Godstoppedby

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Adam's Unfiltered Status

You never know what is going to come out of the mouths of kids. Even bigger ones. I recently wrote about a friend's UFSOTD...unfiltered status if the day. It's when she writes whatever she's thinking about without filtering in case someone else may not like her subject matter.
Adam rarely, actually never, filters what he says. He can't. His speech disability doesn't allow for that kind of planning. He most often can't even say what's on his mind that's unfiltered. That's the nature of expressive aphasia; you know what you want to say, but it gets stuck somewhere between your brain and your mouth. He often speaks very fast, hoping to get it out before he loses the train of thought to the wrong station. Not so in the middle of the night between Monday and Tuesday. "I have to thowing up", he kept telling me. I got the bucket just in case and sat in his room with him. He was pacing around with his head down. "I feel like trap.."(Adam can't pronounce the hard c or k sound at the beginning of a word, so it comes out as a strange blend of  t and something I never heard anywhere else ) as he shakes his head back and forth.
To tell the truth, as bad as I felt for him being sick, it was all I could do to keep from laughing. He was so serious and dismayed, and spoke his feelings on the matter quite elegantly. And he has never said that before. It was funny and cute and sad all at once. A few minutes later, vomit he did.
The phrase of the day on Tuesday became "I feel like trap".
Ever have one of those days? You know, when "I feel like crap" expresses it better than anything else, even though it isn't the most polite way of speaking. I'm sorry for Adam that his day went that way, but I'm so happy he was able to talk about it.
 Maybe we can all learn something from Adam. When you "feel like crap", tell someone. I bet there's somebody who knows exactly how you feel and will hold the bucket for you.
Have a healthy year, everyone. xoxoxo