Without humor, I’d wouldn’t make it. Everything takes three times longer (or more) to complete, if at all; we have to learn a new language all our own; without warning, things whip across the room; and most likely at any time of the day, one can easily find some sort of food matter in my hair or hanging from one of my appendages.

I heard one mother say that if one more person told her she was lucky to have an autistic son, she’d blow her top. The day-in and day-out physical and emotional challenges are a lot. It’s not a pretty television commercial, this “special needs” thing. I mean, how many special needs kids do we see on peanut butter commercials happily spreading the stuff on a perfectly white piece of bread?

In a special needs world, most likely, the peanut butter would have ended up on my arm; the bread ripped up to pieces and thrown across the kitchen; and the spoon in some one’s hair. A sense of humor is not a nice extra to get through the tough times - like the dinner hour - it’s an absolute requirement when getting just one task finished can seem to plop me in a hole where, without a good laugh, I’d think this was all too unfair. Spending more than 1/2 a minute wondering why it seems so unfair is not in the special needs handbook. There just is no time, for the child will gaze up at us and again, ask for help, usually in a way we’d never even imagined, and send me roaring into laughter as I watch it all spin by.