punchdrunkmom

The dinosaur dig

If you know Kai, you know that he likes dinosaurs.

If you REALLY know Kai, you know that the spinosaurus had a double row of teeth and snacked on sharks and was SWIMMING DINOSAUR and not a marine reptile and I should do some more research before I say incorrect things like that, and also that the displesiosaur means "double crested lizard."

So when talk last winter meandered to the possibility of going on a dinosaur dig, there was simply no turning back.

Long before we'd made any decisions or booked any flights or hotels, he'd told everyone that he was going on a dino dig this summer.

So.

I asked my friend John, who knows some paleontologists, if he knew of any who would let us tag along on a dig. John said that his paleontologist friends were kind of jerks and instead googled a list of places that will let the public hunt for dinosaurs. With people who know what they're doing, I mean. I myself saw an opportunity to combine a dino dig with a trip to visit my friend Quincy in New Mexico, and viola! A plan was born.

:::

The dino dig I chose was out of the Museum of Western Colorado. For $140 apiece, they would take us to the Mygatt-Moore quarry outside of Fruita, let us dig for dinosaurs, and feed us a sandwich.

I mean, sold.

I bought tickets online, and, to my surprise, we had to fill out a vast array of medical forms, which I dutifully procrastinated on until the week before we left.

After a gloriously conversation-filled and booze-soaked weekend with my friend Quincy and her family, in which we took zero pictures of each other but took several of our cocktails, we pointed the car north to Colorado.

I am so not kidding.

Let me stop here and taxi-cab confession to you that I would be lying if I told you I was excited about this dig.

I knew it would be hot and dusty, that dinosaurs don't die in the Peninsula Hotel but in the vast wastelands of Hot Nowheresville, USA. I worried about Ryan, who hates to walk more than 20 feet at a stretch. I had completely ignored the advice of the dig coordinator to outfit us all in wide-brimmed, Park Ranger-style hats on the basis of sartorial loathing, plus the fact that we would never use them again, and was concerned that this was a huge mistake and, after all the medical forms, I was vaguely worried about our health.

Additionally, I harbored a completely separate fear that Kai would hate it, and therefore, by encouraging his dream of becoming a paleontologist, we would inadvertently ruin it with a hot, dusty dose of reality served with a sandwich. We talk about this in guitar class all the time—the fact that the worst thing you can do is meet your idol. You can't help but be disappointed.

So, it was with considerable apprehension that I presented my family at the Dinosaur Journey in Fruita, Colorado, armed with bottled water and approximately 50 cans of sunscreen. We found a contingent of people loading coolers into a van and, after a few minutes consultation, got our first piece of good news: the dig would be over by 2:30. You should have seen Scott's face when I told him.

Anyhoo, two dudes who looked like construction workers ushered us into the museum. I assumed that they were drivers. Or haulers. Or lifters of heavy coolers. They led us into a room with several chairs, a podium and a giant screen. I wondered if we'd see a film before we left, the kind that starts "One hundred and fifty million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth..."

But there was no film, no PowerPoint, no frills of any kind.

Instead, the two guys sat down on the stage and introduced themselves.

They were paleontoligists.

And I guess I didn't know what I expected. Ross Geller, I guess. Or Sam Neill with his cleaned-and-pressed khaki button down. But these guys were just regular guys. Guys who dug dinosaur bones. They were tanned and be-hatted, and I was relieved to see only one of their hats was wide-brimmed. We were told there was no running water in the on-site bathroom (they looked at me when they said it), and I told them we'd be okay, though I wasn't going to say that we weren't.

In the van on the way to the quarry, we were all asked to tell everyone our favorite dinosaur. Alarmed, I searched wildly for an answer while the rest of my family gave theirs. Kai went with the T-Rex. Ryan's was the triceretops. Scott said the velociraptor.

I wanted to say something cool, but what was I going to say to two paleontologists?

They waited.

"Stegasaurus," I said finally.

"They have a brain the size of a gum ball," Kai said.

There was another family with us, a father/son duo. I don't remember what they liked, but I do remember what the paleontologists said they liked.

