When I was walking towards my car in the parking lot of the grocery store earlier this week, I heard someone coming up behind me saying, "excuse me, excuse me!!!" The voice belonged to a well-dressed, young woman maybe in her early 20's. She launched into a rehearsed speech and was talking really fast. So fast, I couldn't quite figure out what she wanted. She opened up a box of suncatchers and was showing them to me asking if I would buy one to help fund some trip she was going on. I told her politely that I wasn't interested and she moved on to someone else in the parking lot. When I get phone calls asking for donations of money and it's not an organization I've heard of or wish to donate to, I've been saying, "please remove me from your calling list." The hubby says, "I'm sure your organization is worthwhile, but we already give to other organizations." Most telephone solicitors say thank you and hang up. I think they respect the honesty. It's getting towards the holiday season, so I know we'll be getting more of those type of calls. Unfortunately, there are organizations that try to scam you into giving them your credit card number and other personal information over the phone. It's much harder to say no or politely hang up the phone when someone is in your face in a parking lot. Many years ago, when I still lived with my parents, I had a young woman come to the front door saying she was from my old high school. She claimed to be selling something on behalf of my old school and wanted the money upfront. I'm still waiting to get what I ordered :( Another time, a few years before we moved to the Midwest, I had a gentleman come to our front door selling magazines. I told him nicely that I wasn't interested and he called me a very nasty and insulting name. Since those two incidents, it's made me very leery and hesitant to open my front door to solicitors. I pretty much only open the front door if it's someone I know, like students from the local high school raising money for school sponsored activities. What would you do if someone sidled up to you in a parking lot trying to sell you something?? Would you buy what they were selling? or would you walk the other way??
When Dominic was diagnosed with Autism at 2 1/2, I went to our local library and took out every book I could find about Autism. Sometimes I would bring back 20 books. This was 2006, so a lot of the information was very "dated." I guess I was looking for a book that would tell me what I should do next, like a "manual." Autism doesn't quite work that way! The saying is, " if you know one person with Autism, you know one person with Autism." Every mom to an individual with Autism follows their own "path." I think as moms, we judge ourselves much harder than anyone else does. I was 41 when I had Dominic. Did he get the diagnosis of Autism because I was an older mom? because I drank a lot of pop? I could sit and think about that every minute of every day. I am pretty integrated into the Autism community around Lansing and have told more than one person that it took me about two weeks to come to terms with Dominic's diagnosis. It is so incredib...
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