Samuel, my son on the autism spectrum, posing for a photo with the "Famous Walt" poster. Normally he refuses to be photographed, so this is another big deal!
A miracle happened yesterday.
On the surface, it might seem like a completely normal thing, but stay with me so you will see the depth of this “little” happening.
Yesterday my children were out with their father and they called me, very excited.
“Our dog is famous!” she said into the cell phone inside her father’s car.
“What? What?” I asked. “Walt is famous? How?!?”
Walt, our resident escape artist, had gotten out this weekend, overnight. I put a “Lost dog” ad on craigslist and thankfully, the woman who found him also put a “Found dog” ad on craigslist, complete with a photo.
I didn’t know she had tried other methods to reach out to us.
The girls were tripping all over themselves to tell me what happened but then Samuel broke in, saying “Wait a minute, wait a minute, let me tell the story.”
And then he did exactly that: he told the story of driving past a local drug store, seeing a sign, pointing it out, asking his Dad to pull over to take a photo and the rest is history.
Naturally, we had found Walt before Samuel found the poster, but there was still a story to be told. Samuel told that story.
What makes this monumental?
He had never told a story before in the same way everyone else tells stories.
Our family tells stories all the time. Samuel likes to hear them. He likes to be a part of living them on their way to becoming a “family story” but this was the first time he was the star of the story and then the architect of its telling.
I have been waiting for this since Samuel was in kindergarten and his teacher noted this weakness in him.
Several months later we discerned he was on the autism spectrum which includes language processing factors including being able to do something so integral to our family: tell entertaining stories of the run-of-the-mill yet very amusing moments of our lives to one another and to friends and for me, here on my blog and occasionally in storytelling competitions.
What a grand bonus in an otherwise very satisfying week-end.
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