Chris, the driver, liked marine reptiles.

“Oh!” Kai said. “Like the plesiosaur.”

Chris sad he liked the mosasaurus, too.

“Oh,” Kai said. "The mosasaurus likes to snack on sharks!”

Rob said that his favorite was the allosaurus, which, coincidentally, was one of the dinosaurs one could find in the quarry.

The quarry itself was only about a hundred feet off the main road, which was another happy surprise. I assumed we'd have to hike into some kind of canyon, but this would not be the case.

Each of us were given a paint brush and a screwdriver, and shown how to use then to find fossils.

"The paintbrush is your best friend on a dig," Chris told us, as he demonstrated how to use the brush to clear sand and debris, showing us how to look for black rocks that might be fossils.

Listening carefully.

Rob showed us where some fossils had already been partially uncovered and that we could continue to brush and chip away at the sandstone (which is what I did), and another area that hadn't been excavated  but that he thought looked promising (which is where Kai, Ryan and Scott went), and we got to work.

Since this was the last day of the digging season, Rob was trying to excavate everything he could before they covered up the site until next spring. What he couldn't dig out today, he would cover in plaster and then layer under rocks so that poachers wouldn't steal the fossils, which is, apparently, a thing. They took out two connected apatosaurus vertebrae that had to be hauled out on a flatbed, and "jacketed" another set with plaster (which Ryan helped with.)

I chipped away at some rock and found what I thought might me a fossil. I called Chris over and asked him what he thought, and he thought I was right. After some careful brushing, I came up with this:

which is a 152 million year old fragment of a vertebra, or a "vertfrag," which went into the "nugget bucket" because it was too small to care that much about if you are a paleontologist, but is amazing as hell if you are a yoga instructor from Chicago.

Chris showed Ryan that the difference between a rock and a fossil was that a fossil would stick to your tongue, which had Ryan enthusiastically licking the rocks in the discard pile until she found a few fossils that had been discarded by mistake.

Kai brushed and chiseled merrily for a while, and I watched him as I worked, worried the whole time that he would break something or worse, lose interest completely. When it looked like his attention was starting to wander, I took him on a mini-hike up a nearby trail, where some paleontologists had found an apatosaurus skeleton that had ended up in the Field Museum.

"Are you having fun?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said.

But still I worried. He had fantasized for weeks leading up to this dig that he would discover a Kaijudysaurus, and he had so far discovered nothing. Not even a vertfrag for the bucket.

At lunch, Rob entertained us with a description of his favorite dinosaur.

“The Allosaurus isn't like T-Rex. It has big, beefy arms. And he gives you a big bear hug, and as he's squeezing the life out of you, he punctures your spine with his giant claws. And then he opens his mouth to take a big bite out of you, but he doesn't just chomp down, he brings his whole head down on you as he does it, like an eagle.”

“But, what about,” Kai interrupted.

“Hold on, I'm talking. And what do you think you'd do if allosaurus was squeezing you, clawing you, eating you?”

“Scream?” I suggested.

“Exactly right. But the thing about allosaurus is that he can't hear you scream. We've analyzed his skull and his ear structure. Allosaurus couldn't hear a scream, because he could only hear at a very low frequency.”

“Yeah, but if the mosasaurus,” Kai interrupted again.

“I don't interrupt you. I'll finish and you can talk. Allosaurus used that low-frequency to communicate. And it was so low, you wouldn't hear it, you would only feel it.”

I want “Allosaurus wouldn't hear you scream” written on a t-shirt.

“But who would win in a fight? Mosasaurus or allosaurus?” Kai asked, clearly nonplussed by Rob’s allosaurus talk.

“Well, one lived on land and one lived in the sea, and they also lived in different periods, so...”

“So who was stronger?”

“Why don't you ask Chris?” I suggested.

Chris seemed pleased. I can't be sure, but I think Chris had asked himself the same question.

