For Whom the Minivan Rolls Read Online Free

with deadlines
approaching, and I made phone calls on them until the kids got
home. Ethan barreled in first, flinging the front door open,
stomping into the house and hanging his backpack on one of the
banister rungs currently unoccupied. We run a tidy household around
here.
    Normally, I don’t like to brag, mostly because I
have so little bragging material when I’m talking about myself. But
my son is a different story. He is a remarkably handsome boy,
having inherited his mother’s big brown eyes, thank goodness, and
her even, pleasant features. He even stood a chance, according to
his pediatrician, of achieving something nobody in my family had
ever dreamed of—average height.
    Right now, Ethan’s face was expressionless. He was
thinking about something other than being home. He didn’t notice me
until I hung up the phone. Nobody can ignore you better than an
11-year-old boy. Except maybe a 13-year-old girl, but I’ll get back
to you on that in six years.
    “Hey, Skipper. How you doin’?” Best to show them
you’re their friend. They can smell fear.
    “Hi, Dad.” Kids with Asperger’s Syndrome, like
Ethan, tend to have unusual vocal expressions. Some speak with
little inflection. Others mumble. Ethan’s voice is unusually high.
Nobody knows why.
    Asperger’s is a form of high-functioning autism. The
kids speak quite well, compared to more severely autistic children,
but their social skills are underdeveloped. They don’t read body
language. They don’t understand idioms. They tend to have physical
“tics,” or what the experts called “stimming,” which is a way of
saying that they flap their arms or continually run their fingers
through their hair as a way of getting the physical stimulation
they lack in everyday life. They need more sensory input than the
average person, and so they create as much of it as they can,
wherever they can. But the worst thing is that they don’t really
read another person’s tone of voice in a conversation, so they
can’t understand sarcasm. It is a huge handicap for a child growing
up in my household.
    Ethan was diagnosed with Asperger’s when he started
kindergarten, and since then, we’ve attended conferences, enrolled
him in a yearlong transitional class between kindergarten and first
grade, learned the meaning of an “IEP” (Individualized Education
Plan), something that school systems do for children with “special
needs,” asked for and gotten an adult aide (called a
“para-professional”) to help get him through the school day, and
gotten him Occupational Therapy for his slowly developing fine
motor skills, and social skills training and speech therapy, so he
can learn how to use speech in a conversation. He also takes
Ritalin twice a day to help him concentrate, and anybody who thinks
we’re unnecessarily medicating our kid can share a week with him
with no medication and see what they think when they’re done.
    He is the sweetest 11-year-old on the planet 85
percent of the time. But when the Asperger’s kicks into overdrive
and he gets into a dark mood, you’d better give him a wide berth
and lock away the sharp objects. An Asperger’s tantrum is like a
regular tantrum, but on Jolt! Cola.
    “How’d the day go?” I asked him.
    “Fine.” A tornado could tear through his school,
killing half his classmates, and he’d say “fine.” On the other
hand, let him lose one Pokémon card he has 14 copies of, and the
day is “terrible.” So I’ll take “fine.”
    He took his books out of his backpack and got
straight to his homework. Like most kids with autism, Ethan is a
creature of ritual. He does his homework as soon as he gets home.
Let him wait until later, even a half-hour later, and there will be
a scene resembling King Kong’s rampage after the infamous flashbulb
incident. Ritual can be good.
    By this time, Leah had also made it home. She goes
to a so-called primary school. In a year, she’ll begin attending
Ethan’s elementary school.