Am I the only one?

Here is probably where I admit to myself where my son's OCD (diagnosed by me) comes from.

Every day when I walk down the hall I walk by an admin’s office. When she is sitting at her computer with nothing up on the screen I get this strange urge to go into her office, scootch her away from her computer on her rolling chair and clean up the icons on her screen. Her entire screen is COVERED in icons. This makes me nuts and I don’t have to sit in front of it, just walk by it! How can she possibly work this way? Find anything?

(For the record I have one, the recycle bin, and I *never* put anything in it there. In fact, if I could get rid of it I would.)

Another...

I have a coworker and routinely I am in her office chatting while she has her Outlook open, as we all do. She has a really great organization system for her e-mails. Folders and subfolders. However, what drives me UP the wall is that many of the folders are bold typeface because they have unread items in them.

Why? Why would you file something, but not open it? Or at least go to the folder, right click and click on “mark all items read”.

I really would like to slide my hand over to her mouse as we chat and "here let me take care of those unread e-mails for you".

I am finishing up "Look Me in the Eye" right now which is a true story about one man's life with Aspergers. There have been suggestions that Leif is on the Aspergers spectrum. As I read the book I have marvelled not at seeing my son in the role, but at all the times I sat there and nodded my head or wondered to myself, "hmm, is this weird? This seems perfectly normal to me."

I was told one time, when I took a test in grad school - you know those tests where you volunteer for a fellow grad student in another department - that I definitely had Aspergers. Then I went back to my lab and looked it up on the internet and scoffed, I wasn't autistic. Though lately as I learn more about Aspergers... I look back to that test and nod my head.

Severe? Nope. On the spectrum? Most definitely.

That gene that skipped a generation...

You may wonder what kind of weird punishment I dole out. Or you may just think my kid is being a spaz...

You would be wrong.

He is doing something he loves.

Remember that gene? The one that skipped a generation?

The clean gene?

He is vacuuming my car.

And enjoying it.

My car hasn't been this clean in... well... I don't remember when. It has been a long, long time.

He is freakishly thorough too... look at him getting the little bit of stuff all the way in the back there... and he lifted the floor mats up, and vacuumed the dashboard. (Oops, I didn't really just admit my dashboard needed vacuuming did I?)

Professional detail job? Or violation of child labor laws?

You decide.

Insanity for the OCD afflicted

What does it say about my son that he cannot put his reward stickers in the boxes of his reward chart? Nope, stickers stuck all over the chart, none in the boxes. Because that would be too ordinary? Expected?

What does it say about me that it is driving me absolutely insane to have stickers all over the chart and none in my very neat, perfectly square, constructed boxes? Insane, positively, absolutely insane.

He does this on purpose, I know.

Maybe just a little obsessive

I had a rare glimpse into my son's daily grind the other day. I arrived 5 minutes early to chaperone the pumpkin patch field trip. The bus was then 20 minutes late. So I stood off to the side to observe the kids (really though, mostly my son).

My son's "work" he was doing was a tracing activity. He had various templates and colored pencils and squares of paper and was tracing them. It took him awhile to do one, but he was excited by this.

Very excited apparently.

Has got to be excited everyday about this.

Because his little folder where he puts his tracings after he finishes with them was THICK. The other kids had 4-5 in their work folder. Leif's was bulging. 30-40 in his case.

And note to self... really do encourage the picking up at home. When finished he put every single thing away. He CAN do this.

Oh and next the amazing thing... getting 19 children to all go potty, wash hands and get coats on in the 10 minutes before the bus came. I just stood and watched in amazement.