Mosasaurus vs. Allosaurus, AKA Chris and Rob

:::

When we got back to the museum, we were treated to a tour of the fossil lab and, despite Kai's fading attention and my exhaustion, I didn't want the experience to end. There was something about this day that had transformed me on some level. Maybe it was the vertebra fragment, or the camaraderie and closeness of the people at the dig site, or maybe it was the incredible gratitude I felt for being able to bring Kai out to this vast wasteland to encourage him to be a paleontologist if he wants to, though I think he could also do well to make a video game about a battle between a mosasaur and an allosaur. I feel like there's a market for that.

The Museum of Western Colorado is delightfully cheesy, with mechanical dinosaurs that eat each other and spit water on unsuspecting museum-goers.

 

Ryan played in the pretend dig site, despite having just done the real thing.

Afterwards, we went to McDonald's, all of us filthy and dusty, and for reasons I can't fathom except that I must have looked like I needed it, they gave me a free ice cream cone, which I ate gratefully.

:::

Two days later, we found ourselves at Dinosaur National Monument, looking at the Quarry Exhibit. The Morrison Formation, like the Mygatt-Moore Quarry where we'd been for the dig, was a vast soup of sauropods and allosaurus bones.

Looking at the wall of dinosaur fossils, I couldn't help but feel like this was no big deal to me, like I'd been there and done that and in greater relief than I'd ever had at any museum. Who wants to look at a fossil when you could dig it out of the earth on a hot Wednesday in August and then eat a ham sandwich?

As I wandered around, I saw a cast of an allosaur skeleton stood against one wall, and I went over to examine it.

A family stood near me, also looking at it, too. They had a boy about Kai's age.

"What's the difference between a T-Rex and an allosaurus?"

When neither parent answered, I stepped in.

"I will tell you the difference," I said.

"The allosaur has big, beefy arms, unlike T-Rex, whose arms are tiny and useless. Do you know what he does with those arms?"

The boy looked unsure of what was happening. "No," he whispered.

"He gives you a huge hug, and he uses those claws to puncture your spine. And you know what else?"

No one answered.

"Allosaurus' ears were such that he couldn't hear you scream. And you couldn't hear him, either. The frequency he used to communicate was too low for human ears to have heard him. You'd have felt it, though. Just before he wrapped his arms around you and ate you with big stabbing motions like a bird."

The family was silent for a moment, regarding me and my enthusiasm for the murderous allosaur with the same wariness you might have with one of those guys at the intersection selling tube socks. I realized I was making a hugging motion with my arms. They all took a collective step backward.

The mother nudged the boy. "Say thank you."

"Thanks," the boy mumbled as the family beelined for the exit.

"You're welcome," I called after them. Feeling pleased with myself, went to find my family, thinking that when Kai comes back out here to hunt dinosaur bones, I just might want to go with him.

Weird Science

Seriously, you guys, if I had a nickel for every time someone said, “Mrs. Judy, I need to have a word with you about Kai,” and then sat me down to gravely list the series of horrible things my son did during camp/school/whatever I’d be like

 :::

Science camp started out great.

Kai was excited. He’d put on his favorite dinosaur shirt.

“Are you ready?” I asked him.

“I was born ready,” he replied, which was probably true.

When we opened the door, the first thing we saw was about 6 kids building with Legos. Kai drifted over there, but the leader, a guy whose nametag read, “Graviton Greg” called him back.

“You can go over there,” Graviton Greg said, “but first you need a nametag.”

Graviton Greg wrote Kai’s name on a name tag sticker and handed it to Kai, who tried to find a creative place to put it.

“Kai,” Graviton Greg said, “I’m going to need you to put that sticker on your shirt so I can see it when I look at you.”

Kai eventually put it on his shin.

“You’re going to have lots of chances to be different today,” Graviton Greg said, and I knew we’d achieved some level of understanding all around.

Ryan, on the other hand, was murderous.

“How come Kai gets to go to that camp and I don’t?” Fat tears began to run down her cheeks.

“Because you’re not having a hard time at camp,” I replied.

“I hate my camp,” she said. “One of the Olivias pinched me on my arm and it really hurt.”

I squeezed her hand.

That, however, is a therapist’s bill for another day.

