novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- why i wouldn't go dancing tonight in the sweltering bottled-up heat of our apartment i sit in an old lady nightgown, fingering the blister on my left foot's fourth toe. picking longer pieces of hair up from my neck to let air in occasionally. i ate three meals in the span of five hours this evening. the first to hunger, the second because it was free, and the third to feel the sheer mechanics of chewing. didn't make me feel any livelier. now i am sick and tired and sweaty, a terrible threesome that i try to avoid at all costs. by some decision my work gods decided to hold PART training after work hours, and told me this morning. seven and a half plus five and a half is thirteen. (this is when i called you and said i still wanted to go) the first three hours were spent chasing courtney away from her statutory-rape boyfriend, taking her to buy a copy of harry potter and nearly exploding when i realised she hadn't listened to a word i'd spoken all morning. not ignoring, but not hearing. after a few weeks with the same staff members she wears them down and forgets that they speak to her, forgets that they speak at all. carries on with her wants and wontons and teenage romance debacles. courtney i wanted to tell her, your "boyfriend" has been dicking around with an overdeveloped twelve year old who has the skills of a preschooler behind your back. he is fully functional besides his severe and crippling depression, and he is mentally capable of knowing how terrible an act this is. and yet you prance near him, sqwaking. you aren't allowed around him but you find the loopholes always.i made my uppers change me to another kid for the rest of the day; feeling like a failure with courtney pulled on my bones. i threatened to quit and cried a little but walked into the first classroom at the end of the hall and tim guffawed at me, pointing at me, repeating HEY YOU WHERE YOU GOING? GECKY? "gecky" is a combination of the phrase "you're yucky," or as tim knows it, "yucky you." no, we are not all lizards in hawaii. we are just all GECKY. he's a pretty funny guy. he'll spill water on the ground just to shout OH NO!!!!! with a huge grin on his face, and then turn around and put puzzle after finished puzzle back into the cabinet, in the order that he took them out, delicately. i cleaned up the water with paper towels swished around by my blistered left foot while julius regaled us with how he got pooped on in the pool today. and then, suddenly, everything made me laugh. from feeling like a failure to laughing. my job is a composition of all the hardest-won feelings, good or bad. it is hard to recover from. (BUT recovery with the dancing bird of paradise flew away because) after the afternoon ended and ricky stopped alternately tickling me and threatening to rip out my trachea, i puttered back to school for four hours of HOW TO AVOID A PHYSICAL CONFRONTATION WITH AN AUTISTIC CHILD HAVING A BEHAVIOUR. AND IF THAT DOESN'T WORK AND HE IS BEING A DANGER TO HIMSELF OR OTHERS, HOW TO TAKE HIM DOWN WITHOUT GETTING YELLED AT. how to not accidentally make your keys available to a violent kid as a weapon. that necklace could be used to choke you. your earrings could rip right through your lobes. they teach me that a child having a behaviour is looking for attention, and chances are, this is the only way he knows how to communicate. and we are to respond by hurting him? not merely restraining him, but throwing him around like a limp doll? the techniques taught are shown in such a way as to detain, not seriously impair the kid. it is misused sometimes. i have seen kids in the wake of being "PARTED." eyes so black the natural folds of skin cannot be seen. it scares me unnaturally. is pain a PART of autism so deeply felt? PART is selectively used. the big guys who staff the houses and the day program use its threat to their advantage. and my students can see right through my hopefull eyes right down to my blistered toes that i would never do that. restrain a kid, yes. forcefully, yes. blacken and scar him? scare him into submission? (this is when i called you and said that i couldn't go) many of the students at my school are schemers. i love them, but how courtney conned the school into paying $18.00 for her harry potter video this morning is beyond me. she completed a lonesome worksheet about balancing checkbooks and ran out the door, me following, grinding away inside. (not physically or emotionally possible, after having to read fifty pages more about this) the schemers can see right through you in order to scheme. they know what i feel so they can manipulate me. if a kid started charging me like a bull flagging red, twisting handfulls of my hair into his hands so my head could be jerked any which way, what would i do? 9:58 pm - 05.29.02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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