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So I started my job working full time at a day program for adults with autism.
For the sake of not confusing you they will now be called clients, as, well, they are our clients.
It's never dull, sometimes not in the best of ways, but really, it's cool.
A day consists of the first half being scheduled, in which the clients get to choose from a list of activities that help develop, or at least hone skills that they have.
Then lunch.
Then either chill, do puzzles, do more of those activities, go on an outing, or just a walk to the park down the road.
These guys are quite fun to hang around with, and I'll kinda go over most of them.
Using initials to maintain confidentiality, since it is a part of my job not to mention them by name.
Note that most of them do also have a form of mental retardation.
This is also not to make fun of them, get that straight, it's just sometimes amusing, and pretty much always interesting.
So I'll just run down the line of clients to the best of my ability.
First up is TB.
This guy is very verbal, and quite intelligent.
He spends most of the day playing Putt Putt and Freddie the Fish on the computer.
(I nostalgia'd the first time I saw him do that)
The rest of the day he touches people.
Not inappropriately, but he knows he shouldn't do it, and he does it to get attention.
Ignoring it generally works the best, but if he is disturbing the others we have to intervene.
Next on the list is KB.
She is incredibly OCD about chairs being pushed in, and just things being tidy in general.
Get in her way when she's on a mission and you will get hit.
Otherwise she just kinda does her own thing.
We have an exercise bike that she rides pretty much all of the second half of the day.
Not very verbal, so we just kinda let her be, since she's pretty happy as she is.
Whose next... TC!
She is quite humorous, actually.
She is incredibly verbal, and very intelligent.
When I got there I was warned that she was very manipulative.
She cries often just to get stuff.
It's pretty amusing since she's relatively old.
Seems like everything out of her mouth is a complaint, but she's not bad to have around.
MG now.
Our unofficial DJ as he always is playing CDs in the radio we have.
Though it gets annoying since he puts the same track on, and rewinds it to the beginning of the song after half of the song.
But he's cool.
He plays with my iPod Touch.
Downloaded a few puzzle games just for him, and he's been liking it a lot.
Not very verbal, but he can say yes and no, as well as other phrases.
KH is up next.
He is a very tall, non-verbal, black gentleman.
He sniffs people.
And steals food.
But he's also quite fun to be around.
Once you realize he's harmless, it's really cool to interact with him.
On my interview day he came up to me to smell me.
Thing is, it looks like he's gonna kiss you, so I kinda backed off a bit.
It was a bit weird... But I'm over it now, and he's great.
BJ next.
He is extremely intelligent, and spends most of the day cleaning the place.
He gets paid for doing it too, so that's pretty cool.
We've played some NCAA Football 2005 together once for the original Xbox.
It was pretty cool.
IK next.
This guy is non verbal besides the moans and other odd noises he makes.
I really don't understand him at all, but he's not a bad guy.
He really likes to touch things, so we keep a bin of beads for him to run his hands through.
It's a reward and a way to calm him down.
Other than that, he's relatively mysterious to me.
SK up next.
This guy is hilarious.
He is very verbal, and loves everybody.
He and TC are boyfriend and girlfriend.
Not like they kiss or anything, but they like the thought of being with someone, which works for us.
Though that doesn't stop SK from saying he loves every staff member there including myself.
It is pretty much a daily occurrence that he asks if he can marry me along with every other staff member there.
It's quite amusing actually.
Though don't be fooled, he will punch the fuck out of you if he gets angry, so we try not to let him get excited, since it turns to anger quickly.
ML now.
He is very high functioning, and very Jewish.
He brings a Torah with him every day which I'm pretty sure he can recite in both English and Hebrew without looking at it.
He can speak 4 languages I believe, and read them all as well.
Extremely talkative, and he talks fast, which can make it hard to understand him.
Though he is fun to talk to when it's in moderation.
JM now, oh boy.
This guy is enormous.
About three times my size.
To make matters worse, he is relatively violent.
He is funny and cool when he is calm, but it doesn't take much to set him off, and he really dislikes doing a lot.
My most memorable moment is when he came into the room where some clients were eating lunch and went straight for the plate I was in front of to get a cookie.
Now he will yell what he wants, so this guy comes up to me.
(Three times my size, and my hight if not taller)
and hells cookie at the top of his lungs.
I was scared shitless, but tried to protect the cookies.
I failed.
He got only one though, so that wasn't too bad.