Sigh.

:::

So Monday was fine, but on Tuesday, Graviton Greg needed to speak with me.

He was gentle and kind, but his complaints about Kai were numerous. Kai had pulled his pants down in front of the whole class. He had punched and shoved some kids much smaller than he is. He took a 25 minute bowel movement that made the other kids anxious. He was obsessed with toilets.

Not one of these behaviors is new, so I waited for Graviton Greg to finish. He seemed so patient and nice, but gravely serious as well.

“I’m worried about the safety of the other kids, and having to explain why they saw another kid pull down his pants,” he said, almost apologetically.

“I understand,” I said.

“And I know there’s a lot going on, a lot of things he’s going through, a lot of electricity.”

They’d been working on circuits that day.

“Was he inappropriate with electricity?” I asked.

“No, literally there was a lot of electricity. He was holding a wire and made a lightbulb light up without touching it to a power source.”

“Wait, what?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he went on, “I made him repeat it a few times to make sure. He has so much electricity going on that he just made lit that bulb up on his own.”

The amount I know about circuits couldn’t fill a thimble, but this seemed like a big deal.

Gravitron Greg went on. “So I’m looking for help here. What should we do?”

“So, like, Kai lights things up with his body?”

“I just need to keep everyone here safe, and I can’t have Kai pushing smaller kids. I want to be fair to Kai but I also don’t want to have to explain a bruise to another parent.”

It wasn't that I didn't take Greg seriously, but you guys!

“Is that unusual? Lighting up a lightbulb with your own electricity?”

:::

Anyhoo.

I told Graviton Greg that I would take care of things with Kai that evening. I told him about the magic 1-2-3 count that works when he needs Kai to cease and desist immediately. I told him that I was sorry.

And I gathered Kai and we left.

When we got in the car I laid into him.

“Do you hate science camp?” I asked.

“No,” he replied.

“Because you’re acting like you want to get kicked out.”

He didn’t reply.

“And this cost me THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS.” I said, the rage building.

“Did you put it on your credit card?” Kai asked.

“Kai,” I said, “We are DONE with the pants thing. There is never a moment, not one time, where it’s okay to take your pants off in public. Not. One. Time.”

He gave a little twittering laugh. “But, I was so surprised by the experiment that my pants just slipped off!”

“KAI,” I said, hurling his name like a knife. “You are done. There is never, not one time, ever, that you are EVER to take your pants off in public again.”

“But..”

“Let’s have a little quiz,” I said. “Is it okay for me to take off my pants right now?”

Kai let out a moan.

“Well?” I asked.

“No.”

“That’s right.”

:::

Later on, Kai asked me to buy an episode of Minecraft Story Mode for him. Don’t worry, you don’t have to know what that is. I sure don’t.

But Kai sure knows what it is, and as a result, I had a nice, fat carrot to dangle in front of him.

“I will download that for you if I get a good report at camp.”

“Okay,” he said brightly.

“In fact, I explained to him. “here’s how this is all going to go down. You are going to go to science camp tomorrow. You are going to keep your pants on. If you need to poop, you’re going to limit yourself to 5 minutes and then be done with it. You are going to use your words instead of pushing or hitting other kids. If you can do all that, you will get the next episode of Minecraft Story Mode.”

“Okay,” he said again.

“And the next time I find out you’ve pulled your pants down in an inappropriate place, there will be no iPad, computer or TV for two weeks.”

“Okay,” he said.

“And not just at camp. And not just tomorrow. But everywhere, and every day for the rest of your life.”

:::

“Was he good?” I asked Graviton Greg the next day at pickup.

“He was so good! We were like, ‘What did she say to him last night?’”

I smiled and nodded. “I hope the rest of the week goes as well.”

I gathered up Kai’s many projects and we got into the car.

“Can I have it now?” he asked.

I turned to look at him. “When is it a good time to take off your pants?”

“When you’re in your own room or in the bathroom.”

“Yes,” I said. “You can have the next Minecraft Story Mode episode.”

We drove away, both of us satisfied with what we had accomplished.

