shot_full_of_arrows cr0wl today was my final ski lesson of the season, seeing that spring is marching in like a lion, melting snow with its warm breathy growls. actually i thought i was already done, but my tuesday @3:00 decided to give it a last go in the heavy slush. he's the 10 year-old autistic boy, who i could have gone to great lengths to write about all this year but didn't because it would take way too much of my time. however, i will end this year (au revoir, je ski fin) by painting a small picture of what's like to spend an hour with this socially inept enigma or ticking time bomb whatever happens that particular day. no, he didn't scream at me and call me an idiot in front of the whole resort like he did once before. no, he didn't ask the terrain park rat sitting next to him on the lift for a bite of his pizza like he did previously. no, he didn't smack a total stranger for not correctly sitting on the chairlift to balance it. no, he didn't call a five year-old girl a brat in front of her father causing him to turn around and glare at me and say, "i'm going to kick his dad's ass!" when i whispered to him, "sorry he's autistic." no, today, i decided to play with him like i have on occasion...to preface, i heard from another coach that he was with his mother at a japanese restaurant and ended up cursing out the waitress in fluent japanese (yeah, he taught himself japanese) for not doing her job right, which eventually got his mother and him kicked out. and so my game with him on our chairlift rides was to pretend i was a reporter and try to get the scoop on what really happened or was it just "celebrity gossip?" he denied doing it with a sly smile and told me he would shoot me with poisonous arrows that numbed my whole body if i didn't stop pestering him. next ride, i pretended i was a different reporter from another magazine and pressed him further, demanding the truth. "what did you say to the waitress? did you curse her in japanese?" same response, but i could tell it must have happened because he was starting to slip a little details here and there. finally, when i tried a fourth time, adding a goofy dramatic flourish and laughing more and more with his quasi-cooperation, he saw a slash of graffiti on the chairlift seat, a simple "fuck_you" in black sharpie. i saw him discover it just as i asked him for the real story. "fuck you!" he said. we both lost it. 090310 ... unhinged careful what you say to kids or let them say or see them do any of it could come back to haunt you i feel like boromir at the end of the fellowship of the ring. and i also feel like a huge nerd for drawing that allusion. 090310 ... birdmad well, you could have gone for the religious history nerd angle and said Saint Sebastian... :) (and hell knows as many times as i have watched the extended edition dvds of the Lord of the Rings movies, i would have arrived at Boromir before St. Sebastian, but no...) 090310 ... unhinged (i finally got all the extended editions on dvd at the second hand dvd store. i originally bought them on vhs, but i haven't had a tv or a vcr for years) 090310 what's it to you? who go blather from