By the Balls

Taking Zach to the movies is kind of a crapshoot. Sometimes when he was younger we would get to the theater and he would refuse to step inside. Yesterday we went to see Chipwrecked, the new Chipmunk movie he's been asking to see since...well, since the first preview. It was part of our last hurrah before school began anew after the holiday break. During the first half of his movie-viewing experience, which included a preview for Zach's new must-see movie Madagascar 3, Zach was all giggles. But he got increasingly sober after the shipwreck that wasn't really a shipwreck. The second half of the film, or more like the latter three fourths, was long on forced plot and inter-chipmunk drama, short on slapstick. And then there were {insert dramatic pause} 'The Balls,' the arrangement of sports projectiles collected and painted with smiley faces by the island's 'crazy' lady (a sorry spin-off of 'Wilson' from The Castaway for you Tom Hanks fans). Though very much a side text, Zach became very concerned when (spoiler alert) it became clear that the balls might be left behind on the island as a volcano spews flames in the background. Zach and I must have exited and reentered the theater at least three times during the final 'action sequences' when the tension of potential monsters and anticipated abandonment became too great. By the end of the movie Zach was sobbing over what he was referring to as 'his lost balls.' (Yes, try explaining THAT to strangers in the lobby.)

The day after the movie viewing and Zach is still asking me to draw faces on the few pathetic pieces of orbital sports equipment we have laying around the house. In the meantime, I've been pondering, 'What was it about those balls that moved him so much?' Could he relate to the theme of being dismissed by others as unimportant? Is he unable to distinguish animate from inanimate? (What does that even mean in the context of cartoon chipmunks anyway?) Was the fact that the woman attributed animacy to the balls enough to engage his tender heart? No doubt many a person who knows of Zach's PDD diagnosis would want to consider his reaction an impairment of some variety. And I understand the deficit model of individual difference, perhaps more than ever. There are times I wish we could just watch a movie together without threat of 'unexpected behaviors' eliciting furtive glances, unspoken questions, and judgments from others. But there are increasingly times that I look at the predictable crowd of people around me and think how flat and colorless they all seem. With so much energy spent worrying about what they're supposed to be, they don't seem to have nearly enough time left over to consider who they are or who they want to be. It's in those moments, my quirky colorful son by my side, that I think maybe, just maybe, the two of us have got life by the balls after all.