And while rewarding a fourth-grader for passing the low, low, low bar of keeping his pants on for 6 hours might seem extreme, I’ll shell out some pretty big bucks for him to finally internalize the idea that taking ones pants off in public almost never ends well.

I mean, “I was so surprised that my pants just slipped off,” is sort of cute when a little boy says it, but becomes progressively less cute as the years wear on.

Amirite, ladies?

In which I finish the story I started yesterday about summer camp

This post is continued from yesterday.

I called the camp director, Jenny, from the car, identifying myself as Kai’s mom.

“What can you tell me about today?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah we had an incident where Kai bit someone, an eleven-year-old.” She said it with an air of incredulousness, the emphasis on “eleven-year-old,” as if that somehow made a difference.

So an eleven-year-old threw Kai’s stuff out of a locker.

“And what was the reason?” I asked.

“I wasn’t there,” she said, “but from what I understand there was no reason for it at all.”

Not bloody likely. Not in a million years.

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“We filed an incident report and it went downtown,” she said.

I had no idea what this meant. “What does that mean?”

“It means that we’re covered and we can see what the other family wants to do.”

So glad you’re covered, Jenny. Who can I murder?

I debated how to respond. For one thing, Jenny’s account contradicted Kai’s, and she was clearly in CYA mode. I never want to be that parent, who thinks her little snowflake is always innocent, but Kai had no reason to lie to me at that point.

“Kai says that another kid was preventing him from using a locker, and it got physical.”

Jenny hesitated. “That’s not my understanding,” she said.

I took a bracing breath.

“Jenny,” I said, “I’m going to say something to you that sounds like just the kind of thing a parent says,” I began. “But there is no way on God’s green earth that Kai bit some kid without provocation. Should he have bitten someone? Of course not, but you can’t tell me that he didn’t have a reason.”

She was quiet for a minute, and then asked me to hold on. She began to talk with someone in rapid-fire Spanish, whether about Kai or me or something else entirely, I have no idea.

When she got back on the line, her tone had softened.

“Kai’s been coming here for a lot of years and he’s never been violent,” she said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“I’m getting a lot of stories,” she said.

I’ll bet she was.

“Who picked him up and carried him from the locker room?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe Marcus.”

Marcus is a counselor we’ve known for years. He knows Kai. His former counselors used to make sure Marcus was with Kai in the locker room.

“If it was Marcus, I’m totally okay with that,” I said. This is true, but the fact remains that Jenny didn’t know who had pulled the boys apart, carrying mine kicking and screaming from the room.

I told Jenny of the other hat incident, the one with the scratch.

“No one reported it to me,” she said.

I told her I’d informed Luis and asked him to keep an eye out.

“Has Kai ever had an inclusion aide at camp?” Jenny asked.

“No,” I replied. “We’ve never had a problem.”

She thought about that for a moment. “You’re right,” she said.

I know I’m right.

She told me that she would reach out to Marcus, to see if he could more closely shadow Kai, especially in the locker room and at lunch.

“I found it, by the way. The hat. Took me about 30 seconds. It was in the garbage at the pool.”

Jenny, I'll see you next Tuesday.

:::

I drove to therapy fighting off tears on Kai’s behalf. The powerlessness, the humiliation he must have felt. He would have replayed it all day, over and over in his mind. And then! Having to go the rest of the day without his hat. The cruelty of that alone made me want to murder someone.

I texted Marcus. He hadn’t been in the locker room, but heard the whole story—a story, by the way, that is exactly as Kai told it. He promised me that he would put his stuff right next to Kai’s in the locker room. He’s good protection, well over 6 feet, not to mention cool.

But still.

I wanted to find that eleven-year-old and pound him into the ground. I wanted to show up to every single locker he’d ever have for the rest of his life and throw all of his shit out of it and light it on fire.

I told Scott the story when we got home.

You should have seen his face.

:::

The next morning, I asked Kai if he wanted to go to camp.

“No,” he said. “I want a break.”

“You’re not spending the day on your iPad,” I warned.

“I don’t want to go,” he said. “I just want peace.”

