Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Relatives: way OT
You don't get to choose your relatives ain't it wonderful you can choose
your friends. An older relative of mine has always been a little odd, other-worldly you might say. But life would be so dull without the eccentric so it has never really concerned me. I need to leave my options open here as I might qualify myself some time. This bloke is not suffering dementia nor does he drink to excess or any such as far as I can tell. He knows who you are, where he is and what he is doing. He travels about the city alone quite happily and does all the normal domestic things one does. He can remember what he did yesterday, last month etc. He is charming and in his own field quite erudite. He phoned his sister the other day to say goodbye. She asked why. He said he was dying because he had just drunk poison. After some frantic questioning it transpired that he had gone to the medicine cabinet to get some cough syrup and pulled out the eucalyptus oil by mistake. He then poured a dessert spoon full and drank it! Even if you don't read the label how can you not notice the spoon of stuff in front of your face is not cough syrup but eucalyptus oil? Having taken it how can your next act be to phone your sister to say goodbye cruel world? So she called the poisons information line and they said to be calm, do not induce vomiting, that he would be in for a bad night but the results would not leave any lasting harm. They were correct: the result was - how can I put this delicately - powerful. But once the stuff had run its course, or should I say blasted and slalomed its course, he was OK. I laughed. I nearly cried. I shook my head and scratched it. I got no nearer to really understanding but ended up thinking that there but for fortune go I. Will he take more care with the little bottles in the medicine cabinet in future? There is no certainty. David. |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Relatives: way OT
David Hare-Scott wrote:
You don't get to choose your relatives ain't it wonderful you can choose your friends. snipped I laughed. I nearly cried. I shook my head and scratched it. I got no nearer to really understanding but ended up thinking that there but for fortune go I. Will he take more care with the little bottles in the medicine cabinet in future? There is no certainty. David. LOL! My son, aged 33, has Asperger's syndrome and that's exactly the sort of thing he'd be likely to do. Once, he put (thick, waxy) ear drops in his eyes! 'Absent minded' doesn't really cover it. It's more, as you say, 'other worldly'. Two points I'd like to make, though. After a lifetime of knowing such people, I've come to realise they're indispensable to the rest of us. They see things either in such minute detail or in such an enormous context, they're mind-blowing in their very specific areas of expertise. When my son was one year old, he was absolutely silent. He never said 'Mama' or 'Dada' or *anything*! Yet, at the same time, he could complete quite complicated jigsaw puzzles *upside down* (ie without the pattern showing, just the blank back). He can play seven different musical instruments (piano, violin, clarinet, flute, harp, bass recorder and guitar) quite well, yet he has difficulty telling the time. He paints, knits, embroiders, gardens - yet no one will employ him because he is so 'absent minded'. Oh, and if he goes walking on a lawn, he will usually come back with a fistful of four-leaf clovers because they 'leap out' at him from the grass. ;-D The other point I'd like to make is that my Nanna used to dose us up with a fat spoonful of eucalyptus oil in sugar whenever we got the sniffles. We never died. Quite recently, I found out that EO is poisonous. Makes me wonder now about my Nanna... =:-0 -- Trish Brown {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Relatives: way OT
On Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:33:01 +1000, Trish Brown wrote:
When my son was one year old, he was absolutely silent. He never said 'Mama' or 'Dada' or *anything*! Yet, at the same time, he could complete quite complicated jigsaw puzzles *upside down* (ie without the pattern showing, just the blank back). He can play seven different musical instruments (piano, violin, clarinet, flute, harp, bass recorder and guitar) quite well, yet he has difficulty telling the time. He paints, knits, embroiders, gardens - yet no one will employ him because he is so 'absent minded'. Oh, and if he goes walking on a lawn, he will usually come back with a fistful of four-leaf clovers because they 'leap out' at him from the grass. ;-D Yep, the jig-saws are the give away he has excellent skills at shape recognition. So long as the jigsaw has every piece cut in a unique shape, anyone can do it. Us mere mortals prefer the assistance of colour matching as well. Music has patterns, -- Great advances in Debian Linux; post a bug report and get spam in three days. |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Relatives: way OT
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
You don't get to choose your relatives ain't it wonderful you can choose your friends. An older relative of mine has always been a little odd, other-worldly you might say. But life would be so dull without the eccentric so it has never really concerned me. I need to leave my options open here as I might qualify myself some time. This bloke is not suffering dementia nor does he drink to excess or any such as far as I can tell. He knows who you are, where he is and what he is doing. He travels about the city alone quite happily and does all the normal domestic things one does. He can remember what he did yesterday, last month etc. He is charming and in his own field quite erudite. He phoned his sister the other day to say goodbye. She asked why. He said he was dying because he had just drunk poison. After some frantic questioning it transpired that he had gone to the medicine cabinet to get some cough syrup and pulled out the eucalyptus oil by mistake. He then poured a dessert spoon full and drank it! Even if you don't read the label how can you not notice the spoon of stuff in front of your face is not cough syrup but eucalyptus oil? Having taken it how can your next act be to phone your sister to say goodbye cruel world? So she called the poisons information line and they said to be calm, do not induce vomiting, that he would be in for a bad night but the results would not leave any lasting harm. They were correct: the result was - how can I put this delicately - powerful. But once the stuff had run its course, or should I say blasted and slalomed its course, he was OK. I laughed. I nearly cried. I shook my head and scratched it. I got no nearer to really understanding but ended up thinking that there but for fortune go I. Will he take more care with the little bottles in the medicine cabinet in future? There is no certainty. He sounds perfectly normal to me :-)) But then I live with a man whose own daughter says is an alien. I've not only tolerated but also thoroughly enjoyed the company of my alien for 40 years (but even I sometimes wonder how he managed to not only get, but then to hold down a very responsible, highly paid job for so many decades). He makes me laugh. Not always intentionally but when I point out the alien nature of yet another thing he's just done, even he is capable of chuckling after I explain it to him. Bless your rellie. |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Relatives: way OT
Charlie wrote:
I laughed. I nearly cried. I shook my head and scratched it. I got no nearer to really understanding but ended up thinking that there but for fortune go I. Will he take more care with the little bottles in the medicine cabinet in future? There is no certainty. David. Ahhh.....celebrate the diversity, David! I do appreciate this sentiment. Your relative sounds delightfully wonderful to me. Not cut of the same cloth as the rest of the world about him? Excellant! I agree with Fran on this, and Trish. One of my 6 yr old grandson's best friends has Asperger's and comes about often and is a delight to be with and could be described as eccentric and otherwordly and "alien"...at seven years of age! And I appreciate him as an individual, we have had some delightful chats over a scotch or two (he also has a hollow leg). Does your relative appreciate the writings of one of our great cynics, IMO? Mark Twain. And others who chose the "other road"? The road less travelled is quite a familiar one to me. I wasn't suggesting that we should all be the same. Perish the thought. Taking that route doesn't mean you have to be so careless of reality that you Darwin yourself from the gene pool.. David |
Reply |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
OT H.M.S.Collingwood 1943 bombing. Looking for relatives | United Kingdom | |||
Three Blind Mice (and all their relatives!) | Ponds (moderated) | |||
Another way (perhaps the best way) of telling whether an elm is UlmusThomasii or not | Plant Science | |||
Looking for The Cattleyas and Their Relatives : Volume II: The Laelias | Orchids | |||
A Fabulous Gift for Friends and Relatives | Bonsai |