Friday, July 29, 2005

Ah but there is always the love of the community

My girlfriend and I decided to meet at the model train store in RWC with our kids. Her son, 4 , and my kids 4 and 6. Both of our boys are ASD type kids with short attention spans and a dear love for trains. A fun way to spend some time...or so we thought.
Immediately after entering the older couple who appear to own it asked, "What do you need." More of an inquisition than customer service. Instantly they were on us "to control" our kids b/c they have "very expenisive things there". At one point The gentleman yelled at little M,"NO running". We were there under 3-5 min. My Mama friend said to him, " You do not need to yell at my son, he hears fine." He retorted, "Oh, so you don't want me to yell at your kids if you can't control them".And in all actuality while they were not being perfect, they were doing well in the store. They even appeared "typical". Which is partly the frustrating part. Next thing we know the man opens his store door and asks us to leave. Our families then stood in front of the store talking. They then came out to ask if we wanted to see a picture of a child who had gotten hurt when she fell into one of there glass cases. (I guess they keep it handy for entertainment sake).I delned the offer. They were very agitated with the fact that we stood infront of the store and came out 2 times to further argue. There discontent with our presence there of course made us want to set up camp for the night.
Of course on the way home I then got to experience the pleasure of a meltdown on the part of my son who wanted to see the trains. Yet again demonstrating for me that I my kid is out of control. Now they did not know our kids were "special". I think if they did they would have stood in front of the door and barred us from entering even initially. "Those type of children should probably stay home locked in their room so they don't break anything or upset anyone." I can just see that as their philosophy.

The thing that really pisses me off is that I tie it back to A and his deficits and it makes me feel sad and lonely. Just like any event where he falls apart in public, which ironically he did not do here. I am angry at them for making the other Mama-or just me-feel badly about our sons. Of course given my prior post and the fact that my husband is out of town-I am not in the best of spots.

How ironic is it that ASD individuals (children and adult) love trains. I will not return to this store ever. And as I told the owner we will let others know of their hospitality.

I just have this feeling that karma will pay-off and one day I'll go to work at the hospital and the patient will be an older man who owns a model train shop who is now unable to speak because of his stroke.

1 comment:

  1. Oh my dear, I am so sorry for you and all this sh*t you went through in such a short span of time.

    Where is this place? Let's see how they like Leelo tearing it apart. Heh.

    Also, let me know if you'd like to go to Satan's Pool any time soon. We are members through the end of August.

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