“Peace from what?” I asked.

I knew. I mean I knew, but I wanted to hear him say it. I wanted to know if he didn’t want to go because of what happened or because he was being, I don’t know lazy or whatever. I wanted to know if I should push him or not.

“From the bullies,” he said. “They bother me and take my hat.”

“What if I told you that I can keep you safe?” I asked. “Marcus will be with you the whole time.”

“Naw,” he said.

I went upstairs to find Scott. I needed his opinion about camp.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“He used the word, ‘bully?’” Scott asked.

“Yeah.”

“Kai doesn’t have to go places where people are mean to him,” Scott said.

I nodded.

“That’s what I needed to hear,” I said, and went back downstairs.

:::

“Why do I have to go to camp and Kai doesn’t?” Ryan protested as we drove to the park.

“Because that’s how it is,” I said.

“It’s no fair,” she said.

No, it’s not.

I walked her in and went to find Jenny. She was gone but her assistant was there.

“I’m Kai’s mom,” I said.

She looked up at me. “Yes,” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Do you know what happened yesterday?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, guardedly.

I asked to see the incident report, but she said it was “private.”

“A report about my son is private? From me?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Kai doesn’t want to come back here,” I said.

And I watched her demeanor change.

“He doesn’t want to finish?” she asked. She seemed to genuinely care.

“No,” I said. “He says he’s being bullied. By eleven-year-olds.”

Something in her broke then, and suddenly she knew the entire story.

“The kid he bit isn’t the bully. The bully was the kid who threw his stuff out of the locker. The kid he bit was standing up for Kai, trying to keep them separated. Kai was just so upset he lost control.”

I stared at her.

“The kid he bit, it’s his birthday today. He didn’t come to camp.”

“Oh, god. What a bad situation all around,” was what I said. But what I left unsaid was what a massive failure of all the adults in charge. They knew there was a bully! They knew the whole story and tried to tell me that Kai bit some kid with no provocation!

She thanked me for being so understanding, and said she hoped Kai would at least come back for the beach party in a couple of weeks.

I told her we would try, but I didn't really think it would happen.

Marcus was so nice when I told him that Kai didn’t want to come to camp.

“Not feeling it today, huh?” was what he said good-naturedly.

But I knew he felt bad, too. He likes Kai a lot.

I drove to Starbucks, thinking the whole time about what had happened: the obfuscation, the melee in the locker room.

In line for coffee, I thought of the kid who’d stood up against a bully on Kai’s behalf, of what courage that takes, and in the ensuing fight got bitten on the arm for his trouble, and my heart broke for him.

When it was my turn to order, I wiped a tear with the heel of my hand and ordered a decaf Americano.

:::

Kai spent last Wednesday making Minecraft videos with Monica’s college-age son, Jonathan, so that I could go to work, but as Jonathan was spending the following four days at Lollapalooza, this was not a long-term solution.

I started Googling other camps, because if Kai wasn’t going to go back to the park district camp, he was still going somewhere. I had things to do and Kai needed to have some structure.

There is a kids’ science place not too far away from us, and they had a spot in their week long science camp for the following week.

I gave them a call to see what kind of people they were over there.

The director answered the phone, and I told her who I was and that I was considering her camp for my autistic son, and did she think it would be a good fit?

“This is a science camp,” she said. “We get a lot of autistic kids. They all seem to really like science.”

I gave her my money and told her we’d see her on Monday.

:::

But then, the craziest thing happened.

Kai went back to Park District camp on Thursday.

This was his idea.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He said he was.

I consulted Scott, who said that sending him back was a good idea, as long as Kai was into it.

I think I asked Kai 10 or 12 times that morning if he was sure, and when he said that he was, I slathered him in sunscreen and sent him to camp.

“What do you do if you have a problem with another kid?” I asked him. We’d been practicing.

“Tell a counselor,” he replied.

“And what will that counselor do?” I asked.

“Call you.”

“Exactly.

We saw Jenny on the way in.

“Hi, Kai!” she said.

Then she covered my hand with hers. “Marcus will be with him today.”

