Ah.....life with a teenager....there were days when I would lock myself in the bathroom, sit on the edge of the tub and say "What was I thinking when I thought I could do this all by myself?" Oh we had our moments..when he turned 12 he had a mouth smart enough to graduate from Harvard. But he always apologized - he knew he done wrong. I ended up apologizing to him too - a lot - for loosing my temper, shouting at him.. he would say - "I know Mom, I still love you."
High school for him was scary to me. Not to him - he enterd high school with the same "I can do it" attitude that had enabled him to crawl, walk, run, and endear himself to all who met him. He went to the city high school with the kids he had been all through elementary and middle school with plus a lot of new kids. Some of those kids who had teased him in middle school...called him "dummy" and "retard"..now became protective of him, helping him get from one class to another, showing him how to work his locker in gym - I guess they matured too. The special education teachers were awesome. He loved them all and tried to hard to please them. He worked hard (for the most part - he did love to daydream), was never a discipline or behavior problem and soon ALL the kids at the high school knew Ryan.
Ryan's special gift was an amazing ability with numbers. For example, you could ask him "What day of the week did February 2, 1975 fall on" AND HE COULD TELL YOU - and he was right - EVERY TIME. He could give you the dates of "all the Tuesday in June of 1986", tell him your birthday once and he never forgot it. The kids at school loved to stop him in the hall and say "Hey Ryan - when's my birthday?" and he would tell them and what day it would be on this year or next year. He loved the attention and all the kids. Oh sure, there were some kids that would tease him, and sometimes he would cry, but for the most part, his high school days were wonderful.
The school had a program called "Community Based Training" (CBT) for the special education kids. Each day for a couple of hours the school would transport the kids to various businesses in our town and they would "work" at various jobs. This helped the teachers to know what kind of work these kids would be capable of doing after they graduated. Ryan worked at several difference business during this years at the the high school. He loved working in the cafeteria at our hospital. He was in charge of putting the frozen rolls and biscuits on the larg ebaking pans and then sliding them into racks ready to be baked. The hospital staff loved him because he was one of the few kids that could get the right number of rolls or biscuits in the right number of rows on the trays. He had to used NUMBERS and he loved it. He also worked at Wal-mart, straightening up shelves and putting out stock. This was a little harder for for him to stay focused on but he continue to try and do his best. His last CBT assignment in high school was working at McDonald's at Walmart. His job was too keep the tables and chairs wiped off and clean up around the drink machine, make coffee, and empty trash. This was his best job in that he stayed focused on it the entire time he was working. The staff at McDonald's loved him because he was so polite and friendly.
I let Ryan graduate in 2001 with the kids he had been all through school with. Since he could, by law, remain in school until he was 22, he then returned for "post graduate" work. This past May of 2004 was his last year in high school. We weren't sure just what the world held in store for Ryan.
About two weeks before school ended, his CBT teacher came to me with incredible news. McDonalds wanted to HIRE Ryan to work for them after he finished school!! We were ecstatic! He had a job!! A paying job!! He would be working 2 hours a day for however many days I could get him there. I tried for every day, but just couldn't do it because of my paralegal job. But now we have a schedule - 3 days a week (2 mornings and 1 evening) and it's working out great.
Ryan is a good kid - young man - and I am blessed each day that I have with him. He has friends he will never forget or who will forget him. I think the world will be kind to him, even after I'm gone. My goal is to provide him with a decent home to live in when I am gone and a small trust to supplement his SSI.
I'm sure that I will remember other incidents with my parents and Ryan and will add them "out of order" in this journal, but I think I've covered the highlights...for now.
Next entry: My brother and sister
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