I haven’t posted in a while. Rest assured, it’s not because the chaos took a vacation. No—inherent in chaos theory as it applies to my life is an inverse relationship between the intensity of the chaos and my ability to document it.

The plague has descended upon MoTopia. Two weeks ago, it was Mason’s respiratory infection that landed him on antibiotics and steroids.

Last week, again it was Mason’s turn, with a stomach virus that manifested itself in the southern hemisphere. It hit on a Monday night and lasted for the next 4 days.

Wednesday, he woke up with his left eye cemented shut.

Thursday, right eye.

Friday, I thought all was well and sent him to school.

Saturday, still seemed fine, so we went to a birthday party at the Home of the Big Gray Rat. I am convinced that the entire place is an experiment in juvenile germ breeding, ChuckE’s own twisted plot of rodent revenge.

Saturday evening—Ri has two friends over to spend the night.

Saturday night—Ethan complains of a sore throat, which we attribute to the fact that he played Raging Ape for 45 minutes. If you’re not familiar with this particular family attraction, here’s the 411: a fiberglass gorilla, and two metal rods that vibrate to simulate some sort of scientific shock torture experiment device. The object is to hold on to the poles for as long as possible, despite the fact that you can feel your dental work beginning to work itself loose.

It amazes me that the same 10 year old boy who can’t down 2tsps. of bubble-gum flavored Motrin without 45 minutes of screaming, wailing, and thrashing can manage to overcome his aversion to discomfort and actually endure this torture device on the expert level. Maybe I should start spitting tickets out of my mouth when I need him to take his medicine….

Sunday morning: I am still thinking all is well. Mason is a little quieter than usual, but he’s probably still exhausted from running around ChuckECheese for 4 hours, right? My friend comes over to pick up her girls from the sleepover. She’s a baby person. She loves Mason. She needs very little encouragement to pick Mason up and hold him, which he takes full advantage of. Mason expresses his heartfelt gratitude by sharing his highest expression of esteem, a lovely raspberry blown right into her face. I comment that I heard recently that cold germs are not spread by spitting, because they are not found in saliva.

Sunday afternoon: Mason is yawning and clingy, too tired to eat, so I take him to his room to put him down for a nap. As we sit cuddled up in the rocking chair, he begins to cough. Not a throaty, respiratory cough. No, it’s more of a deep, gagging kind of—

I jump out of the chair and run to the bathroom sink. I’m a little too late, and I realize it’s been quite a while since I’ve been covered in vomit. To tell the truth, I could have gone another 2 or 3 years.

Mason throws up a couple of times over the next hour. I call my friend to say, “guess what?” I figure I need to give her a heads up, because even though cold germs are not spread by saliva, I’m pretty sure that every other germ under the sun—including and probably especially the kind that make you throw up—are.

Mason and I snuggle in The Hubby’s recliner, the one I never liked and didn’t want to buy and he never sits in because he prefers the couch. But at this particular moment, it’s pretty comfy. We doze on and off over the next couple of hours.

Sunday evening— Ethan can’t swallow. His throat hurts. I shine a flashlight down his throat, because The Hubby says looking down throats with flashlights isn’t his department. I don’t see anything that makes me suspect strep. A little red, a little swollen, no Carlsbad-Caverns-worthy stalactites or anything. But he assures me that the absence of crusty white formations at the back of his throat is no indication of an absence of pain. He assures me of this not so much in words, but more in kind of a “OOOOwwwwwOOOOowwww….I hate my life… OOOOwwwwOOOOwwww” kind of way. 

At some point, as I’m making dinner for a bunch of people who are too sick to eat, I look over and realize that Mason-the-perpetual-motion-machine has been lying on the recliner completely motionless for a while now. Panicked, I rush across the room to make sure he’s conscious. When he sees me, the corner of his mouth barely pulls back into the faintest hint of what wants to be a smile. I pick him up, and we settle onto the couch with Riley, who feels shivery and weak, Ramie, who feels nauseous, and Ethan, who feels shivery and weak and nauseous and swears that he is going to rip his throat out with his bare fingernails.

He’s a trifle dramatic, that one….

