The secret's out

TH came to me last night and asked, "Is my mouth bleeding?"

Indeed, it was. All over everything. Dubya, it seems, in a moment of late-evening exuberance, had executed a gymnastic maneuver on the lower bunk of their bed, landing with his butt right about TH's chin. TH happened to be holding his DS about 10 inches above said chin. DS slammed straight into mouth and literally sliced off a crescent-shaped piece of TH's gum over his right incisor. Sorry. I know that was gross to read.

Most kids would probably have screamed, either from pain or anger or surprise or all three. TH? Got up, came downstairs, and asked me that question, calmly, even as blood pretty much poured from his mouth. "Did that hurt?" I asked. "No," he said. "Does it hurt now?" I persisted. "No," he said. "I didn't feel anything." But the blood kept coming.

A sterilized pair of scissors, some ice in a clean rag, and a bit of rinsing later (I threw away the gum slice), we sat in the home office and chatted, at his request. It's the fourth night in a row of such requests. I posted recently that when TH does this, among other signs, there's something going on. Something that will emerge with time, usually during one of these chats.

Some of it emerged a couple of nights ago, secrets so secret that I won't be revealing them here. But last night's information was more of a universally common experience for some children, especially some on the spectrum, so I'm sharing them. I also do so with the firm and unshakeable knowledge that not one of the things quoted below (except possibly the first one, but we all are) is true.

Children at school--not all, certainly, but a damned good-sized cooperative of them--say the following things to TH, usually in those unstructured, adult-distant situations of school, like recess, at the water fountain, in the after-school car line:

"You're weird."

"I hate you."

"You stink."

"You're disgusting."

"You're gross."

"You're ugly."

After informing me about this, with a completely flat affect, bloodied rag to his lip, TH went on to say that he figures that when it comes to popularity, his BFF is somewhere near the top of the list, while he, TH, is somewhere near the bottom. I think he got this idea of a ranking system from Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

"Does that make you feel bad when they say things like that to you?" I asked him.

"No." Flat affect. The only thing I can detect that lets me know that answer is more equivocal than it sounds is that his eyes move around a bit more.

"It doesn't bother you? What do you feel when they do that?"

"Nothing."

There were no springing tears when he said that, no watery eyes, no readily apparent efforts to suppress emotion. But I know my son. I saw those eyes get on the move with each denial. And I know what the last week has been like as he tried to regulate and process and effervesce away all of the feelings that these experiences unlock for him. And even though he claims to have felt nothing, just as he did about his mouth wound, I know that inside, his psyche is bleeding all over the place. Whose wouldn't be?