What do you say when someone tells you their child has special needs?

It's a corollary to yesterday's post, one that should have been a clear no-brainer to write, but it took Ami's question in a comment yesterday to trigger it for me. Hello, social interaction deficits!

Ami asked, "What response do you want? What is the 'right' thing to say?"

And later, Royal Ranch (whom I was hoping to hear from), said something worth quoting to completion:

Ummm, or you could have people like me who really want to help and be friends and are just scared shitless to say the wrong thing. Yes we with NT children will NEVER understand. But, that doesn't mean we should be excluded. Maybe we could understand from our own experiences or just from being empathetic, even if we do say something stupid out of the gate, it might be worth not getting angry and trying to hear what the dumbass is REALLY trying to say in their own words, if you know what I mean.

Royal Ranch nails it here. Most people are probably ALL scared shitless during an interaction like this. A special needs parent who brings up their child's difference--even if it's defensive, a way to try to explain some behavior to a stranger--is in some way edgy about it. How will the interlocutor respond? Will they blow us off? Will they be understanding? Curious? Non-committal? Critical? Knowledgeable?

And I think of the possibilities above, "blown off" is the one that stings the most because of the risk we've just taken with the revelation. When someone says, "Oh, everyone has issues," or "He seems like a normal kid to me," or some variation of "Better discipline would take care of that," it's like a slap in the face of our self exposure. That's why, when you read the comments from yesterday's post, you'll find that no one gets particularly edgy about pity, but we all seem to detest the blow-off. No one wants to try to trust another with their rawest, most vulnerable information and be shrugged off.

From my perspective, when I make that revelation, I'm seeking a conversation about it. I think what I'd like as a response is healthy curiosity, sincere interest, a stab at empathy from my listener. Questions are great, even ones like, "Why do 'they' think he has autism?" or "How does that affect him?" Even, "I'm sorry," is fine, as long as I can figure out a pithy way to explain why "sorry" isn't really necessary. Still working on that one. Royal's comment includes a suggestion that we try to see what the person is really saying. I do try to do that, but let's just say that in my sons' cases, the AWOL status of the social cue interpretation gene came to them via their mother.

To use Royal's term, I got no problem with "dumbass." I have no problem with pity--I understand that response. I'd embrace questions, a sincere conversation about what the hell I'm talking about, an appearance of understanding that it is not just another little something like everyone else has. What drives me crazy--and apparently many other parents of children with differences--is the blow-off, the brush-off of our leap into the abyss, our exposure in a few single words--"My child has autism"--of everything that's deepest and most vulnerable in ourselves.

What do people do when they learn your child has special needs?

What response do you get from people when you mention your child's difference or try to explain it to them? I can categorize our responses into three distinct groups.

1. From total strangers--and my mentions of autism in this context are rare--the response is pity. Clearly pity, and with it a lack of understanding of what I'm even talking about. And then, of course, I find myself struggling to clarify why pity simply isn't necessary, to get across with pith what a great person my son is, what a total joy it is to have a wonderful person like him in my life. It's rare that I bring up autism to strangers, although if I were savvier, I could use it as a way to enhance awareness and downgrade the pity response.

2. From casual acquaintances, such as parents of other children and periodically from others closer to me: "I don't like labels." "He seems like a pretty normal kid to me." These responses set my teeth on edge. They speak to so many things: Diminishing what my son's struggles are. An accusation that we're magnifying his struggles, or, worse have sought and gotten the "dx du jour" of autism for a child who's merely quirky. An implication that if we just left him alone without labels, he'd be just fine.

Of course, I have to forgive these responses. Sometimes, they're just well meaning, an effort to say, "Well, even with that difference, he's just a kid like other kids." Sometimes, it's exactly the implied criticism I think it is. But I must forgive. They know not of what they speak. How could they?

Invariably, these responses come from parents of neurotypical children. The fact is, They just don't get it. They never will. Sorry, but unless you've spent hours wondering why your child's anxiety leads to nonlinear, bizarre suicidal ideation at age 3, you're not gonna get it. Unless you look at your nine-year-old child and marvel at how far he's come that he can say, "I'm going to go interact with that child over there," and wonder if it's the intensive therapies or your own efforts or his efforts or all of the above, you don't get it. Unless you've spent days fending off perseveration over strawberry plants because you unwittingly drove by a plant nursery, you're not gonna get it.