When we walked into the multi-purpose room where the kids sign in and line up, Marcus came up to Kai, offering to have Kai hang out with him and the other counselors over by the stage.

“Naw,” Kai said, and went to sit with his group.

They greeted him with a chorus of “Hey Kais” and he sat down.

I told him to have fun and I left, full of apprehension and pride, too, at Kai’s resilience and his wanting to do normal things like sit with the other 9-year-olds instead of being singled out.

Kai made it through that day and the next, though he did put up a slight protest on Friday.

“Why don’t you want to go to camp today?” I asked.

“Because camp is so boring,” he said.

And because that was the wrong answer and because I had to work, Kai went to camp.

“Just one more day,” I said. “Science camp starts next week.”

In which everything is fine until it isn't

Kai’s been going to the same Park District day camp for four years. It’s close, it’s cheap, and we’ve always had a great experience. The first year, I dropped him off on the first day with a, “He has autism, ‘kthanksbye!” and ran out the door to do whatever it was I was late for.

And if he wasn’t a perfect camper—see his tendency to wander—his counselors tended to fall in love with him, thereby ensuring that he was well taken care of. The campers swim, they go on field trips to other parks, they ride bikes, and Kai always seemed to enjoy it. We never really needed an aide at camp (an inclusion aide, they call it), because it’s about 10,000 times easier to get Kai to go to the playground than it is to get him to write a topic sentence and four supporting ones.

This year, Kai has been less enthusiastic about camp. I chalked this up to him missing his camp counselor from last year, Vanessa. Kai had a little crush on Vanessa, which I know not because he told me, but because he always said her name in a breathy sigh: Vanessaaaah. Apparently, his new counselor, Luis, didn’t have the same je ne sais quoi (and I think we all sais quoi).

:::

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Kai had a scratch on his forehead.

“Where’d you get that scratch?” I asked.

He told me he didn’t have time for my questions. This was fine, because I also didn’t have time for my questions, as I was running out the door. Scott, however, got the full story out of him, though Scott said that Kai didn’t wat to tell him at all.

Some kids at camp had tried to take his hat, and scratched his forehead in the process.

“Kai,” I asked later, “were you guys playing and that’s why they took your hat?”

“No,” he said.

“Were they mean-teasing you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I was silent for a long moment. Kai was lost on the iPad.

“Do you want to keep going to camp?” I asked.

“I will take a day off,” he said.

“You’re not playing on your iPad all day,” I said to him.

He sighed. “Fine, then I’ll go to camp.”

:::

Autistic kids are great targets for bullies. Sometimes they can’t distinguish between genuine friends and manipulative jerks. Sometimes they don’t have language to tell on their tormentors. Sometimes they act weird and do weird things, making them easy fodder for someone looking for power.

Kai’s had a lot of support around spotting a bully. He’s had IEP goals about it, in addition to units on bullying in his social skills group. At school he has an aide, Dalila, who can be eyes and ears, plus they watch him like a hawk there. But camp is different, especially this year.

I wondered about these hat-stealers. Kai couldn’t tell me who they were or even whether they were boys or girls. I worried. But he kept saying that he liked camp and wanted to go back. I took him at his word. He would tell me if he didn’t want to go back, I reasoned.

The next time I dropped Kai off, I spoke to Luis about the incident and asked him to keep an eye out.

Later day when I picked Kai up, I looked around at the group of 9-year-olds and wondered which of them had tried to steal Kai’s hat. I picked out one kid, a beefy kid who was challenging the other boys to an arm wrestling match. He got one taker, and immediately won the match, but…

“You cheated,” I said to him.

He looked at me, surprised.

“You’re supposed to keep your elbow on the table. That’s regulation.”

“Oh,” he said to the kid who lost. “Sorry.”

Of course, I had no idea whether this kid was a hat-stealer or not. He seemed like a nice kid, actually.  Kai was sitting right next to him reading a book and everyone seemed to coexist peacefully. He said goodbye to us when we left.

Kai’s scratch healed. Luis seemed genuinely happy to see Kai every day.

