Dog Day Afternoon

My young adult son Jason and I are crossing Riverside Drive to get to the park on the other side.

This part of Riverside Drive comprises four lanes separated by a median that’s too narrow to make for a good stopping place; the whizzing cars and buses make you feel like either your toes or your heels or even both might get grazed as you wait for the light to change in your favor. I thus always plan to make the journey in one go.

However, Jason has nonspeaking autism, and we don’t know why he does some of the things he does. Sometimes we’ll get to the other side, and just as I breathe a sigh of relief, he’ll turn and run back into the middle of the street.

Today, we manage to complete the crossing safely.

Jason’s brand of autism includes sensory dysregulation. One day, the vroom of a motorcycle might cause him to collapse, screaming and clutching his head. The next day, the same unmufflered chopper elicits no response.

He can talk, but most of what he says — “Hi! Hi!” and “Duck in the water” — tends not to be functional speech. He will, however, scream the word “loud” when a noise bothers him. And when he’s afraid something might hurt him, he will yell, “Hurt you!” (He mixes up pronouns.)

Dogs, a common trigger for many autistics, elicit the “hurt you” response. Fluffy or fanged, it doesn’t matter. Back when we lived in Rhode Island, he bit an aide after merely seeing a dog on the street — from inside the house.

When Jason was 12, we moved to New York. He had better schooling options, but we worried about the increase in possible triggers, including dogs.