Unless you still, every day and all day, remind your child that making those faces and noises in certain situations isn't gonna fly, you're not gonna get it. Unless you've spent every car ride listening to a symphony of self-regulating, Bobby McFerrin sounds and echolalic bursts from the back seat, you're not gonna get it. Unless you've peeled your child off of every door frame associated with every new encounter involving new people just to get him in the room (or, if the meltdown's bad enough, out of it), you're not gonna get it.

And unless you've helplessly watched your child, for years, be unable to fend off even the most overt bullying and childish attacks on the playground because he either didn't detect them or has no idea what to do, you are not gonna get it. If your heart hasn't broken over watching the contrast between what your child doesn't get about human interaction and what other children do get, You. Are. Not. Gonna. Get. It.

Parents of neurotypical kids worry, I know. I just don't know what exactly they worry about. Their worries are not mine. Their triumphs and pleasures are not ours. I do not get them. They probably wouldn't understand the sheer breakthrough it would be for us one day to go to a playground and have one of our sons play with a strange child without seeing that child back away slowly, confused or bemused or downright hostile.

They probably don't lie awake at night, wondering, hoping, considering whether or not there will be a person out there, the Just Right Person, who some day will appreciate their child's quirks and oddities and inability to remember to zip his pants or put his shirt on with the tag inside right along with his incredible sense of humor and beautiful mind. They likely don't stare into a void sometimes in which their child is lonely, ostracized, suicidal, and devastated as an adult, even as he sometimes was as a child thanks to the verbal--and sometimes physical--brutality of people who see him as an oversized, grimacing freak rather than as the complex, funny, brilliant, unpredictable, entertaining fellow he is. They may not submit themselves helplessly on a daily basis to the side of grace and positivity and hope in humanity and progress simply to keep functioning and moving forward and looking to the future.

So, because they do not get it, I must forgive them. I must forgive the skepticism, the inherent criticism of my parenting or my choices or our use of a "label." They're not gonna get it, and right along with that, they're missing out on so much of the happiness we have in our lives thanks to our complex, fascinating, joyful children. As with everything else, there are tradeoffs here.

3. And that takes me to response category 3, the responses I get from other parents of special needs children and from professionals who work with them. It's always been, "You're a member of our club. We get it."

I've had parents of special needs kids pick up right away on our son's differences. We laugh over the funnier commonalities of behaviors our children share. We commiserate over the anxieties these differences can bring to us and our children, ironically often not born of our different children themselves but of how others receive and perceive them.

I cannot recall a single instance of a professional therapist or a special needs parent who queried our son's autism or questioned whether or not it was real or shrugged off "label." Why? Because they get it. They know how important that label can be as a key to the special needs toolbox. They know what it means for people to stare when your child flaps or says something odd and without volume or tone modulation. They know what it means for others to blow off your child as a brat or needing a spanking or as a willful bully or just requiring a firmer hand (things don't get firmer than they are around here, I can assure you).

And for them, rather than having to be forgiving, I am simply thankful. You all know who you are. You're the ones who, like us...just get it.

In the name of Science

I was sitting across from a friend today at a picnic table when she received an email on her smart phone. A local parent who disseminates all manner of autism-related information and misinformation had circulated an email with a SafeMinds headline asserting that "scientific evidence" had emerged linking autism, vaccines, and mercury. Suppressing the impulse to hurl all over the beach towels at the prospect of yet another mole to whack (or, more unlikely, something valid to grapple with), I asked what the gist of the "evidence" was. Then, in a sudden burst of inspiration, I asked if it involved macaques.

Oh, yes. Those poor monkeys, their ever-changing provenance and authorship and hypotheses and numbers and findings, making the rounds like some terrible virus, infecting even my pleasant time at a Colorado water park with my children, my friend, and her children. Gah.

If you don't know about the macaque story, it began in 2008. I blogged it myself here, and Gorski hammered nails into it here. I took it apart in my post, noting that this was a study looking for a hypothesis. Looks like I wasn't alone in that conclusion, as the original 2008 version appears to have been withdrawn, deconstructed, and reassembled into a 2010 Frankenstein job that is being paraded around as the real "science" all the antivax folk have been seeking.

I wonder if the publishing journal, based out of Poland, knows this history.

Others have blogged it. Regardless, the deconstructed, reconstructed monkey study still seems to be outcomes in search of a rationale, a hypothesis, a study design, and a decent-sized control group, and it's this last that is most disturbing--well, from a scientific standpoint, anyway.

