Encyclopedia FrogBoy

Most days, it starts in the car on the way to school. Before 7:00 a.m. Today was no exception.

This morning, it was just me and FrogBoy. We had plenty of time in the 3 minutes it takes to get to school to have a very confusing (for me) conversation.

It started with FrogBoy telling me all about different animals. He loves science - nature, planets, weather - you name it, if it's science, he's all over it. And, being autistic, and frankly just a little annoying at times, he has to repeat every tidbit he knows about a particular subject every time he brings it up.

For example: "Blah, blah, blah...Pluto...which was the smallest planet, but it's not a planet anymore, it's a star. And then there's planet X...blah, blah, blah." It's like this with anything he has any sort of knowledge about. And he reads A LOT.

This morning, he really reminded me of that kid in Jerry Maguire - when he says "Did you know the human head weighs 8 pounds?"

BEFORE 7 a.m., friends, I got: "Have you ever heard of a melon jellyfish?" (I hadn't) "We'll, they're really cool. They're jellyfish that look like melons." (I kinda figured)

Then..."What kind of animal are you interested in knowing more about?" (frankly, at 7 a.m., none) "How about a pygmy rhino?"

"Well, honey, I don't know what a pygmy rhino is. I'm sure it's nice though."

"Oh, you'd love it. It's a rhino, but smaller, and it has a big horn and blah, blah, blah..."

I know, I should have paid more attention. But seriously, this is the kid who plays regular, adult Jeapordy every night, and ALWAYS gets questions right. A bunch of them. And not the stupid "crossword Q" questions. (Those are the ones I get) No, he gets "Polynesian Wars" and "Senators" and "Pollination" and other such nonsense. It's hard to keep up sometimes. He has a great memory for concrete, rote memorization like science and spelling and social studies. Things like math, where he has to make conclusions, are not so good.

Meanwhile, we get schooled daily in the things that interest him (and we're learning some interesting things in the process!), and we get to hear word-for-word movie and TV scripts (an amazing characteristic a lot of autistic kids have called echolalia - which basically means they echo what they've heard in the past - sometimes out of context, sometimes in context - which makes it very difficult to know if they mean it or are just mimicking something they heard Superman say).

All that said - it's like one of my favorite tees:

AUTISM - NEVER A DULL MOMENT!