I pour him a shot of Motrin and try my best to ignore him as he rather vociferously proclaims that he absolutely canNOT take the Motrin, that he HATES the Motrin, and that I just don’t understand the fact that the Motrin is so absolutely disgusting that if he tries to drink it, he will throw up.

I tell him to submit his flesh to his spirit and drink the medicine.

What do you know…he was right.

As I’m yelling, “Get outside—open the door and throw up outside!!!” I hear the cessation of footsteps that tells me he is frozen in place, and that no amount of yelling is going to unfreeze him. I keep yelling anyway, even as I hear the telltale “SPLAT” on the stained concrete floor. Meanwhile, the little lethargic bundle that is Mason is still snuggled up on my lap, so I can’t get up to look. Not to worry, though. I have Ramie. “Look!” she announces, “Ethan’s vomit made a heart!”

…to be continued. If, that is, I make it through the rest of the week….

I have no use for political correctness.

Nothing shuts down constructive dialogue faster than the fear of inadvertently saying something that will be deemed “politically incorrect” by the listener. Political correctness is the enemy of meaningful discourse.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t condone the use of racial epithets or shock-jock language. Not because I care about some notion of political correctness, but because I’d like to think I’m a nice person who cares about the feelings of others.

Johnny Knoxville doesn’t care much for political correctness, either. I know this because he says so in the clip I’m about to share with you (don’t scroll ahead—geez, I promise I’m not going to ramble on this time. Be patient, and we’ll get there when we get there).

See, I’m not a big fan of the word “retarded.” But I realize that most people who don’t have a child with Down syndrome in their life aren’t up on the latest vernacular (which is, by the way, some combination of either of the words “cognitive” or “intellectual”, paired with either of the words “challenge” or “disability”).

If a well-meaning individual strikes up a conversation with me about the fact that their little neighbor was retarded, and she was just the sweetest thing, I’m not going to get offended. If someone asks me what the most challenging thing about raising a retarded child is, I will remain unflapped. I’ll tell you why: because we live in a country where people with Down syndrome have only recently—in the past few decades—been afforded the opportunity to live their lives outside of an institution, and in which over 90% of parents who find out pre-natally that their child will be born with Down syndrome choose to abort. The most dangerous thing we as parents can do is to discourage people from talking about Down syndrome. And the fastest way to discourage them is to make them memorize the verbage that comes to us so easily.

I had to have this conversation with Ethan when Mason was just a baby. The neighbor’s kid said to him, “Your brother’s retarded.” Being only 6 years old, E didn’t possess the verbal skills necessary to engage this child in a meaningful dialogue. What he did possess was a water hose.  But it gave me a great opportunity to engage the kid’s mother in meaningful dialogue, seeing as how when he went home soaking wet, he left out the part about why Ethan sprayed him down.

So if you want to talk to me about Down syndrome, don’t ever worry that you’re going to use the wrong words. I don’t care—it’s way more important to me that the conversation takes place.

However, I feel much differently about the use of the “R” word as a slur.  Let me elucidate….

When you say, “That’s so retarded!”  I hear, “That’s so Mason.”   Likewise, when you say “What a retard,” I hear, “What a Mason.” 

Do you get it?

See, I know that the overwhelming majority of people don’t mean to be hurtful when they use the “R” word. Well, I’m pretty sure they mean to be hurtful to whomever it is they’re talking about, but they don’t intend to slam the entire intellectually disabled community. I get that. I totally do.

But now that you know how it makes me feel for you to basically say “That’s the kind of stupid thing a person with Down syndrome would do,” now that you know that it hurts me—not offends me, but cuts me to my core—for you to equate my son’s genetic condition with stupidity, let me ask you something: do you care?

I promised you some Johnny Knoxville, and I am a woman of my word, so here it is. And by the way, anybody ever calls my son a “retard,” and for the next few days they’re going to be answering the question, “How the hell’d you get a bootprint on your forehead?”

Watch the clip HERE (as in, actually click on these words, because I am not blog-savvy enough to figure out how to actually link the clip with the little thumbnail pic down there. Nothin’ but a glorified typist, that’s what I am…).