Of course, it was The Monkey Study that was the cited "science" in that email about "science linking vaccines, mercury, and autism." I don't know how that can be, as the study had a control group of THREE monkeys. Based on these control numbers, I could use my own children as a control group and refer to it as science. Based on the level of actual science present in this study, I could also simply write a paper about my own children as counterweight to its findings, as my offspring did not receive the 1994-1999 vaccine schedule or a single vaccine with thimerosal, yet...here we all are, autism and everything.

In spite of what is almost a total absence of study controls in real numbers and in principle, these authors--a changing cast, I might add--performed a number of complex statistical analyses with findings that should be disallowed from any perspective because of an utter lack of power. It's inexcusable to report any findings from these kinds of analyses using a control with n = 3. They claim that their multiple measures, etc., validate their findings in spite of the fact that they have only THREE controls: "While, as a pilot study, the size (sic) of the study groups limits the strength of the conclusions that can be drawn, the use of statistical modeling and repeated measures contributed to the study’s power and increased the accuracy of the estimates." No. Take a look at figure 3 of the paper. Take a look at the error bars. Note the error bars for the "unexposed" group and consider that these represent error for THREE individual data points. One. Two. Three. That's all. Three monkeys, and their names are "Hear No Science," "Speak No Science," and "See No Science."

It's egregious that this paper, with all of its noise (it is very noisy), Sturm, and Drang, made it into any journal. Nothing has changed in two years. It's still indefensible to rely on this study as "scientific proof" of anything more than evidence of the continued desperation of a small, loud group of proselytizers for whom belief is more important than science. SafeMinds actually summarizes the study as finding "increased brain growth" and links that to putative correlations between large brains and autism. Three monkeys. One. Two. Three. That they would juxtapose this flimsy paper against the weight of a mountain of solid scientific findings from several branches of research and consider it a sort of scientific grail for their "side" speaks powerfully to their bias and reliance on belief.

Their belief, by the way, has been pinned to the MMR for, oh, a decade or more now? Except that if you'll note Table I in this study, the MMR is the one vaccine the authors list as containing no mercury at all. I asked it in 2008, and I'll ask it again: Which is it people? Is it MMR? Is it mercury? Oh, right. It's neither, hence the obvious confusion here and a study still in search of a hypothesis. The authors slip in a rationale for MMR-as-autism-culprit in their MRI methods section: "These timeframes for neuroimaging were chosen to determine whether the MMR may have contributed to any observed neurological features." No rationale. No background. But, must feed the faithful.

I note for the sake of completeness that in spite of the alleged induction of some sort of monkey-autism-via-vaccines, these monkeys appeared to survive on a diet containing casein--40% casein, as a matter of fact--and biscuits containing wheat gluten. Just wondering why the autistic enterocolitis didn't afflict these poor macaques in spite of that MMR vax. Poor macaques that, by the way, were removed from their mothers at birth and kept separate from each other with no physical contact. And for what? To test them with the carefully selected--oh, let's just call it cherry picked, shall we?--"1994-1999 vaccine schedule." I'd like to see the IACUC justification for this one.

According to the paper, this work with macaques would be in part justified because "there is a paucity of information regarding amygdala growth during non-human primate development." That would likely be news to these people. And these. And these. And these. And these. I'd suggest a read of that last link, by the way, as it directly addresses the role that the amygdala might NOT play in the development of social behavior...and notes that social isolation rather may drive some of these findings. In fact, maternal deprivation stress alters amygdala development. Control group of THREE, folks! One. Two. Three. That's all.

Among anti-vax acolytes, science is a bad word. Good studies are dismissed because they don't take anecdote and intuition into account. Experts are simply heartless, hearing-impaired automatons who just don't get it, who won't listen to parents, dammit, even though parents know more, somehow, than the experts.

Science is a four-letter word, that is, unless they're name-checking science for their own benefit. Then, suddenly, it's an altar at which we should all fall on our knees in blind, submissive worship. All of this preamble is simply a long way of getting to this question: Why are people who are so dismissive of almost all scientific findings so anxious to give a shout-out to science when it seems to support their beliefs?

Control group of THREE! One. Two. Three. That's all.

Thinking Person's Guide to Autism: We've posted!

Today, you can read a post courtesy of Kim Wombles and Yours Truly on three particularly questionable biomed protocols over at The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. Click on over, read, think, and comment!

Tomato, tomahto, fighting, fun

Sorry. No list of 10 today. I know you're devastated.

I've had some weird playground experiences in my time. As an adult, I mean. My childhood playground experiences weren't weird, they were just mostly a misery. But I've never had a playground encounter quite like this one.

