Jonathan
attends an adult day program on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Since it is a forty
minute drive and I’m the main source of transportation, those are the only days
I can devote to getting him there, for now. After I pick him up at 3 pm, we
usually make a night of it since we’re already out. I take him to the library
to load up on free DVDs, to the movies, or bowling, to the Dollar Store or Wal-Mart
to snoop around or anything else he might want to do. Often we go eat dinner
someplace.
You
must understand that going out with Jon requires clearing your schedule for the
entire day, until midnight, and psyching yourself up for truck loads of
patience. He is snail slow…no, make that snails-in-reverse slow. The Pony
Express moving mail across country in the beginning of our nation’s history went
faster in two weeks than Jon does in an hour. (The only time he is fast is when
he wanders off. In seconds, he can vanish into thin air-but that’s another
topic).
Yesterday
I retrieved Jon from the program at 3 pm, when it ends, and took him to a
scheduled doctor appointment (annual checkup) at 3:40. When we got back in the
car I asked him where he wanted to go. He ripped out a coupon from a booklet he found in
the car, for a local buffet, and handed it to me. The restaurant was just up
the road so we headed there.
It was 5 pm.
Jon
loves buffet! Who doesn’t? The vision of counter after counter of delicacies displayed for the taking makes most folks I know salivate with happiness.
For the price of two Starbucks' lattes or less you can eat yourself to death. For
Jon, part of the fun is about having choices. So many choices are made for him,
but here he is king of his universe! He shuffles slowly around the food tables
looking intently at each item and can waste forty five minutes filling up his
first round.
On
the door, I noticed the closing hour of 8 pm as we were entering the restaurant
and realized instantly this could be trouble. Three hours is not long enough
for Jon to do buffet. It takes him longer than that to go back for seconds. It
was too late to reverse the decision. Jon was already heading for the clean stack
of plates. Deal with him melting down now or possibly later? Hmmm? Quick
decision made-I opted for later.
I finished
eating in forty minutes, returning once to refill my plate. The entire time Jon
was still wandering up and down the aisles between the food counters trying to
decide what he wanted. He spent another fifteen minutes at the help yourself drink
counter and finally sauntered back to our booth with a plate in each hand piled
high in the middle and all the way to the edges with chow; then went back to
retrieve the drink he had poured.
It was 6:15.
I
decided it might be prudent to warn Jon ahead of time about the early closing
hour, although I had a feeling that wouldn’t matter. Every half hour or so I
mentioned it.
“You better eat faster Jon, they close early here,” or “You
better go back up and get more food now if you want it because they close at
eight.”
Every time I brought it up he scowled at me. Not a good sign.
At 7:50
pm, Jon was still up to his eyeballs in two full plates. He had gone back to refill one of his plates and hadn’t made it to the dessert counter yet. I walked across the
room to the young man who had been collecting plates and cleaning tables all evening,
and asked him for a to-go box.
“We don’t do to-go boxes here, “he replied.
“Yes,
I know. Most buffets don’t,” I shot him a look of desperation, “but there’s no
way you’re going to get that food away from him and he won’t leave without it.”
I pointed at Jon across the room.
The
young man thought for a few seconds, “Let me go ask the manager if it’s
ok, given the circumstance.”
He returned a few minutes later with an empty styrofoam
container and I thanked him profusely. When Jon spotted me heading back to the
booth with the container, he grabbed his plate and hid it on his lap under the
table. Oh boy, this isn’t going to go
well.
I
tried everything I knew to get him to put his food in that box. No way. He
wanted to stay there and eat it all and all attempts to get it away from him
was going to end with it upside down on the floor, if I wasn’t careful.
I saw the
kitchen employees clearing the food counters and washing them down. Then the lights
started going out until I heard one of the employees shout, “Hey, we still got
customers over there in the corner!”
It was 8:15.
I
won’t bore you with more details of removing Jon and his dinner from the
closed restaurant. Let me just say that there were six restaurant workers
including the manager and of course me pleading, begging, bribing and cajoling.
What did the trick was this mother finally getting annoyed enough to climb over
the back of the booth bench, plunking down next to Jon and shoving his one
hundred and forty pound body out of the seat with my derriere! It was 8:30 pm.
Years
ago one of Jon’s funny little sayings (that he picked up from a movie I think)
was, “Sometimes it’s good to have a big butt.”
Last night he wasn’t thinking it
was so good that Mom has a big one.
May
I politely ask this of you? If you ever come upon a parent or caregiver trying
to deal with an obstinate developmentally disabled person don’t be quick to
judge what you see, especially if you just happened upon the scene and weren’t
there to view the whole incident.
We love our kids and don’t abuse them, but
there are times when different measures are required to break through that wall
of stubbornness and resistance they can challenge us with. Most of us are just
trying to do what’s best for them while maintaining our own sanity. Sometimes that’s
a tough scale to balance.
A
new Jon rule to add to my list; next time we go to a buffet, check what time
they close BEFORE we get out of the car!