MM1 up now (We have a couple with those initials)
This guy is a beast at puzzles.
Also likes to be tickled, which is funny since he can only say a few words and phrases.
Three of those are, "Tickle!" "Drink your beeeeeeer" and "Fuck".
Yes, drink your beer.
Dunno where that comes from, but it's amusing.
He's quite funny, and pretty easy to watch over.
MM2 this time.
He keeps to himself usually.
Pretty low functioning, this fellow is.
He just kinda sits and rocks most of the day, though we talk to him, and he understands, he never talks back.
It's a shame though, wish I knew what he'd say.
AM next.
He is non-verbal.
Well, mostly.
He'll say things we don't really understand from time to time.
He has a thing about biting himself when he's agitated, but he's generally a pretty nice guy.
He spends most of the day rocking, whether he is sitting or standing.
We don't really argue with it, since it helps calm him down.
KM now.
This guy plays DVDs on his personal DVD player all fucking day.
Wouldn't be too bad, but it's generally the same DVD every day
(he switches it up every few days)
and he does a similar thing to MG, that is, he rewinds the DVD to the beginning before it is even half over.
This week he's been watching Thundercats all fucking day.
I swear I can recite the first few episodes he plays.
Other things he's watched in the past has been DBZ, Barbie Christmas, and an animated Batman movie.
He's verbal, but only kinda.
He mostly says what he is thinking, which is a good way to get in his head and find out what's up.
He's pretty cool though.
JO up next.
This guy is pretty funny.
He sings songs, particularly Michael Jackson songs.
Though when he's not singing he's usually in the bathroom for whatever reason.
He's quite intelligent, and as I said really likes singing as well as dancing.
We also taught him to say kowabunga dude.
Yup.
MR is up now.
He draws pictures most of the day.
Well, by pictures I mean multi-colored circles on a piece of paper in a row.
He's pretty intelligent.
I've seen him angry, but it doesn't happen often.
Not too much to say about him.
RR is a blast.
Not exactly verbal besides the laughing and kinda... yelling that he does.
He can say a lot in sign language though.
This past week I've been trying to teach him how to use a mouse of a computer.
It's not exactly working too well, but I think we're making progress.
He's incredibly friendly, and is great to have around every day.
JS up now.
This guy is interesting.
He headbutts walls and tables at random it seems.
It is hard to judge his mood, since he is non-verbal aside from the noises he makes that aren't words.
He does understand everything you tell him though, so he's not too hard to keep an eye on.
The craziest thing about him is that he spends the entire day standing up rocking back and forth.
How he can do that without being ridiculously tired is beyond me.
DS is very interesting.
She is deaf, autistic, and retarded.
But she is relatively intelligent.
Most of the day she will draw on the whiteboard.
Generally circles inside of circles, but it can get relatively complex with the patterns she draws.
She is also surprisingly good at puzzles.
One pretty amazing thing about her is that she puts legos and pen caps in the webbing of her fingers, and is still able to draw and puck up puzzle pieces.
She'll push and shove, but she's generally pretty nice, and pretty happy.
RT is quite funny.
He's extremely stubborn, but relatively intelligent.
He can't speak besides saying no and hi.
He walks really funny, like every step he takes looks like he's gonna fall, but he really rarely does.
He loves instruments, but also loves destroying things.
We have a drum he likes, and a guitar he loves to strum.
He also has a wheelchair.
A bit of background is that he really never reacts to his environment emotionally.
Usually he has the same look on his face.
But I took his wheelchair once when he was sitting in a regular chair and attempted to pop a wheelie.
I nearly fell backwards and this guy starts cracking up.
To which I began laughing to as well.
Glad I could make him laugh at my failure.
Finally is DW.
He plays a bowling game on the computer almost all day.
We make him give us his socks at the beginning of the day since he likes to flush them down the toilet.
Dunno why.
Other than that, he's quite intelligent, and understands everything you say, and will respond accordingly.
He's a pretty cool guy, actually.
Well, yeah, that's an overview of the people I work with every day.
Never a dull moment with this group, that's for sure.
But better than any other summer job I've had.
Well... yup.
That's what I've got.
Any questions I'll answer if you're interested in the subject of autism, or whatever.
Just know, these guys are all relatively low functioning, which is why they're in this program in the first place.
Again, not making fun of any of these people, they're just what makes my work days... interesting.
