Moment of truth

(*Note: This was the back story to a post I submitted on SMITH Magazine's Six Word Memoirs.)

Imagine how alarmed I've felt the last 2 days hearing my autistic son say repeatedly, "He touched the butt." This is a child who is verbal yet rarely expresses himself clearly. He often speaks in riddles, forcing us to crack codes and hunt for clues to figure out what he is really saying. Anyway, I checked in with the teacher, and she said nothing's awry at school as far as she knows. They keep a close eye on him at my insistence and because he tends to be very random with his not-so-pleasant behaviors. 

I decided I was going to get more info out of him cleverly. He kept saying this over and over, and I asked him, "Oh, yea? Who touched the butt." No answer. I waited. Then I asked again, "Hey, did somebody touch the butt? Person's name is __?" He often fills in the blank. This time, no answer. This continued all evening. I kept nagging him with my incessant yet subtle interrogation. If anyone messed with my boy, I was already getting revved up for war! 

After a zillion times, I tried one last time before he went to bed. This time, I tried a different angle to the question. "So ... somebody touched the butt. I wonder who it was. Hmmmm. Was it Optimus Prime? Hey, Optimus, did you touch the butt?" He has a giant cardboard Optimus Prime hanging on the wall in his room. 

Then from behind me, I hear, "NO. Nemo touched the butt." 

Then the fluorescent mental light bulb came on, and I remembered that scene from Finding Nemo; butt being "boat" since they didn't know how to pronounce this human word correctly. It was a hilarious scene and one of my favorites from the movie. My son, since he was tiny, has a habit of blurting out random lines from shows and movies. Another thing he's done since he was much younger is to correct me. It's a homemade tactic I came up with when he was around 5-7 to make him talk once I realized that saying something wrong annoys him into correcting me. Anytime I wanted to force him to speak, I'd say something totally false, like "Hmm. Look. This shirt is red." (It was blue.) After any length of silence, he'd blurt out, "It's BLUE!" 

*Wicked grin* 

So, I'm glad a burden was lifted off my shoulders like dropping a backpack full of bricks. Whew! All is well in the world again.