The first time the police came to my door, I knew the reason why right away.
There I was back in November about a half-hour before the doorbell rang, standing on my back deck looking through the bare trees at the street block behind my house, watching for my boy as he ‘chugged’ down the sidewalk pretending to be a train, listening to him make ‘choo choo’ noises as he reached each driveway ‘railroad crossing.’ Oh, there he is, I thought, reassured by the echoing of ‘choo choo’ throughout the neighborhood.
As a mother, nothing makes my ears perk more than the sound of emergency response sirens while Diego is out riding his scooter, or the reassuring sounds of the train noises he makes, signaling to my nerves that everything is fine. But in that moment, out on the deck with my likely third cup of coffee, I heard something else that perked my ears up like a mama bear out in the wild with her cubs, reacting to a branch snapping beneath the weight of a hunter. I may have even heard myself growl.
“Shut up! Stop making that noise!” I heard. As the creature of logic that I am, I immediately deduced that it could only have been aimed at my son – the boy cheerfully chugging along in his world where he is a train and the sidewalk is his track – something so offensive to one person’s ears that they called the police to put an end to this criminal activity, this anarchistic chaos, this … little boy’s fun.
Hello, officer. Come on in.
There have been some complaints about the noise, he told me. Yeah, I figured that was why you were here. It’s unfortunate, he said, that some people can’t understand or just don’t care, but he wanted to come tell me that this has been happening so that I was aware of it.
Many of my readers know by now that my Diego, 13, is autistic, and man does he love his trains. He loves the dinging of a railroad crossing and the horn of a passing train (especially when the driver gives him a ‘shave and a haircut’ to acknowledge his waving).
This officer knows Diego, so he was of course sensitive to the situation. Nonetheless, that beating hunk of meat in my chest sank. I clenched my teeth and squeezed my toes until the officer left, then I turned teary-eyed to my partner standing close by and let myself be held for a spell while I grappled with the thought, will it always be like this, will he always face this … rejection?
For the next two hours it was, “No, D. You aren’t going to get arrested. You did nothing wrong.” I wondered if that person could have known how frightening for Diego it would be for the police to come knocking on our door. I wondered if they even cared. I was certain they didn’t.
It was time for another brainstorming of solutions so that everyone could be happy – Diego, me, and yes, the meany-pants who called the cops.
We parents of autistic kids are superb troubleshooters. We don’t simply think outside the box; we’ve thrown that box away years ago because that box is useless to us. So I handed Diego a harmonica to ‘toot’ at each and every railroad crossing rather than the usual screeching out “choo choo” that this un-neighborly neighbor found so offensive to her ears. Now, his tooting just sort of sounds like Bob Dylan mid-harmonica-solo scootering past the house. Problem solved. Even Diego loves the harmonica ‘horn’ more than his other method, so now I can let go of my passive-aggressive fantasies of addressing the so-called neighbor.
Now here I am in December, answering my phone. “Hello, this is Jean.” Hi, yes, this is Officer Botelho from the Fairhaven Police Department. Can I talk to you for a few minutes?
This call, I thought, was undoubtedly regarding my bicycle and lawnmower that were stolen from my garage a few weeks ago. “We’ve received some noise complaints about the honking going on.” Oh, for crying out loud, here we go again.…
As most parents of autistic kids know, for kiddos who are so sensitive to sound, they sure do make a lot of noise. As long as it’s their noise under their control, and not the sudden buzzing of a bee or the ominous hum of a halogen lightbulb.
This time, I fear, I must take responsibility for the amalgamation of the elements that formed this latest clusterduck. For it was I who taught Diego the air-horn-pulling-down motion of the arm that kids make at tractor-trailer trucks so they would sound their horn.
