I was getting into bed last night and thought I’d turn on the TV to finish the night off. I was flipping around, when I caught a glimpse of a boy running around in the dark and banging his head on the wall.

It was a spooky to come into without any context, and I had to turn the channel.

But let me roll back the clock. I want to go back to when I was younger, probably in 8th or 9th grade maybe. I lived in Northern Virginia in a suburb of DC. Somehow (I’m sure my mom knows) I ended up doing some volunteer work at the local rec center.

It involved handicap children and swimming, my exact ward was a young boy with autism. I remember clearly, his tense body and jerky movements, like a flexed muscle of steel at all times. What amazed me then, and what I knew Don King was going to say when I went back to the channel and caught him and his son Beau swimming in the ocean, was that in water he was relaxed.

Posted in Family 2 Comments »