to watch me spaz out and try and pop the bubbles and he blew them.
I call him Boo Radley because he reminded me of the character from To Kill A Mockingbird. I was scared at first and didn't understand a lot of what he was doing, but I just needed to explore his world a little bit before I could expect him to try and participate in ours. By the end I got him signing simple signs (something I don't think his usual staff even know hw can do. Yes, I am bragging about myslef) All in all, it made for an interesting 2 1/2 hours and one more story to add to the books.