"Why do I smell wine?" -#NaBloPoMo

"Why do I smell wine?" our younger son asked me at 3pm one random afternoon.

My heart in my throat, breathing suspended, I was frozen. Perhaps if I don't move, he will walk away. You know, like nothing happened. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.

"Mom?" I heard him probe.

Oh dear. There he was again. He wasn't behind me, was he?

"Do you smell it?" he asked.

Wondering how the heck he knew what wine smelled like, anyway, I slapped myself to my senses. I had to admit that I was caught, caught red-handed with a glass of wine. Never mind that it was in an every day plastic cup instead of fancy, yet telling, stemware.

"Beats me," I managed to say casually. "Maybe you're smelling my Mountain Dew," I said, all the while calling myself a liar and feeling every eye in Heaven casting down upon me. Great. Now I'm a drunk AND a liar.

Drat that wicked sensory system of his!

Feeling the equivalent of a fifty pound weight of guilt on my brain, I hid my cup behind the coffee pot and busied myself at the sink, mulling over this kid's sense of smell. It has always been insanely good. I should have known better than to try this.

My lie seemed to work, and I promised myself that I would not use that as reinforcement for future debauchery. This kid was worse than the Resident Assistant in the college dorm my freshman year!

When considering autism and the comorbid complexities that exist with sensory integration, most people tend to think of the negative characteristics--which are very real. However, there are some times in our household when we are able to remove ourselves from the weight of the moment, step back, shake our heads and marvel.

In our house, sensory integration dysfunction has given our younger son seemingly bionic senses of sound and smell.

Like the time I was trying to be nice to the kind aging man beside me in a waiting room who was talking and talking and talking and talking about---I don't know, the dawning of time? Eventually, I admit it, I pulled out my phone and did the unthinkable. I placed it on the far side of my lap to occupy my thoughts during the conversation.

I KNOW!! I'm a terrible, terrible person!!

I was an even worse person when our younger son, who was sitting across and down the next aisle popped his little head up and said, "Do I hear Angry Birds on your phone?"

Grrrr.

He's my own pocket moral barometer.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? If so, you might want to skip the urge to dip into that Halloween bucket which your child has forgotten about. You know, the one everyone thinks you've thrown away but we all know you haven't? As soon as you open the first treat, he's going to smell it. I don't care if he's upstairs, downstairs or in the back yard. You will be caught.

Been there. Done that.

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NaPoBloMo July Challenge. Cranking out the blog posts into the double digits now!