Sunday, 10 June 2012

• Caution: Slippery When Wet

  
  
  

  I don’t think much about signs I see in shops, my subconscious seems to process them and send an alert through if it is something important I need to respond to Right Now.

  
  Recently I took Heidi to public toilets in a busy shopping centre, she was already overwhelmed and we were making a very brief visit to get her a new boardgame when the need to go to the toilet struck and off we dashed. The toilets were noisy, all that echoey tile and the dreaded hand dryer – although thankfully not the Dyson AirBlade hand driers which have the double autistic evil of being

  A) Super Dooper Extra Loud
  B) The word ‘Blade’ in the title thus causing my literal thinking children to expect that their hands are about to get sliced off.

  Thanks a bunch Dyson for making the Autism hell of public toilets (lets not even go into smell sensitivities) just that little harder.

  Where was I???

  Oh yes we were in the public toilets, Heidi had finished washing her hands and was flapping them about madly, partially stimming, partially just trying to get them dry. I was trying to shepherd her out of the toilet facilities without setting off a meltdown (it had been that kind of day)… when Heidi started to do the moondance and kept telling me ‘slip over mama’.

  I kept trying to get her out the door and she kept moondancing on the spot and finally pointed at a yellow cone tucked away in the corner of the public toilets… one I expect they pull out after the floor has been mopped.

  ‘Mama dat says to slip over.’

  And to my girl who thinks in pictures, that is indeed what the picture seems to be telling her, she wasn’t processing any of the words, just the picture which showed a person slipping over.

  Once I explained what the sign for was for Heidi informed me ‘dat silly, der should be a mop.’

  And on our merry autism way we went.

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