Some background: Good friends of ours have arrived in Colorado. While they were unpacking, I took their oldest son and TH's bestest-ever friend to a playground. They hadn't seen each other in six weeks. The friend had just spent two days in a car. Naturally, the two boys, along with Dubya, were rowdy.

It was the best place for it, with huge grassy fields, some splashy water feature fun, places to run. The boys wrestled and wrestled and ran and wrestled for probably close on to two hours. I sat and watched them, only stepping in once to remind people that pulling on clothes simply isn't very good for the clothes. They were smiling and laughing the entire time.

And at one point, just before we left, a woman who'd been there the for the duration turned to me and said, "Are those all yours?" She didn't sound very happy about it, and I was suddenly worried that I'd somehow overproduced.

And I responded, "No, three of them are. One's a friend."

And she said, "They sure do fight a lot."

I was stumped. What do you say to that? It seemed like an accusation, like several accusations--you're a bad parent, you should be stopping that behavior, your children are violent, why are you here?--all rolled into one. And it was bizarre to me because they clearly were not fighting but having a blast.

All I could think of to say and do was the usual: I overdid the detail, focused too much on nuance. "They've not seen each other in a long time, so they're busy enjoying really solid inputs with each other." Am I a dork or what? "Really solid inputs"? Who understands therapy speak if they're not involved in therapy?

She just stared at me. "Well," she finally said, "they fight a lot. You sure do have your hands full."

Considering that all I'd had on my hands for two hours was a bit of boredom and a Blackberry, I had to silently disagree with that assessment. Out loud, I just said, "Mmmmhmmm."

So, what was the deal with that? Was she a Mennonite? Am I a blind fool who doesn't know fighting when I see it? Why was my "fun wrestling" like "fighting" to her?

I've realized from experience that people tend to have very different perceptions of what aggression is. I know for a fact that my candor and intensity can put some people off, especially if they trend toward thinking that any pointed observation or contradiction is somehow an argument. For some people, their "conflict" is my "discussion," their "argument" is my "interesting conversation." And apparently, my children's rowdy good time with each other (no other children were involved) is off-putting fighting worth commenting on.

Conflict or conversation? Fighting or fun? Tomato or tomahto? Some days, you do truly want to call the whole thing off.

On traffic, earwigs, and ancient-ass microwaves

Having a great time! Wish you were here!

1. Some people from Iowa and Kansas do not understand the use of "slow traffic pullouts" and insist on (a) yawing all over the road and (b) driving about 10 mph under the speed limit. Sigh.

2. Some people from Colorado do not understand that when one is stuck behind someone from Iowa or Kansas, one cannot (a) drive or fly over them or (b) pass them on narrow, two-lane, winding mountain roads with blind curves.

3. Some people from Texas, or at least we the people from Texas, do not like to be tailgated and do not tailgate others. Neither do we drive a minivan that flies, much to the disappointment of our children, who wish we at least owned one jetpack.

4. We the people from Texas do use traffic pullouts just to get rid of all of the above. Let the Coloradoans tailgate the Iowa/Kansans. We'll just amble along and enjoy the scenery.

5. In other news, earwigs can somehow get into dishwashers. Who knew?

6. They also can get onto dining room tables and hide in magazines.

7. They do not crawl into your ears and lay eggs in your brain. Good to know.

8. Some children will be mildly disappointed to learn this.

9. That does not, however, stop them from excitedly chasing down every earwig to flush it down the toilet. Did you know that earwigs are among the few of their kind to engage in a sort of gentle parental care?

10. Why so many earwigs, you ask? Oh, the weatherproofing on this condo leaves, let's say, something to be desired. Oh, really, you query? Yes. And don't get me started on the microwave that won't pop popcorn. It's a Galanz. Likely made in about 1984, complete with analog knobs, a capacity limited to the smallest of containers, and an inability to pop corn. Never heard of Galanz, but it appears to make more microwaves than any other company in the world. Wonder if they've made any new ones since 1984? If you go to their Website, you'll find that they invite you to "Warmly Congratulate the 30th Anniversary of Galanz Group," along with the somewhat mystifying combined headers of, "Thirty Years of Glory" and "Centennial Dream" and a sideways "G: Good to Great." Yep. They made that microwave, I guess during the "Good" end of that period rather than the "Great."

On hats, insularity, and other binding factors

Yep. It's another list of 10, just for you, the latest learnings from Colorado.

