Still behind, but still moving forward
Wednesday afternoon before track practice, a reporter and a photographer from the local paper met with J to ask him a few questions and take a few pictures for a story featuring J, his autism, and his running experience. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. J’s not much of a talker–at least a talker that stays on topic.
J and the reporter met for about 20 minutes and it was a bit of a struggle–J couldn’t give him any great quotes to use for his story–but boy, J is a million times better at small talk than he used to be. I don’t get to watch him use his small talk with people very often, but I was floored by how far he’s come in that department. J was polite, asked the reporter and camera man their names and where they were from. When the reporter asked J what his favourite sport was, J answered and then asked the reporter what his favourite sport was. There was some really great back and forth and reciprocation happening there for a few minutes. I wonder how many times the reporter’s been asked questions about himself when he’s on assignment to listen to people talk about themselves. I couldn’t help but crack a smile. It was a little comical.
But J’s not the best at using words to communicate his feelings and that’s exactly what the reporter was trying to get J to talk about. When he asked J how running made him feel, J just smiled and said, “great!” When the reporter tried again in the conversation, J just said, “running is good for my energy.” Those were the two answers J had. The only two answers. The poor reporter tried answering his questions in different ways and J kept coming up with the same two answers. But that’s autism, I guess, and that’s part of the story.
I’m becoming more and more a fly on the wall in J’s life, and as I step back from every aspect of his life, I’m noticing that he’s starting to step up on his own in little ways. Instead of meeting J up at the school to make sure he was dressed and ready to go to his meet before he got on the bus, I sent him in his uniform under his warm ups with his track bag with his Gatorade, water, apple, and Ipod. And guess what? When I arrived at the meet a few minutes after the bus arrived, I found J in the stands with the rest of his team, chatting it up, with his track bag and back pack full of homework. He sat with his team, on his own, for the entire time (yes, I did check up on him a few times to make sure he wasn’t getting too anxious or obsessed over something). Steve and I at one point and saw him sitting next to his XC captain, both of them with their earbuds in, listening to music. “He looks so ‘normal,'” I said to Steve.
About a half hour later, I turned around to tell J that it was probably that time in the meet to start listening for the announcement to line up for the 1600m, but when I looked up in the stands behind me, he was no longer sitting next to his friends. Steve and I immediately got up and searched the stands and field (casually, but still kind of freaking out that he’d miss his race) and five minutes later Steve came back saying he found J and that he was already at the check in. I missed the first announcement for the 1600, and while his teammates always head over at the second call for the 1600 (fashionably on-time/late) J heard his event and went down to the field right away. I was shocked that he had done that all on his own (it’s always so loud at a track meet;you have to be listening and watching for your event) and that’s exactly what J had done. Since there were 50 kids running his race, I stuck around at the check in to make sure J heard his name (because there’s a man on the field calling out names at the same time a man on the loudspeaker is calling the winners of the previous event) and I’d never seen J so focused. He kept giving me a thumbs up telling me he was listening for his name.
It’s so crazy to me that J is still always improving. It’s always in small, almost imperceptible ways, but it’s still improvement. It’s like every race he runs–he’s always lagging behind everyone else, but every race he gets a little bit better and gets a little bit closer to managing the same things his peers do effortlessly. It’s almost never on par with his peers, but he’s slowly getting there. And when you step back for a minute and look at the years and months that have come before whatever the current moment is, you see how big that progress really is.
Three years ago, in grade 7, J ran the 1600 m in 8:39.56. Monday he ran that same race in 6:44.41. That’s almost a 2 minute improvement.
2 minutes.
So yeah, J wasn’t great at answering the reporter’s feelings about running, but he was able to hold a few minutes of small talk. He showed up at check in at the 1st call to check in instead of the second. But he’s becoming a better, more independent J.
Even when I’m not watching over him.
If you would like to read the story in the Fargo Forum featuring J, just click here.
