I know because it says so on the note that my kids gave me on my first day of work here at Joel's Place. They both made pictures of my flying through the air on a skateboard, complete with skating helmet and wide-eyed abandon on my face, to post at my desk. They were excited for me to get a new job. They were especially excited that the new job was in a skate park. They were over-the-top excited that they would get to visit me and play in said skate park.
They don't know about money troubles or mortgages or staffing or business plans or grant applications. They don't know and they don't care. All they know is that Dad works somewhere that is fun. And not "fun" in that "make a game out of chores to trick us into cleaning our rooms" kind of way. This is "fun for fun's sake" as Kelli, our Program Director calls it. This is the fun that pushes you to run and test the limits of your body, fun that leaves you laughing until your sides hurt. This is fun that engages the mind and the body and the soul. This is fun that shouts so loud that it drowns out the rest of the day and makes you forget about everything but right now.
My son is 10 and has autism. I am sure that I will share more about him in the coming weeks, but for right now I will simply say that it has always been hard for him to have fun. Fun usually happens in a social setting and involves sharing experiences with other people. Social settings are especially challenging for people on the autism spectrum ...they tend to engage in something called "parallel play," playing next to someone but not with them.
When the boy was four, he was an avid reader. He would sit on the floor for hours, reading anything he could find for hours at a time. His sister was just a toddler and would wobble over to where he had parked himself. She was the only one in the world who had no respect for his boundaries. She would wrap her arms around his neck and lean on his back, upsetting his balance. My son payed her no mind as he continued reading, suddenly finding it harder to keep the words still as they swayed back and forth. Finally they would topple over, the boy coming out of whatever hyper-intense world of reading and concentration he had been in, and they would laugh and wrestle. Throughout his life, this is the level of effort needed to have fun with my son.
Here at Joel's Place, I have an entire complex filled with boys like my son. Maybe they are not on the autism spectrum like he is, but I have watched them all come in and every day it looks the same. First they enter and head straight to the skate park to see if anything interesting is going on there. If it is empty, they attack the ramps at full speed, sometimes skating...more often simply running up and down, around and around until their cheeks flush and they need to stop. Then they wander to the cafe for some water, a snack and a video. Next they head to the Red Room where they play pool, air hockey and video games while being told not to touch the equipment on the stage. Then it is back to the ramps where they cycle starts all over again. One night, my son had run himself ragged; he was lying on his back yelling to me that he was so exhausted that his legs wouldn't work. I was shutting down so I told him to just lie on the floor and cool off until I got back. I came out to find him rolling himself up a ramp by using only his arms. The amount of effort he was using was immense. He finally made it to the next level, slid back down and did it again. At last he was lying on the ground, spread eagle and chest heaving. I came over to him and asked what he was doing.
He looked up at me with a big, toothy smile and answered simply, "Having Fun."
Long live Joel's Place.
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