1. Having three children who need to wear hats at all times ensures that hats will go astray...at all times.

2. One of those times will be at a zoo an hour away. That was a good hat.

3. Kind people may find the hat and turn it in to the Lost and Found. Kind people did that, allowing for successful hat retrieval on the next zoo visit. It remains a good hat.

3. Another of those times will be at the peak of a two-mile hike that was relatively easy with a Viking around to carry a whining, tired, 47-pound three-year-old. The Viking is gone. The hat was left behind. You do not carry 47-pound three-year-olds, whining or not.

4. The Fates found more kind people who not only found the hat but who also hiked it down to the ranger station and turned it in.

5. That also is a good hat. Black, John Deere, with, natch, a deer on it. Sure, we drove through sleet and thunder crashing all around to retrieve it, but while rain, snow, sleet, or hail may not stop me, the thought of hiking uphill at 9000 feet with a whining 47-pound three-year-old will. So, thank you, kind people and watchful Fates.

6. With all of this family bonding and hat retrieval, you may forget that you have autism in your family.

7. Sure, there is still all manner of wild and loud vocalizations, rigidity, and other related manifestations. But with all this time spent in the loving and comfortable bosom of the family, you forget about that key issue: social interaction deficits. Obviously, we also have issues with holding onto our hats.

8. Until you go to a playground. First, those vocalizations? You suddenly realize that yelling out things like "Tighty-whitey-go-round!" over and over in a high-pitched voice can come across differently in different contexts. Say, the back of your van vs. the swings. Very different.

9. Then, you realize that the Fates are still trying to send you kind people, the sort who offer to play tag with your children or join them on some sort of high-falutin' spinning-type thing that I think substitutes these days for a merry-go-round.

10. And as your autistic child and provisionally autistic child and theoretically neurotypical child hastily decamp behind the nearest tree in response to the offers--every. single. time.--you recall that yes, you do indeed have people with autism living with you and that, yes, social interaction remains a key deficit for them.

But thank goodness for kind people whom the Fates send to us as we grapple with the things that bind. Perhaps with practice, we'll all manage to remember our hats. Perhaps, with a great deal of practice, we'll someday be able to say, "Yes! Let's play tag!"

A short visit from a Viking

The Nordic One has come and gone. But he left behind some lessons learned.

1. People like me get used to being alone very easily.

2. Returning Vikings seem much larger than you remembered and take up far more of the bed than you think they need.

3. When Vikings return, it takes people like me about 24 hours to adjust to the presence of another human being, especially a large one who takes up more of a bed than one would anticipate.

4. Vikings, being what they are, deal with people like me perfectly and with a fair amount of admirable patience, which is why I hang out with one.

5. It costs $100 to switch a plane ticket by one day on Frontier.

6. That was $100 well spent.

7. Off the subject of Vikings, fireworks are extraordinarily loud in the mountains.

8. Some of us do not like loud noises. In fact, even the flushing of a public toilet is, well, difficult. To people like that, fireworks sound like the Blitz. The reaction is also analogous, except the reactor is small, three, and burying his head in a couch.

9. Speaking of noise, having one autistic child in the car doing his typical, loud Bobby McFerrin imitation = usually tolerable. Having yet another child in the car joining in with an iterative, slightly off-key humming of the Star Wars theme--only one line of it = intolerable. Add in the incessant rhinoceros snort of child #3, and what you've got there folks is auditory hell. I'm pretty sure the Viking was only pretending to be sorry when we dropped him off.

10. I miss my Viking. The bed seems so big now.

About nuns, Christians, and other religious types

The Viking arrived for a visit for a couple of days, and that's really got almost nothing to do with this post except...

1. I don't know how nuns live like they do. I suppose they focus their minds on other things. Jesus.

2. Thanks to a little friend I call Bee See Pee, the Fates have arranged for hormone withdrawal days to coincide with Viking's visit. Luckily, I am not a nun and know how to cope with events like this.

3. Speaking of nuns and Christian stuff, apparently, young Christian boys from a Church of Christ in Indiana think that the Christian thing to do in a national park campground is to break as many rules as possible during their 12-hour stay. This includes throwing rocks at pine trees to knock down limbs, climbing fences intended to keep people out, and collecting wood in spite of the multiple signs prohibiting it. I mean, WWJD, people? I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been going around hurling stones at trees and hassling the elk.

4. Autistic children will show their rules-loving hearts when they witness Church of Christ teens from Indiana breaking park rules and will be straining at the parental leash to release their inner park ranger.