We moved on with our lives.

And then it all went south.

:::

Our friend Monica picked the kids up from camp last Tuesday, and warned me that Kai was in a state because he’d lost his hat.

“Lost his hat” was how it was presented to Monica. If you know Kai, you know that he’s never without his hat—even in family portraits—so I definitely understood his distress.

“How did you lose your hat?” I asked when I’d caught up with him. “When did you have it last?”

“At the pool,” he said, miserably.

I figured as much. He’d once lost all his clothes at the pool when he put them in a locker and then didn’t remember which one. I figured the same thing happened that day.

“Is it in the lost and found? Did you check?”

“Just forget about it,” Kai said.

“And your sunglasses?” I asked. He had won a pair of sunglasses with a crazy lightning bolt attached to them at a crane game in an arcade.

Kai made a sound like, “Hunnnorrrrl.” I could hear the catch in his voice. He was near tears.

“Kai,” I said, “I can help you but you have to tell me what happened.”

“I don’t have time,” he said.

“Kai,” I said, beginning to wonder if this was something more than just losing his hat. “What happened?”

“A kid took them out of my locker.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

I started driving. “I’m trying to help you get your hat and sunglasses back,” I said. “Please tell me.”

Kai started to cry, whether from reluctance to tell me or reluctance to relive the situation or frustration—or all three—I don’t know. “I was using a locker, and someone took my hat and sunglasses out of my locker, and wouldn’t let me use it, and I tried to get back in and he was blocking me, and…I bit him.”

“Oh, my God. You bit a kid?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I processed this for a moment.

“Then what?”

“A man picked me up.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Alarm bells were clanging by now. “One of the counselors?”

“I tried to kick him, but only got one good kick,” Kai said.

“Jesus,” I said, deciding to let that go for the moment. “Then what happened?”

“I got a timeout for all of swimming.”

“Jesus,” I said again.

:::

Now, for those of you following this at home, I’m going to sum up Kai’s story for you.

• Kai was changing for the pool, and had chosen a locker. Locker number 45, to be exact. And
• Some other kid decided that he wanted Kai’s locker, and removed Kai’s hat and sunglasses from it. This upset Kai very much, and he tried to force his stuff back into the locker.
• The other kid was preventing him from doing this, and
• Kai bit him.
• Eventually a counselor picked Kai up and carried him from the locker room, but not before Kai got a kick in at the counselor.
• Kai had to sit in time out during swimming, and, in the melee,
• Kai’s hat and sunglasses went missing.
• Oh, and lest we forget, this was all presented to us as “Kai lost his hat.”

I parked the car in front of the swimming pool.

“Stay here,” I said to Kai, and went up to the guard. Not the lifeguard, the guy whose job it is to make sure you’re not packing heat at the pool. Yes, that’s a thing.

“My son lost his hat and sunglasses today. He’s a camper. Have you seen them?”

The guy looked around his office.

“No,” he said. “I have some towels, and this old t-shirt.”

I looked around the office, too.

Feeling defeated and full of confused emotions, I turned to go.

“There’s a hat in the garbage in the men’s locker room,” the guard offered.

I turned to look at him.

“Could you go get it?” I asked in a clipped tone. Obviously this was Kai’s hat. I had no idea why the guard hadn’t started with that little tidbit of information.

He returned shortly, brandishing Kai’s green Minecraft hat, holding it away from him as though it was thoroughly offensive.

“What about the sunglasses? They’re blue with a lightning bolt on them.”

He looked like I’d suggested he clean toilets with his toothbrush.

“But,” he protested, “it’s the garbage.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’ll go in there if you won’t do it,” I said.

He sighed. “Fine,” he said, and went back into the locker room. He returned seconds later.

“Not there,” he said, his eyes everywhere but on mine.

And though I knew he hadn’t looked, I decided that the hat was victory enough, and left. I had bigger fish to fry.

I handed Kai his hat when I got in the car.

“What the fuck?” Kai asked.

And because he’d used it appropriately, and because these were my exact sentiments, I let that go, too.

To be continued.