It's finally time for that talk

Today's post, about hats times two, is at Toxophily (again).

I took the kids to Playworld today for an afternoon of climbing through the maze. After Archer went with Cady Gray through the maze a couple of times, they split up, and Cady Gray found gainful employment guiding a little girl named Brooklyn, who was scared to enter at first. Archer spent about half of the visit perched near the barrier separating the maze area from the arcade ticket redemption area, watching the automatic ticket counter gobble up long streamers of tickets, the numbers clicking over on the display. I got him to race through the maze three times more by encouraging him to time himself on his wrist watch ("My watch can be a chronograph," he announced to a father helping his toddler son get up onto the climbing nets). His times: 2:27, 2:08, 1:57.

Then came the requisite air hockey game, where occasionally Archer gets mesmerized by the digital score display but mostly demonstrates the best hand-eye coordination I've ever seen from him -- nobody would know, watching him play, that he wasn't an absolutely normal six-year-old. Score: Archer (Visitor) 7, Cady Gray (Home) 2. Before going home, we waited by the snack counter for the free small cheese pizza that we got for two paid maze admissions. Cady Gray perched on my lap. "Hey Mom," she said, "Archer can't hardly look at me." "I know, honey," I said. "He is nice to me but he can't look at me," she repeated.

"That's because his mind works differently from ours, sweetie," I said. "I'll give you a book about it that will explain how Archer's mind is special."

Noel and I were just talking earlier this week about how the day was going to come when we'd have to try to explain Archer's autism to Cady Gray. Looks like it's here.