Is For Life: Chapter Three: Traffic Lights

Chapter Three
The school bus pulled up outside the house and, as always, Sammy sat in the third seat from the front and stared out of the window.

He showed no recognition of his house and made no move to exit the bus. Sandra, the driver’s help, opened the side door of the minibus and climbed in. A moment later, she reversed onto the pavement holding Sammy’s hand and guiding him through the door. Sometimes, Sammy allowed people to touch him, sometimes not. It was as unpredictable as the British weather and didn’t seem to bear any relevance to his current mood. Sometimes, on a bad day, when you might expect him to be at his most unreachable, he would allow this small contact and, likewise, on a very good day, he might not.

He was deeply autistic and there was no way of telling what he would tolerate on any given day. Shelly noticed immediately that he was withdrawn, that always signified a bad day.

Walking to the garden gate to meet him, she pulled hard on her maternal strength. Today of all days she really needed a good one. Sammy refused to make eye contact with her and stared at his shoes as she took his hand from Sandra. Sammy gave no sign that he was aware of his change of protector.

‘Thanks Sandra, how’s he been?’

‘Oh, no problems at school, they said he had a good day, but we had an incident on the way home.’

‘New route?’ asked Shelly.

‘No, the traffic light sequence was wrong. They’d been working on them over the weekend. Anyway, the first one was green, which was fine, but when we came to the second set they should have been green but, what with being messed about with, they were on red, which of course knocked all the rest completely out of kilter. He’s not a happy bunny. He’s been counting seconds for the last ten minutes and he’s hit out a couple of times, so watch your face. Oh, and he tried to bite Gracie, so while you’re watching your face, you might want to keep an eye on his teeth.

Shelly laughed knowingly. ‘Traffic light sequencing, that’s a new one. Oh boy, we’ll suffer for that when he decides to re-play it. Batten down the hatches.’ Both women laughed again. ‘Come on, you, let’s get you inside,’ Shelly said, giving Sammy’s hand a squeeze.

‘Red,’ Sammy said, lifting his head and rolling his eyes from one corner of their sockets to the other. The eye rolling movement was the first thing that set him apart. When he was doing a decent job of normal, it was only when he made the exaggerated eye movement that strangers would get their first inkling that something wasn’t quite right with him. ‘Red,’ he said again. Here we go, thought Shelly, sooner than expected but we might as well get it over with. ‘Green, green, green, green, red, amber, green, green.’ He said in an expressionless voice, and then, to demonstrate the depth of the emotion behind the flat words, he punched Shelly hard on the arm.

‘No, Sammy. No.’

‘Should have been green.’
‘I know, honey, I know it should.’

‘Samuel May must write to the highway authorities. This can not be allowed to happen in this country in Europe called Great Britain. Samuel May knows it is not right. On those eight sets of lights it is always green, green, green, green, red, amber, green, green. Samuel May must write and tell them that green, red, red, red, green, amber, red, red, is bad.’

His echolalia kicked in and he began reciting traffic legislation appertaining to the history of traffic lights. ‘Traffic lights, which may also be known as stop lights, traffic lamps, traffic signals, signal lights, robots, or semaphore, are signalling devices positioned at road intersections, pedestrian crossings and other locations to control competing flows of traffic. Traffic lights were first installed in 1868 in London and today are installed in most cities around the world. Traffic lights alternate the right of way of road users by displaying lights of a standard colour and using a universal colour code and a precise sequence to enable comprehension by those who are colour blind.’

And then, as quickly as he’d appeared, her erudite fifteen year-old was gone. The flat expression, which was his default setting when something had upset him, was back, the light had gone out. He dropped his head and counted seconds with an intensity that might lead people to think that he was working on a mathematical equation so great that it had stumped every genius in the land, but he was only counting seconds. It gave him comfort. She walked him up the path and into the house.

‘Hey Sammy. How you doing, fella? How was school?’ asked his father as Shelly led him into the living room. John rose from his seat and spread his arms as though to fold Sammy into an embrace. He made a hug motion with his arms while being very careful not to touch any part of him. Sammy stiffened his entire core and withdrew from the implied embrace without actually moving away at all. It had always been like this. John called it the cuddle version of an air kiss and said that it was the way forward for Tinsel Town. Sammy didn’t respond to John’s question about school and John lifted his eyes to meet Shelly’s. She shook her head.

John was torn deciding which mood was worse, on a good day when he asked this question, Sammy would spend ages taking him, minute by minute, through his day. When this didn’t happen he knew that something had upset his son. It didn’t bode well for introducing him to the dog.

Shelly made him a snack. She ensured that the milk in his glass came exactly to the half pint level and that the glass above the milk line was spotlessly clean. She laid out four biscuits keeping the Jaffa cakes and the pink wafer separated, only plain biscuits were allowed to meet. She waited until Sammy was at the downstairs computer desk before taking the milk and biscuits in to him. By this time he had hung up his coat and had taken his homework out of his satchel and placed his books, along with a pencil, pen and rubber on to his homework desk. The books were positioned squarely an inch from the edge of the desk and the pen and pencil were laid next to each other a quarter of an inch apart along the top of the books, with the rubber horizontal to the end of the writing implements. He had been to the upstairs bathroom, washed his hands, urinated, and had washed and thoroughly dried his hands a second time. You do not touch your penis with dirty hands. That is how infection spreads.

Shelly handed the snack to him so that he could position them correctly. It was easier that way.

Sammy couldn’t tolerate surprises. Surprises were by the nature of the beast, unpredictable, and predictability was what made Sammy’s sun rise in the east and set in the west. Anything that was contrary to order and routine was anything but a surprise; it was a disaster waiting to happen. With this in mind, John and Shelly cautiously broached the subject of the puppy.