| Alan: The Kid With the Typey Thing |
[Aug. 18th, 2008|10:19 pm] |
"Oh boy," says a long-forgotten coworker to me soon after I started at Borders, "here comes that weird kid again. He's harmless, but really annoying" she adds.
I look over and see an overweight guy of uncertain age and race walking towards us with an odd swaying motion that isn't quite a waddle. I've tried to guess at those factors since then, and I remain baffled. My best guess for race is some sort of Pacific Islander, or Hawaiian, or maybe Latin American-- straight black hair, brown skin and eyes. I'm pretty lousy at guessing that kind of thing anyways. His age is even harder to determine. He's close to my height, perhaps 5'3", and very heavily built, but his face is relatively childlike and hairless (his legs are pretty hairy, though). There's something a little odd about his face, like there is with Downs' kids (although he obviously doesn't have Downs'), something that makes it harder than usual for me to place his age. He couldn't possibly be younger than an overgrown 8, and probably not older than 18-- probably.
So, back to our first meeting. My coworker shows me what the kid wants, which is to see our name badges. He then pulls out a small device that looks like a calculator with letters rather than numbers-- that is, it's too small to be a PDA, and consists purely of a keyboard and small display screen, like a hand-held word processor. The kid dutifully types her name into this device, shows it to her to be sure he's gotten it right, then after she curtly nods her approval, he erases it and repeats the process with my name badge.
Ok, I think, she's right, weird but harmless. I also get on my mental high horse here and feel that she shouldn't have called a disabled kid "weird" or "annoying".
A few hours later, I admit to myself that I have to agree with her. He is annoying. The routine I just told you about repeats, without variation, over and over again, sometimes as little as 2 or 3 minutes apart. He's sort of politely intrusive-- comes over and waits to be shown the name badge and won't let himself be ignored (we've all tried). Mostly he doesn't invade personal space, but he'll point, make small inarticulate insistent noises, and follow me around closely until I conform to his routine-- and never mind if I'm helping a customer, up a ladder, or trying to lift a massive stack of books. None of these factors seem to penetrate his awareness.
He becomes something of a regular, usually coming in with a small group that I suspect is from a special school or assisted living place (there are lots of both in this area). He's often seen in the company of a petite woman who strikes me as mildly retarded-- she does everything with the sort of exaggerated care that suggests she's carefully following a script of instructions for every activity.
The staff react in different ways to him. Some, including myself at first, are noticeably creeped out. The kid gets a bit too close, pesters a bit too much. It's a little uncanny and some days I just don't feel up to dealing with normal interactions, let alone this. Most employees, and I become one of these, are sort of resigned to his presence-- we see him, flash the badge, give him a short nod or an "ok" when he types our name, and shoo him away again. A few people, particularly the managers, try to communicate with him from time to time, mostly trying to politely tell him when he's getting too much underfoot. ("Hey little buddy," I remember one supervisor pleading with him, "we're really busy here. Do you think you could go sit down and look at something for a while? I'll get you some nice magazines...")
To no avail. He always seemed completely oblivious that he was being talked to. When it got too bad, the manager would go find whoever was supervising the group visit and ask them to call him off, and we'd get a half hour or so of quiet before he started up again. I suspect they may have eventually asked that he not visit so often, because he started not being around as much.
Eventually, I became more fascinated than annoyed by this guy-- generally called "the weird kid" or "the deaf kid." I'm not sure why, but despite his muteness and the fact that he never responded to anything we said to him, I found myself increasingly convinced that he was not deaf. I don't know how I knew, but he just didn't quite act deaf. I took to calling him "the kid with the typey-thingy" instead of "the deaf kid." Thinking of his rocking gait, his obsession with repeating the same activity over and over, and the fact that he couldn't seem to tell when he was annoying people, I suspected that he might be autistic. (I've since changed my mind about that. He makes eye contact far too readily, among other things.)
I really wanted to make some kind of contact with him. After all, if his caretakers could communicate with him, it must be possible. I started switching up my reactions to him-- I'd say "good job" or "that's right" or "thank you" when he typed my name. He'd usually smile back at me then, but turn away again before I could say any more. In time, he didn't need to look at my name badge. I was intrigued by the fact that he could write but didn't seem to speak or listen to verbal communication. Could he really read? I wondered. Why did he type our names? Was it just a game, an act of mimicry to pass the time, or was he trying, in his limited way, to relate? If he understood words, why didn't he ever type something like "hi"? Why just our names, over and over?
My breakthrough came one day when he didn't run off immediately after showing me my name. I grabbed the opportunity, and as soon as I'd said "yes, that's my name," I added "What's your name?" (And I pointed to him and made a questioning face, just in case he actually was deaf or hard of hearing.) He hesitated briefly, then typed "Alan" and showed it to me. I was elated. To my knowledge, I was the first person there ever to get an answer from him about anything. "Nice to meet you, Alan," I told him.
Then I asked "Do you like to read?" because I had seen him with a magazine (and I was still very curious about his mental level). As a response, he typed "reading" and showed it to me.
"Yes, that's right," I said, and he nodded and turned and wandered off the way he usually does. The exchange left me more baffled than ever. He'd responded to my first question with an actual answer and to my second with a related word (showing that he wasn't just mimicking), but at the same time his response was far from coherent-- I'd asked him a yes or no, and he'd simply emphasized what I said. Still, it was pretty neat to have "talked" with him at all. And now I was pretty darn certain that he wasn't deaf after all.
I've seen him only rarely since then, and when he does come in, his caretakers watch him more closely so that he doesn't pester the staff too much. But I don't mind him, and I think he even understands when I ask him to wait a minute because I'm with a customer. Once, he came in with an older couple that I think were his parents-- same coloring-- and the woman was surprised that I greeted Alan by name. When she saw my badge, she seemed very happy to see me.
"Oh, so you're A*****!" she exclaimed, and told me that when Alan wanted to go shopping, he'd type "Borders" and sometimes also typed "M******" (a very sweet coworker) or "A******". I was oddly touched that he did so, although I had suspected I was one of the few people here who'd ever tried to be really friendly with him rather than just tolerant. I wish I'd asked his parents a few questions about him at the time, but I was a bit flustered and also not sure what was appropriate or not to say.
I've gotten one more response from him, too, although as I said he's neither been around as much nor been as "talkative" when he is. The last time he was here, trying to draw him out, I told him that his little device was really neat, and said "you do a good job with that!" In answer, he typed "good job" for me, and I smiled and said "that's right" and he wandered off before I could try to ask him any more questions. Next time I get the chance, though, I'm going to ask him how old he is!!
(sorry this entry took me forever to get around to. I hope it's as interesting as you all hoped for!) |
|
|
depressed
groggy
