It’s what I use to get through every life-altering event that Taylor has gone through since the very beginning of her life. We called her “stick baby” because she was almost 29 inches long but only weighed in at a whopping 5lbs when she was 2 weeks old. Just picture a stick figure drawing & that’s what Taylor looked like.
When she was older and we could see that her skull was a little misshapen around her forehead, we called her “Frankenbaby”….with absolute love.
Because she has seizures & loves salads, we started ordering her a “seizure salad” (think Caesar).
When she turned 21 last week, I told some people that I was going to take Taylor to a bar and order her a Jack & Coke just so I could see the bartender/patron’s faces when she paid using money from her Blue’s Clues purse.
Now, you might be wondering where I’m going with all of this. Apparently, some people are offended by the above things. I’ve also met some parents of special needs kids that are so caught up in their child’s diagnosis that they forget there’s actually a child attached to whatever condition/syndrome it is.
I don’t begrudge anyone whatever it takes for them to cope. If you don’t get my humor, that’s okay. If you find it offensive fine too. Just don’t tell me or try to make me feel guilty about it. I could make myself cry every day if I just sat and thought about all of Taylor’s health issues.
I don’t want to do that for many reasons. The main one is that it doesn’t reflect who Taylor is. Taylor is happy. She loves life. She laughs a lot, hugs a lot, gets joy out of caffeine-free Diet Coke so why am I going to walk around with the “oh woe is me” face?
When I was talking to The Bossman about this post he said that police & first responders use humor to cope with all the horrors that they deal with. The Bossman used to be a cop so he would know. I know doctors that have that same kind of humor. I’ve shared many a dark humorous moment with some of Taylor’s doctors. If we heard even a tenth of the coping humor used by police, doctors, EMTs, and the like, I’m sure we would all be properly horrified. (I’d probably laugh with them because I’m bad like that.)
I’m sure this sounds like a rant and I don’t mean it to be. Well, maybe I do just a little bit. I just don’t understand why these mothers that email me are so offended about how I talk about my child and deal with the stress. If sitting around all day, constantly uptight and only defining your child by their syndrome is how you handle stress, well okay. I’m not going to harass you about it. I may shake my head at what you write and sigh, but that’s the extent. I’m not going to email you and tell you that you are wrong.
I would invite you to join me on the dark side and make fun of your situation. While some think I’m making fun of Taylor, I am not. Fortunately for me, I think she has an awesome sense of humor and if she understood what I was saying, she’d laugh right along with me.
For those mom & dads of the specialty kids, what coping mechanism do you use? I know I’m not alone out here on the dark side. *laughs*