So yeah.
Peace!
For the sake of not confusing you they will now be called clients, as, well, they are our clients.
It's never dull, sometimes not in the best of ways, but really, it's cool.
A day consists of the first half being scheduled, in which the clients get to choose from a list of activities that help develop, or at least hone skills that they have.
Then lunch.
Then either chill, do puzzles, do more of those activities, go on an outing, or just a walk to the park down the road.
These guys are quite fun to hang around with, and I'll kinda go over most of them.
Using initials to maintain confidentiality, since it is a part of my job not to mention them by name.
Note that most of them do also have a form of mental retardation.
This is also not to make fun of them, get that straight, it's just sometimes amusing, and pretty much always interesting.
So I'll just run down the line of clients to the best of my ability.
First up is TB.
This guy is very verbal, and quite intelligent.
He spends most of the day playing Putt Putt and Freddie the Fish on the computer.
(I nostalgia'd the first time I saw him do that)
The rest of the day he touches people.
Not inappropriately, but he knows he shouldn't do it, and he does it to get attention.
Ignoring it generally works the best, but if he is disturbing the others we have to intervene.
Next on the list is KB.
She is incredibly OCD about chairs being pushed in, and just things being tidy in general.
Get in her way when she's on a mission and you will get hit.
Otherwise she just kinda does her own thing.
We have an exercise bike that she rides pretty much all of the second half of the day.
Not very verbal, so we just kinda let her be, since she's pretty happy as she is.
Whose next... TC!
She is quite humorous, actually.
She is incredibly verbal, and very intelligent.
When I got there I was warned that she was very manipulative.
She cries often just to get stuff.
It's pretty amusing since she's relatively old.
Seems like everything out of her mouth is a complaint, but she's not bad to have around.
MG now.
Our unofficial DJ as he always is playing CDs in the radio we have.
Though it gets annoying since he puts the same track on, and rewinds it to the beginning of the song after half of the song.
But he's cool.
He plays with my iPod Touch.
Downloaded a few puzzle games just for him, and he's been liking it a lot.
Not very verbal, but he can say yes and no, as well as other phrases.
KH is up next.
He is a very tall, non-verbal, black gentleman.
He sniffs people.
And steals food.
But he's also quite fun to be around.
Once you realize he's harmless, it's really cool to interact with him.
On my interview day he came up to me to smell me.
Thing is, it looks like he's gonna kiss you, so I kinda backed off a bit.
It was a bit weird... But I'm over it now, and he's great.
BJ next.
He is extremely intelligent, and spends most of the day cleaning the place.
He gets paid for doing it too, so that's pretty cool.
We've played some NCAA Football 2005 together once for the original Xbox.
It was pretty cool.
IK next.
This guy is non verbal besides the moans and other odd noises he makes.
I really don't understand him at all, but he's not a bad guy.
He really likes to touch things, so we keep a bin of beads for him to run his hands through.
It's a reward and a way to calm him down.
Other than that, he's relatively mysterious to me.
SK up next.
This guy is hilarious.
He is very verbal, and loves everybody.
He and TC are boyfriend and girlfriend.
Not like they kiss or anything, but they like the thought of being with someone, which works for us.
Though that doesn't stop SK from saying he loves every staff member there including myself.
It is pretty much a daily occurrence that he asks if he can marry me along with every other staff member there.
It's quite amusing actually.
Though don't be fooled, he will punch the fuck out of you if he gets angry, so we try not to let him get excited, since it turns to anger quickly.
ML now.
He is very high functioning, and very Jewish.
He brings a Torah with him every day which I'm pretty sure he can recite in both English and Hebrew without looking at it.
He can speak 4 languages I believe, and read them all as well.
Extremely talkative, and he talks fast, which can make it hard to understand him.
Though he is fun to talk to when it's in moderation.
JM now, oh boy.
This guy is enormous.
About three times my size.
To make matters worse, he is relatively violent.
He is funny and cool when he is calm, but it doesn't take much to set him off, and he really dislikes doing a lot.
My most memorable moment is when he came into the room where some clients were eating lunch and went straight for the plate I was in front of to get a cookie.
Now he will yell what he wants, so this guy comes up to me.
(Three times my size, and my hight if not taller)
and hells cookie at the top of his lungs.
I was scared shitless, but tried to protect the cookies.
I failed.
He got only one though, so that wasn't too bad.
