I work at a TAB. If you live outside of Australia, you might not know what TAB means.  Essentially, it is a place where people can place bets on horse racing, football, and the like.  Because of the amount of customers we serve at the TAB I work at, a new carpet strip was laid infront of the counter.  It has a more rough texture than the rest of the carpet and it is grey and black stripes (the rest of the carpet is red). 

Taj and I were out and about in the car, getting some potatoes and carrots.  Because we were out, I decided to stop off at my work at put some money into my TAB account.  There werent’ alot of people there but there were still enough for Taj to become overstimulated.  I took him to a quiet part of the TAB so that I could fill out my account deopsit slip, giving Taj a pen and paper so that he could scribble.  Once finished, we walked over to the counter.  Normally, people just drop their loosing betting tickets on the floor as well as blank tickets. Because of this, there are normally tickets everywhere.  I was very proud of Taj – he put the paper he had been drawing on in the bin

Whilst I was waiting for my account slip to be processed, Taj become very fixated with the new carpet strip that has been laid in front of the counter.  So fixated that he started to literally flatten himself out on the carpet stripe so that as much of his body as possible was touching the carpet.  Then, when I asked him to ‘please, get up’ this was meet with Taj trying to attempt a headstand, make that, lots of attempted headstands.  It took me about five minutes before I could get Taj to even consider standing up and walking out the door.  Even then, I had to bribe him – promises of doing drawing when we get home convinved Taj that it was okay to leave. 

When I take Taj out, and he isn’t in the trolley, I have to have a harness on him.  Sometimes, and this is going to sound really horrible, I feel as if I am trying to teach a dog how to lead.  Taj pulls and pulls on the harness, wanting to get away.  Taj will even flop himself down, normally head first, to the point where I have the starp pulled tight (normally wrapped around my wrist) and it looks as if Taj is bungy-jumping or something.  Because Taj is under-sensitive, he absolutely loves this ‘hanging’ sensation.

I had the harness on Taj whilst all of this was going on – the headstands, the ‘bungy-jumping’ and the fixation with the stripey carpet. I’m not a very large person so I was getting jolted around whilst Taj was doing all of this.  Thankfully, I have a good sense of humour about it all and the regular punters who go to the TAB I work at know that my boys have different types of autism.

The most interesting thing I did notice was how one of our deaf punters was observing Taj.  He had a look of total amazement and amusement. I hardley ever see this punter smile (it must be hard being deaf) but I was so very, very happy to see a huge smile of enjoyment as he watched my ‘crazy’ child do his thing.  It is things like that which make living on the autism rollercoaster alot easier.

Thank you for reading,

Roxy