<h1>Holy PORK SWORDS!!</H1>

So my oldest, "Tha Jr."?....

The chess master extraordinaire?? (Oh, how I adore that word!)

He's got a crush on Juno.

Not Ellen Page.

Juno.

Pregnant, fluffy, Juno.

When it comes time to lay all the spawn down for the night, Snookms and I usually present them with option of picking something on t.v. to fall asleep to. They have to take turns each night, (unless it's the lurvely weekend, of course) otherwise they'd be up all fucking night if I let them ALL have a turn picking what they'd wanna watch. Unless it's something short, like Thomas the Tank Engine, or the Suite Life of Zack and Cootie, or Mythbusters.

But needless to say, Tha Jr.'s prime choice is Juno these days. He claims he doesn't have a crush on her, he just "likes" her. But that shit eating grin of his tells me otherwise.

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Tha Jr. claims that he would MOST DELIGHTFULLY love to engage in a battle of chess with her. I can't help but wonder if he would feel the same after watching Hard Candy? Hmph!

Which brings me to other exciting news.

So like, I don't know how many of you know that Tha Jr. is Autistic, put there it is all plain & simple like, in case ya didn't know.

But yeah. He struggles like a mutherfucker with the nuances of this realm. It's hard for him to learn the language o' the world, to express himself in a universe of social order that ironically flips us the finger of fleeting chaos.

Teaching him even the most "simplest" of concepts (which, really, AREN'T that simple, if you think long, deep and hard enough about it) while homeschooling him were a real bitch and a half.

I would find myself crying in the bathroom, curled up into a ball on the floor, next to someone's ill-aimed piss some mornings, trying to fathom how I could help this amazing kiddo make his way in the universe.

I knew he wasn't dumb. I knew he wasn't uncapable. But I also didn't know he was Autistic at the time either. Knowing what I know now, I look back in retrospect and see why he didn't care to gain understanding of why one needed to memorize the ABC's and the 1,2,3's of life. I can accept why this dude needed to see things in pictures.

What I can't understand is why it took me so long to accept this about him, when I knew in my own heart that I needed to see the world in much of the same way he did in order to gain a better insight of what the fuck this world was all about.

But alas, that shall be another story for yet another day.

When the diagnosis of Autism finally came for us, Tha Jr. was already in the 3rd grade of homeschooling. By then we had already accepted his "intense interests" of vacuums, fire alarms and tornadoes as the "norm" for him. But what that diagnosis did, for me anyway, is strip away all the fear, all the doubt, all the footsteps I took in the dark of whether or not Snookms and I were doing the right thing for this kiddo.

It was HARD. Very fucking HARD, at first, to try to explain to others that Tha Jr. loved vacuuming more than he loved playing with Hot Wheels. It was painstaking misery to watch him struggle up the social ladder with other kids, where my other 2 spawn soared effortlessly.

But I had seen so much of myself in Tha Jr.

I knew of his need for the strange and wonderful. For his need to obsess over that which struck fear into his heart. He was terrified of tornadoes, of fire alarms, even of vacuums at a very early age. What seemed like an irrational fear of all things fuzzy (he was also terrified of animals for a very long time, even birds) was the "norm" in the Turner abode.

And to many, we looked like something from the Addams Family just because we embraced this difference in our son with pride.

Jumble all this chaos into the ball that is "Life", and you get parents that revel in the fact that their son only learned how to play chess not 3 months ago, but despite that, can hand the principal of Tha Jr.s' school his ass on a platter of Forfeit.

Last Friday, the Jr. was in a 2 day chess tournament at school, and whooped everyone's ass unashamedly.

Until it came to his great and worthy opponent.

I knew most of the other kids Tha Jr. went up against. Even though I wasn't there for the event, I was told he went up against honor roll students, and other such chess masters, that have been playing since the day they could talk.

It was brought to my attention that he put ALL of their asses in checkmate. Several of them were put down by his infamous 4 move checkmate.

Even though he didn't take first place, he managed to beat the very feller that beat him in the tournament the weekend after. This is the same kiddo that has the only record of beating the principal.

And then Mike beat the principal's pants offa him the next day.

Although this kid has it rough in the world, the way most folks breeze by with ease? Well, y'know, he's got THIS going for him.

And so many other things.

But I revel in this for now.

Nevermind the fact that he spends his allowance on cleaning supplies. The latest Swiffer Mop Model gives him the same joy that a typical kid would derive from the latest in Mattel and Hasbro. He's just awesome like that. And when he gets paid in Starburst every Friday, for helping the janitor clean the cafeteria, we all know that wasn't what the real paycheck was for him.

Adrian Monk ain't got shit on Tha Jr.