Greatest Inventions

This week, I will administer our Indiana state proficiency exams, the ISTEP+, to my seventh grade students. Every year my colleagues have me tell the story of a student I had in class years ago who apparently misread the writing prompt for his essay, which we still find amusing years later. The students that year were to write about the greatest invention in history. As I walked around the room to monitor the students’ progress, I noticed this student had entitled his essay “My Hamster.” I gently suggested that he re-read what the assigned topic was, and as he did, his eyes widened, and he began erasing what he’d written and hopefully chose a more appropriate topic. [Sadly, under the more stringent rules the state has given test proctors this year, I wouldn’t be able to help that poor kid.] Yesterday, I ran across an entertaining blog entry from Look At My Eyes entitled “The Greatest Invention for the Autism World EVER???” [Click here to read this blog entry.] No, the greatest invention wasn’t a hamster, but the electronic timer instead, which holds a special place in Alex’s heart, as I’ve written in previous blog entries. While I’d be hard pressed to choose the greatest invention for the autism world, five items—in addition to the beloved electronic timer—come to mind.

Betty Crocker gluten-free yellow cake mix makes my life so much easier. Before this wonderful product came on the market last year, I had to bake all of Alex’s cakes from scratch. Gluten-free cakes that have a good texture and flavor require measuring three different gluten-free flours (tapioca, potato starch, and rice flours) and adding the proper mix of xanthan gum to help the flours stick together without gluten along with baking powder and/or baking soda to make it rise. With Betty Crocker’s GF cake mixes, I just dump the mix in a bowl with three eggs, a stick of Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine, a little water, vanilla extract, and orange extract (my own addition that Alex really likes), mix with the electric mixer, pour in a pan, and bake. Not only is it easy to make, but also topped with Duncan Hines vanilla frosting, this is one tasty cake.

I’d personally like to thank the creator of the Game Show Network for entertaining Alex for hours on end. Between Family Feud, Lingo, Deal or No Deal, Press Your Luck, and others, Alex has not only enjoyed watching these shows, but he’s also learned some information and strategy by playing along at home.

I don’t know what Alex would do without his beloved calculators. He has calculators of every shape, size, color, and format and can spend hours punching in numbers. Of course, his love of math and numbers has shaped his affection for these handy gadgets. When he was a toddler and had to sit through faculty meetings with me, I’d put him in his stroller and hand him a calculator to play with, and he never let out a peep, fully amused by punching the buttons. Early on, I guess I knew how to keep him happy and calm in such a simple way.

If it were not for melatonin, we would have spent many years sleep deprived. When Alex suddenly developed insomnia around age five, he would wander around the house and watch middle-of–the-night tv, such as CNN. Of course, we couldn’t allow him to be up without our supervision, so we had to give up sleep, as well. The first night he started taking melatonin under the guidance of our doctor, he easily fell asleep at a reasonable hour and slept soundly through the night. I really suspect that he did not have enough natural melatonin in his system, and this supplement provided what he needed. Fortunately, he has overcome this problem and can sleep without taking melatonin anymore, but for those years he couldn’t, I’m thankful he responded so well to this supplement.

For Alex, I think the greatest invention is the computer and the Internet. He has learned so much by playing games, doing Google searches and subsequent research, and typing information into spreadsheets and word processing programs. As I mentioned in a recent blog entry, he is currently fascinated with a website called “Ask God,” and now he begins every morning by consulting with this artificial intelligence site. He shares his worries with “God” about rising gasoline prices, and apparently, he has some good sense about not sharing his identity online. Last week, “God” asked him his name, and he typed in [game show and talk show host] Regis Philbin. Ed and I thought that was pretty clever of him. In addition, I’m pleased that he knows the best way to start the day is by having a conversation with God; now if we can teach him that prayer is better than the Internet, we’ll have taught him well.

“Sing to Him, sing psalms to Him; Talk of all His wondrous works!” Psalm 105:2

Spare Time

With bitter cold weather over the past few weeks here in Northwest Indiana, Alex has been spending his spare time inside. I’m sure that he, like Ed and me, misses being out on our three-season porch reading and relaxing. Also, he probably is in withdrawal from roaming around our backyard, counting the pickets in our fence, watching our neighbor’s dog bark at him, and throwing a ball up into the air and counting how many times in a row he can catch it. Nonetheless, he seems to be dealing with cabin fever better the past couple of weeks. One would assume he’s entertaining himself with the variety of nice birthday and Christmas presents he received last month, and, of course, he has enjoyed them. But, like a typical child who seems more interested in the empty box than the present that came in it, Alex is finding fun in unusual items that he uses in his idiosyncratic ways.

Last week, my mom, Alex, and I went out to a restaurant for dinner while Ed and my dad went to a basketball game and a fans’ dinner served before the game. Lately, when we take Alex out to a restaurant, Ed brings his iPod, which he has loaded with various applications that Alex especially likes, including the game Deal or No Deal, Blackjack, Roulette, Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, and even a pi digit calculator. While we’re waiting for the meal, Alex and Ed pass the time playing on this handy little gadget. Since I don’t have an iPod, I didn’t think to bring something for Alex to play with when we went to the restaurant the other night. However, he was fairly patient waiting for his meal. After a few minutes, I noticed that he started pulling out the container of three different artificial sweeteners and looking at the packets. Figuring that he just wanted to read them, I watched as he began moving them into patterns on the table, creating an activity of his own. He placed one packet on a top row, followed by nine packets below that, then nine more below the second row, and finally six packets on the bottom row. He seemed pleased with his efforts, and he was even more pleased when I asked him if that meant the year 1996. [This was not just a lucky guess on my part; I happen to know that he’s somewhat obsessed with the year 1996, which he’s decided is the year of his earliest memory.] I’m not certain which was scarier—that he figured out a way to create an abacus out of those pastel packets of sweetener or that I immediately knew what he was trying to represent by the lineup he’d created. At least that activity kept him occupied and happy until his food arrived.

Of all the gifts he received last month, one that seems to be a favorite of Alex’s is the set of magnetic numbers I found in a clearance bin for twenty-five cents. Besides having two numbers of each digit, the set came with mathematical symbols: plus, minus, times, divided by, and equals. Knowing how much he loves math, I suspected that he’d find various ways to put this set together, and he hasn’t disappointed me. I have found those numbers in various combinations throughout the house—on the family room coffee table, on the kitchen counter, on his bedroom chest of drawers, and even on the bathroom floor. He has certainly gotten at least twenty-five cents worth of entertainment out of that little gift. Despite that he has new books to read, he’s been spending a great deal of time reading his old collegiate dictionary. Like the magnetic numbers, the dictionary seems to have legs, winding up in various rooms throughout the house as Alex roams around with it, too. While he received several gadgets for Christmas, he decided to spend some of his Amazon gift card money right away on a new electronic toy, a talking clock with calendar. I’m not certain why he wanted this because he knows how to read clocks and calendars, other than the fact he really likes clocks and calendars. However, he didn’t have any that talked to him, and he seems enthralled with this one. Besides the joy that clock seems to give him, another positive aspect was that he didn’t pester us at all after he ordered it, never asking when it would arrive or demanding that we track the package online. Perhaps Alex’s obsession with package tracking is disappearing; that would be welcome relief to us. As long as he’s finding things to occupy his time and keep himself entertained, Alex is happy, and so are we.

“So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can.” Ecclesiastes 3:12