[video]
I don’t think it. I quoth it.
(via glamorouswhimsy)
Oh. Dear. God. I have done that. I actually have. I need to stay far away from my kids’ TV from here on out.
I almost wrote about this for the True Crime Report [truecrimereport.com] my paying gig, but it’s really too personal, too peculiar to my family.
Growing up I was closest to my mom’s side of the family, the Lanes. I spent many summers with my cousins, Travis and Keith Lane, and their parents, my Uncle Phil and Aunt Magdalene.
Uncle Phil is my mom’s little brother — all 6’4” of him. With his wide shoulders and booming voice he could be a forbidding presence to little kids, and he was a stricter parent to my cousins than his sister — my mom — was to us, but I’ve always loved and respected Uncle Phil. He has shown himself in many ways to be a good and decent man — mostly in the way he has taken care of his sisters, my Aunts Lillie and Marjorie, after their husbands passed away and each one began to encounter major health issues.
Tonight I received an e-mail from my mom. I knew right away something was up, because while mom will talk for some time on the phone, she rarely writes e-mails any longer than a paragraph. Mom wrote, in part:
Phillip got robbed Wednesday night. Two men had guns and one kicked him in the chest and broke a rib. But he feels lucky that is all. They got $120 and his license. About 6 weeks ago someone broke in his house during the day and stole his safe with all important papers and a lot of money he was saving. He has really had it hard lately. The men Wednesday night broke in in the middle of the night and his daughter was there, she is 16. He is just so grateful nothing worse happened.
Sounds bad enough. But the litany of bad stuff — the burglary and then a freaking home invasion — made me wonder; who the hell is targeting my Uncle Phil? Has he moved to a really tough area and I didn’t even know it? Phil is in his 60s, but the last time I saw him he was still a strong, vital man, and he looked at least 10 years younger than he actually was at the time. I couldn’t help but think he must have been caught by surprise during the robbery.
Uncle Phil is right — at least nothing worse happened — especially if you consider that my young cousin was home at the time. Still, when crime hits that close in the family — it has before, but it’s been many years — I have tons of questions, probably more than the average bear, because of the kind of writing I do for a living.
Not that there’s anything I could do. Still, I feel I need to know what’s up. I’ll call my mom tomorrow and see what she has to say.
![The Fighting Gacys
The following is a heavily edited Google Chat transcript regarding the lovely fellow you see above. Names have been changed to protect the… yadayada.
Rollo: Dude, I need the jpg of the psycho clown. Can you send me that?
Random Lunatic: My crazy grinning psycho clown? I actually have two, and they’re equally awful.You want the one I’ve had for a while, now?
Rollo: I think so. It’s very unsettling.
Random Lunatic: You’re going to make me guess what proper use anyone in their right mind could have for that image, aren’t you? [Remember: I’m generally not in my right mind.]
Rollo: What would anyone in their right mind want with an image like that? There are lots of twisted possibilitites.
Random Lunatic: Yeah — there are. He’s the definition of “can’t sleep — clowns will eat me.”
Rollo: Stalking and general intimidation are at the top of my list.
Random Lunatic: AWESOME. Okay. I’ll send you a few images, you can pick what you like.
Rollo: Cool. Actually, it’s rather mundane. I’m participating in the annual office ritual of fantasy football. I want the image to be my team logo.
Random Lunatic: YES. What are you going to call them?
Rollo: I’m open to suggestions.
Random Lunatic: The Fighting Gacys.
Rollo: I love that, but I’m afraid it might be a bit extreme for the office. If they understood the reference, it might make them wonder about me!
Random Lunatic: The Demonic Dahmers? You mean it might make them actually glimpse into the true dark heart of you and tremble in fear and awe, don’t you?
Rollo: Yeah, come to think of it….that would be cool. I’m now laughing my ass off at the prospect of it (in a rather sinister way).
Random Lunatic: You could also go with the straightforward, but relatively mild “Evil Clowns” or some variation on the same. A bunch of big-ass bruisers who take to the field in floppy cleats, honking horns and squirting the cheerleaders from lapel button flowers.
Rollo: Oh god, that’s twisted! I’m literally in tears now. The fighting Gacys.
Random Lunatic: Some things are so wrong, they’re almost right.
Rollo: This would be one of those.](http://media.tumblr.com/XRqXsNVzGcyg00u5nZk4vMlw_500.jpg)
The Fighting Gacys
The following is a heavily edited Google Chat transcript regarding the lovely fellow you see above. Names have been changed to protect the… yadayada.
Rollo: Dude, I need the jpg of the psycho clown. Can you send me that?
Random Lunatic: My crazy grinning psycho clown? I actually have two, and they’re equally awful.You want the one I’ve had for a while, now?
Rollo: I think so. It’s very unsettling.
Random Lunatic: You’re going to make me guess what proper use anyone in their right mind could have for that image, aren’t you? [Remember: I’m generally not in my right mind.]
Rollo: What would anyone in their right mind want with an image like that? There are lots of twisted possibilitites.
Random Lunatic: Yeah — there are. He’s the definition of “can’t sleep — clowns will eat me.”
Rollo: Stalking and general intimidation are at the top of my list.
Random Lunatic: AWESOME. Okay. I’ll send you a few images, you can pick what you like.