5. In spite of this longing to admonish the teens, autistic children around the age of, say, nine will suddenly be overwhelmed with a "parents are embarrassing" feeling and refuse to walk arm in arm with you as usual when you stroll by the Christian teen campsite. Being autistic or honest or both, said nine-year-old will carefully and apologetically explain his rationale and return to his native hugginess once the moment has passed.

6. One child will switch his career choice from "army man" or "a police" to "park ranger" when he sees that park rangers also get to carry guns. He has yet to learn that criminals get to do that, too.

7. The "traveling public" remains as frustrating and obtuse as always, as park rangers likely are all too aware. Hey, lady. We saw the ptarmigan first. It's not cool to step in front of us with your phone camera and scare the damned thing off, chick in tow. And that scary-ass bright pink shirt of yours is probably what did it.

8. Or you, the jerk from Texas--yes, Texas, what a shock--who tailgated us to the trailhead on a 20 mph dirt road as we both passed a parking space back down the road. As we both realized at the same time that the trailhead spaces were full and we'd need to turn around and go back to that space. As you cut us off like an asshole so you'd get there first. You were alone. We have three children. Luckily, the Fates (not the nun-related ones, apparently) intervened and an older couple emptied a parking space right there at the trailhead. Ha. Ha. Ha. We parked closer than you. Nyah.

9. Or you, the couple hiking hot on our heels. We pulled over to the side in a line of five people so you could pass. That was not your cue to stop and stand there as though awaiting the Rapture. It was your cue to move past us so we could hike in peace. Or, as much peace as is reasonable with three children under the age of 10 armed with sticks.

10. Those rangers with guns come in handy when it's time to put the sticks down. I mean, what three-year-old wants to be arrested for not obeying, "Take only pictures, leave only footprints"? Too bad we can't use that one on tailgating Texans and teenage Christians from Indiana.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone. Try to follow the rules, mmmkay? Somewhere out there, there's a ranger with a gun. Just not anywhere we are, it would seem.

Summer single parenting: In which a debit card is declined

A few new learnings for your edification.

1. If you, the WAHM, think you have a day--a rare one--in which you will have no assignments from clients, you will plan something fun and lengthy and outdoors for that day for you and your children. You look forward to a solid 12 hours or so of no typing, editing, emailing, or other digital interaction.

2. Your clients will suddenly inundate you with jobs mid-morning. You know this because you forgot to destroy your Blackberry.

3. Except for this one client, one that had you clear your schedule through August for 20 to 40 hours of week of doing something you really, really like to do. From them, you'll get an email announcing that the team you're working with will likely soon become obsolete because they're switching to a "vendor-based model." In the preceding months during which you had cleared your schedule as requested, you've billed out about 20 hours...total.

4. Having not learned your lesson from items 1 and 2, you think you have another such day two days later, one free of deadlines. In a moment of sheer insanity, you decide to take your three children camping in a nearby park. You don't even know if campsites are available, but you go anyway. Ever the optimist, you are.

5. Lo! Campsites are available in your favorite campsite. Good ones. Your luck has changed.

6. Oh, really? Then how do you explain the fact that your debit card is declined for a four dollar water purchase at a park convenience store?

7. Oh, that'd be because some criminal asshole has STOLEN YOUR DEBIT CARD NUMBER AND TRIED TO USE IT, SO YOUR BANK HAS SHUT DOWN THE CARD. Yes, you are out in the middle of nowhere, completely disconnected from all computerlands, living in a tent. You use your credit card instead to purchase the water.

8. Vikings are handy people. They take care of things. You continue your campout in peace, wishing all manner of ill will on the criminals but glad for Vikings.

9. If there's not a motorcycle gang in the campsite next to you arriving one at a time in the wee hours of the night over the course of three hours, there will be a baby in the campsite across from you who screams bloody murder at regular intervals throughout the night. You discover that you have yet to turn off the "crying baby jerking me awake" trigger that all parents develop when their children are in infancy. You have no more children in infancy. Thank God. And if you did, you would not take them camping.

10. In spite of the fact regarding infants cited in item 9 above, your youngest child, who is no infant, will still manage to crawl inside a suitcase that you'd swear no one but an infant could fit into. Your middle child will zip him into it, catching your youngest child's hair in said suitcase in the process. Extraction is painful.

Sounds like a pretty good punishment for the asshole who stole my debit card number. Minus the extraction part.

Like roller coasters? Forget the amusement park. Just come spend a week with us.