open letters

To the driver behind me,
I know your natural instinct might be to assume the slow driver in front of you is either A. old, B. drunk, C. texting or D. all of the above. In reality, I am a sober, relatively youthful, cellphone-on-the-floor driver with an autistic daughter who happens to be freaking the hell out at the moment. I am slowing down so I can try to pull over before my daughter vomits. Most likely, I won't make it, and will rush to get most of puke off before it soaks into the car seat and floor; also likely is a swift kick to my face in the process.

Please lay off your horn, and try to keep your middle finger unextended. Give a fellow driver the benefit of the doubt instead of making her say even more curse words even louder than she would anyway. Patience is contagious, dear driver.

kindly, Aimee


To the woman behind me at Target,

Yes, I do know that a three year old is too old for a child to have a baba, and I'm thoroughly impressed that your junior went right from "the boob to a sippy cup". However, I'm kind of busy right now teaching my daughter to use words, communicate with others, not run into the street, stop digging grooves into her face with her fingernails and to only eat four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a day instead of 6. If the baba helps me do some grocery shopping for a half hour, I'm ridiculously cool with that.

Unless that was an offer to shop for me?

Kisses,
Aimee

Dear idiot staring at me at the Y,

Yes, dude, this is what a tantruming child looks like. This is, sometimes, what autism looks like. Put your freaking eyes back in your head and go ogle some lady on the stairmaster.

-A


and finally,

Dear other patrons at Starbucks,

Yes, I know it LOOKS like I'm spoiling my child, thus meriting your THREE eye rolls at me from your table. However, sometimes with autistic children things need to be a certain way, in a certain order. While I'm working on lessening the need for this, I'm pretty sure Starbucks isn't the place to do. Therefore, when my daughter's straw falls into her vanilla milk, and she throws herself on the ground sobbing, it's just the right move for me to simply buy her a new one, with straw intact.

You should be thanking me- do you have any idea what her tantrum would've done to your morning latte (see vomit and kicking, above letter)?

Caffeinatedly yours,
Aimee