So there would be Diego, air horn motioning with his arm in the front yard at the passing traffic with all his might, his entire body moving up and down with each jerking pull, his tongue touching the side of his smile as he concentrated deeply on the fine and gross motor movements required for such a delicate gesture. And he would get beeps! Trucks, cruisers, cars of people he knows, cars of complete strangers delighted by the sight of this boy smiling and laughing with each beep granted. He would have a blast for about ten to fifteen minutes or sometimes sooner, depending on how long it took for me to ascertain that the threshold of annoyingness had been reached.
I would watch him from the front steps and sometimes from the front window of our Route 6 home. Such joy he would exude beep after beep. That sweet smile. The thumbs-up he’d flash me after a particularly loud honk by an ambulance.
So when I learned that there was someone in my neighborhood looking outside with scorn at my child doing what he loves to do the most, it grabbed hold of that beating mass in my chest and I took it personally.
I told the officer while choking back my emotion that my son is a sweet boy. He’s 13, and he has autism. He comes home every day from school and plays by himself because he doesn’t exactly have a whole bunch of friends calling him up and asking him to hang out. He belongs to a world that rarely recognizes him, that rushes by him. So when someone takes the time to beep, to acknowledge him, it makes him happy. It makes him feel connected to the world. So, unless he is doing anything illegal, I would not be taking any action to stop him from soliciting beeps from passing cars, I told him, on Route 6 – the busiest street in Fairhaven on which we living here have all chosen, knowing full well that there would be beeping, trucks jaking, loud motorcycles, and revving engines almost 24/7.
Fair enough, the officer told me. “I just wanted you to know what was going on.”
I thanked him, put the phone down, bit my lip and did what everybody else does these days – I went on an angry four-letter-word-laden rant on Facebook.
“To the neighbors who called the police on my autistic son,” I wrote (well, no need for profanity here). The post struck a chord within the community. People wanted to get involved, aghast at the neighbors’ actions. Before I knew it, there was a public event created by another citizen on Facebook and she called it “Stand With Diego” on Sunday, December 18. People started RSVP’ing to it. The outpouring of support from the community penetrated that hammering hunk of a heart in my chest. The hashtag #Honk4Diego was born that day, and so was the hope that, with a little support from the world around him, Diego just might make it through.
In response, I submitted a letter to the editor in my own community’s weekly paper. I addressed it to the anonymous neighbors who called the police. I acknowledged the community rallying around Diego in response to their Grinchy actions, and I thanked them for providing just the right amount of manure for this garden of love and humanity to flourish. I forgave them for being mean-spirited and easily annoyed, and I wished them a “Merry beeping Christmas” and a “Happy honking Holidays.”
The turnout that Sunday was enormous. Children from school, other neighbors, people we had never even met – dozens showed up on my front lawn with pinwheels and signs that said “Honk for Diego,” “Honks Trump hate,” and “I Stand With Diego.” People all over the front yard stood, making air-horn-pulling gestures with their arms. A local charitable biker gang rode past the house in solidarity with Diego, pausing long enough to throw Diego a T-shirt and rev their engines loudly to annoy the neighbors, one could only presume. Heck, the outpouring even touched the blackish heart of one of the neighbors who had called the police, and he subsequently came to my door to leave Diego a Christmas present and apologize. We hugged. The world was suddenly better.
Still, even after experiencing all the love, there lingers a residual emotion, one of a mother whose child is misunderstood at large by the world that, despite a little autism awareness, may still withhold compassion, refrain from making the effort to accept the child that is ‘different,’ who plays differently, who is carving out his autistic place in this non-autistic world.
As Autism Awareness Month this year comes to a close, I ask only that you take a second to look past the outward appearances, transcend the obvious responses to ‘different,’ and find it somewhere in your own beating mass of meat in your chest to connect with those who most need that connection. Say hello, smile, let go of your own discomforts for a second, and for goodness sake, honk your horn. Honk at every single child that makes that old air horn arm because, don’t we all just want the same things in life? To feel kindness, to be seen, to feel connected, and to be acknowledged and validated in this world we share with each other.
By Jean Perry