Social Hand Grenade

Some of our very good friends gave my husband a nickname of sorts.  They always call him the "social hand grenade" because of his ill-timed comments that are always funny but never appropriate.  I am not sure if it's the bipolar, his quick wit, or just a lack of a verbal filter, but he always comes out with zingers that make you laugh, even when you know its oh so wrong.  Little did our friends (and me for that matter) know that the name actually applied to my son as well.

All kids say crazy things.  That's part of the reason for them being so cute.  To complicate our situation though, a child with Asperger's does not understand social cues, nor do they pick up on facial expressions. For my aspie, this increases the chances of saying inappropriate things at horrible times.  Add that to the fact that he quotes animated movies continually also does not help in the matter.  Because he knows he does not understand our social cues and facial expressions we think he is trying to learn them from watching movies. He LOVES watching movies.  He will bug us to watch the same movie over and over again, which of course we limit, but he still gets his way at least once a day.  Because he is so smart, once he watches a movie, he can act out, recite, and imitate nearly any scene from that movie.  It's truly amazing.  If he watches it a second time, we have noticed that he tries to reenact the facial expressions that they make to match them. Honestly, he is either going to be an award winning actor, or the best partner to have in a movie trivia competition.  Obviously, the characters he loves the most are the villains, because they are so over-the-top with their faces and verbal expressions.  Hopefully, you can see where I am going with this.  It never fails, if we are somewhere in public, at relatives, etc he will come up with a zinger from a movie that only my husband and I know because not everyone watches children's animation and we have to explain this same long story so no ones feelings are hurt.

I thought for entertainment purposes, a few examples were necessary to justify my social hand grenade labeling.  Here are my top 5 Social Hand Grenade Moments produced by both my husband and my aspie!

5.  My father-in-law sometimes takes my aspie to and from pre-school.  My son hates going to preschool and cries almost every morning that he has to go.  On one particular feisty morning, instead of crying, he walks by my father-in-law points and says with the craziest evil face he could produce, "I don't like that guy!"  -A quote from Despicable Me, when Dr Gru was talking about Vector.

4.  A guy was walking his dog down the road, when our two girls (Penny a Boxer and Lola a Lab) decided they wanted to bark and run after the man.  Of course they stopped at the end of our yard, but our neighbor had some not so nice things to say about the incident.  My husband, overhearing the man, walked over and said to the man, "Buddy, I ain't gonna lie and tell you I won every fight I've ever been in, but I can tell you this.  I never lost a fight to a man in a track suit."  The man picked up his small dog and jogged away.

3.  We had our family over for Christmas, even though we had been suffering through the flu.  We were so tired but really and truly loved having our family over.  As the night goes on, people start to leave and we were down to our last two guests.  The nicest and sweetest couple you could ever have as guests.  My aspie, wanting so badly to take a bath to play with his new tubbie toy he got from Santa, walked up to them and said, "We want you to leave.  This is redonkulous!"  -First part, purly my aspie, second part a quote from Shrek Forever After.  

2.  When my husband and I were first dating we went to the movies as many new couples do.  I cannot remember if Confessions of a Shopaholic was the exact movie preview or not, but it makes my point as to what type of film was being advertised.  After the preview was over, in a not so quiet voice, my now husband announces, "Wow, that looks like a two hour douche commercial."  I should have known then.

1.This one needs a lot of explaining so that no one gets upset.  First off, I am overweight and so cannot judge anyone else who has a weight problem.  Secondly, I am still not sure if my son really connected the two or if it just happened to be a horrible coincidence.  So let me set up the background information for this story.  In the movie, Madagascar: Escape from Africa, the girl hippo finds a guy hippo that really likes her because she is the biggest hippo in Africa.  In the background during their introduction scene there is a song that plays that talks about her being big, and plumpy, and round, and curvy.  Okay, so now let's seg-way to Walmart.  I have my two boys in the cart to get a few groceries when I stop in an isle to look at something.  I did notice a heavy set person in a cart across the isle from us and did not think anything of it.  Next thing I hear, my aspie is singing in the loudest voice possible, "I like them big.  I like them plumpy.  I like them round. I like them chunky."  I threw what I had in my hand in the cart and pushed them away so fast that my baby nearly knocked his head on the cart's handle in the process.  I know that this was not probably the best response to the situation, but it was a pure reaction process that took over.  My aspie was laughing loving the fast pace that the cart was going and with out missing a beat asked when he got to pick out his toy for being a good boy.   

On days that my social hand grenades explode, I reach for a margarita.