MM1 up now (We have a couple with those initials)
This guy is a beast at puzzles.
Also likes to be tickled, which is funny since he can only say a few words and phrases.
Three of those are, "Tickle!" "Drink your beeeeeeer" and "Fuck".
Yes, drink your beer.
Dunno where that comes from, but it's amusing.
He's quite funny, and pretty easy to watch over.
MM2 this time.
He keeps to himself usually.
Pretty low functioning, this fellow is.
He just kinda sits and rocks most of the day, though we talk to him, and he understands, he never talks back.
It's a shame though, wish I knew what he'd say.
AM next.
He is non-verbal.
Well, mostly.
He'll say things we don't really understand from time to time.
He has a thing about biting himself when he's agitated, but he's generally a pretty nice guy.
He spends most of the day rocking, whether he is sitting or standing.
We don't really argue with it, since it helps calm him down.
KM now.
This guy plays DVDs on his personal DVD player all fucking day.
Wouldn't be too bad, but it's generally the same DVD every day
(he switches it up every few days)
and he does a similar thing to MG, that is, he rewinds the DVD to the beginning before it is even half over.
This week he's been watching Thundercats all fucking day.
I swear I can recite the first few episodes he plays.
Other things he's watched in the past has been DBZ, Barbie Christmas, and an animated Batman movie.
He's verbal, but only kinda.
He mostly says what he is thinking, which is a good way to get in his head and find out what's up.
He's pretty cool though.
JO up next.
This guy is pretty funny.
He sings songs, particularly Michael Jackson songs.
Though when he's not singing he's usually in the bathroom for whatever reason.
He's quite intelligent, and as I said really likes singing as well as dancing.
We also taught him to say kowabunga dude.
Yup.
MR is up now.
He draws pictures most of the day.
Well, by pictures I mean multi-colored circles on a piece of paper in a row.
He's pretty intelligent.
I've seen him angry, but it doesn't happen often.
Not too much to say about him.
RR is a blast.
Not exactly verbal besides the laughing and kinda... yelling that he does.
He can say a lot in sign language though.
This past week I've been trying to teach him how to use a mouse of a computer.
It's not exactly working too well, but I think we're making progress.
He's incredibly friendly, and is great to have around every day.
JS up now.
This guy is interesting.
He headbutts walls and tables at random it seems.
It is hard to judge his mood, since he is non-verbal aside from the noises he makes that aren't words.
He does understand everything you tell him though, so he's not too hard to keep an eye on.
The craziest thing about him is that he spends the entire day standing up rocking back and forth.
How he can do that without being ridiculously tired is beyond me.
DS is very interesting.
She is deaf, autistic, and retarded.
But she is relatively intelligent.
Most of the day she will draw on the whiteboard.
Generally circles inside of circles, but it can get relatively complex with the patterns she draws.
She is also surprisingly good at puzzles.
One pretty amazing thing about her is that she puts legos and pen caps in the webbing of her fingers, and is still able to draw and puck up puzzle pieces.
She'll push and shove, but she's generally pretty nice, and pretty happy.
RT is quite funny.
He's extremely stubborn, but relatively intelligent.
He can't speak besides saying no and hi.
He walks really funny, like every step he takes looks like he's gonna fall, but he really rarely does.
He loves instruments, but also loves destroying things.
We have a drum he likes, and a guitar he loves to strum.
He also has a wheelchair.
A bit of background is that he really never reacts to his environment emotionally.
Usually he has the same look on his face.
But I took his wheelchair once when he was sitting in a regular chair and attempted to pop a wheelie.
I nearly fell backwards and this guy starts cracking up.
To which I began laughing to as well.
Glad I could make him laugh at my failure.
Finally is DW.
He plays a bowling game on the computer almost all day.
We make him give us his socks at the beginning of the day since he likes to flush them down the toilet.
Dunno why.
Other than that, he's quite intelligent, and understands everything you say, and will respond accordingly.
He's a pretty cool guy, actually.
Well, yeah, that's an overview of the people I work with every day.
Never a dull moment with this group, that's for sure.
But better than any other summer job I've had.
Well... yup.
That's what I've got.
Any questions I'll answer if you're interested in the subject of autism, or whatever.
Just know, these guys are all relatively low functioning, which is why they're in this program in the first place.
Again, not making fun of any of these people, they're just what makes my work days... interesting.
So yeah.
Peace!
