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Quinn is a very delightful six year old boy.  He has many qualities that make me love him so much, but there are other times Quinn is unreachable to friends and family.  Quinn is autistic.  His grandfather and I first began to suspect that something wasn’t quite right with Quinn when he was about two years old.  My daughter just felt that he was slow, but she agreed to have him tested.  The doctors tested him, but the results were inconclusive.  They wanted to retest him when he was four years old. 

   Quinn was doing most things that other kids his age were doing, but he was not talking.  He didn’t seem to understand that he could hurt himself when he was in a dangerous situation, like trying to run across the road or climbing onto the counter.  He would break free of my daughters hand in a parking lot and start running around.  They live in Arizona, and he wanted to jump off the mountain.  My daughter was ready to get a leash.  She never did, but he sure gave her some scares. 

   One time when he climbed onto the counter top, Quinn got into his mother’s spice rack.  He threw all of the spices onto the floor breaking each jar.  He wanted to see what the spices would look like all mixed together.  Some he picked up and threw out into the back yard, oblivious to the fact that he could have cut himself.  My daughter had been in the basement doing her laundry.  From that time on, whatever room she was in, Quinn was in.  She realized that she could not let him out of her sight, not even for a second.

   On a visit to Michigan just after Quinn turned four, we had all decided to take a trip to the beach.  Quinn was in the water with a life jacket on, but he had drifted out way over his head and I was concerned.  He was talking by now, and his favorite sentence was, “I don’t care”.  That was his response to everything that was said to him.  I swam out to where Quinn was and tried to explain to him in a way that he could understand that he need to come back closer to shore.  I wanted his feet to be able to touch the ground.  Of course he said, “I don’t care.”  I proceded to bring him back with me, and the words that came out of his mouth really took me by surprise.  He said, “You’ll pay for this old woman!”  I can laugh at that statement now, but at that time, I thought, “Wow, where did that come from?”