Rollo: Cool. Actually, it’s rather mundane. I’m participating in the annual office ritual of fantasy football. I want the image to be my team logo.
Random Lunatic: YES. What are you going to call them?
Rollo: I’m open to suggestions.
Random Lunatic: The Fighting Gacys.
Rollo: I love that, but I’m afraid it might be a bit extreme for the office. If they understood the reference, it might make them wonder about me!
Random Lunatic: The Demonic Dahmers? You mean it might make them actually glimpse into the true dark heart of you and tremble in fear and awe, don’t you?
Rollo: Yeah, come to think of it….that would be cool. I’m now laughing my ass off at the prospect of it (in a rather sinister way).
Random Lunatic: You could also go with the straightforward, but relatively mild “Evil Clowns” or some variation on the same. A bunch of big-ass bruisers who take to the field in floppy cleats, honking horns and squirting the cheerleaders from lapel button flowers.
Rollo: Oh god, that’s twisted! I’m literally in tears now. The fighting Gacys.
Random Lunatic: Some things are so wrong, they’re almost right.
Rollo: This would be one of those.
Some people have probably noticed already that I snuck the link above in on the side there. It’s my new true crime blog. It’s different from my past crime blogs in that I’m basically doing this as a job, now. Go check it out.
ETA: Sprocket asked a good question in the comments — yes, I’m the only one posting to the True Crime Report. Also, all the posts are new — no re-posts from old blogs.
First person reportage here, because the autistic kindergarten student is my own child, and the following just took place about 2 hours ago.
My youngest son, Dylan, is in special needs kindergarten. School has been wonderful for Dylan. One feature of Dylan’s autism is a lack of verbal communication. He understands as many words as a normal kindergartener, and can read and write better than most — but he just won’t talk much, unless prompted. School has helped improve this, though, in a huge way. Still — Dylan isn’t the little dude who will just pipe up and say something. You need to know this up front.
So, I go to get Dylan from his bus about 2:35 today and a little dark-haired boy I’ve never seen before walks up to me. The bus driver, a substitute (Dylan’s usual driver is awesome, very competent and caring) says something like, ‘there ya go, Dylan Huff.’
I say, ‘No. That’s not my son.’ I’m as dead-serious as I can be. I look around the bus, and start to sweat.
The sub, a cheerful-looking man in his mid-50s, says something like, ‘aw, you’re kidding,’ as if I really am kidding.
‘No. I’m not joking. Where is my son?’
I need to reiterate at this point that we’re not talking about a regular old kindergarten kid. We’re talking about Dylan. He’s large for his age, blond and handsome. Dylan isn’t the kind of kid you can just look at and see that there’s any kind of issue, like autism. People assume he’s an everyday little boy until they interact with him. Because of his size, they also tend to assume he’s 6 or 7 and not his actual age — barely 5.
While Dylan talks more than he ever did before, we’re also talking about degrees — he still speaks less than most kids, and has something of a speech impediment, to boot. “Dylan Huff” sounds like “Doolan Hupp” when he says it. Dylan would not tell someone “My name is Dylan Huff and this isn’t my home.” He can’t.
I tell the driver that he needs to figure out where my son is.
He starts to sweat.
I get off the bus, and call transportation myself.
Soon, we figure out that Dylan got left at the black-haired boy’s stop. The driver circled the wrong name on the list of students, and not knowing the children on the route, figured he had Dylan Huff.
The boys get swapped again, and Dylan comes home, none the worse for wear.
I’m not doing all that well, though. I call the driver’s supervisor and blast away: “THIS CAN NOT… HAPPEN… AGAIN!”
Maggie’s bus comes and I walk the children home. Still sweating, heart still pounding a little. The head of North Fulton County, GA transportation calls and apologizes. A lot. I don’t know if the sub will keep his gig, or not, but I would be surprised if he did. According to the head of transpo, the sub had no excuse — he’d been driving for them for a decade.
The bad thing — well, there were a few bad things, but — the bad thing here is how it was exactly the sort of thing I feared would happen when Dylan started riding the bus last year. My mistrust of bureaucratic institutions (and you don’t get more bureaucratic than a county school system) combined with Dylan’s lack of communication skills have long conspired to put me in fear of him being in a situation where another kid — like his sister, Maggie — might just say, “Hey, this isn’t my stop,” or at least, “My name’s Dylan Huff.”
It was a low-level ‘worst fears’ scenario for me. Really, probably one of those for any parent of a special needs child — a child with Downs, or autism, or cerebral palsy, perhaps. The more I live with having a special needs kid, the more I realize how awesome my own parents were — one of my two older sisters is autistic. My folks were going through these things when society wasn’t nearly as well-equipped to handle kids who need help.
I’m left with a question from this charming little episode that I don’t know how to answer, though — how the hell did another parent — apparently, from what I was told by the transportation people, the dark-haired boy’s mom — just let some random kid whom she probably didn’t know get off the bus? What the hell is up with that?
I asked the sub bus driver this question, albeit through clenched teeth. I got some explanation that the lady thought the kid was the other boy’s brother, or something. What?
Dylan is fine, now. He’s happily watching Chowder on Cartoon Network, playing with his blocks.
Me, I need a drink.