Stacie Sherman

I’m kind of an expert in non-verbal communication. I can tell what my daughter wants without one word spoken. I can tell by her noises or gestures whether she wants to go to bed, or wants a drink or some ice cream, or needs help with her DVD player.

I’m usually grateful to have such communication expertise. Except on occasions like last night, when I was out to hibachi dinner with my two kids. As we were finishing our meal, a large family sat down next to us. My daughter was swaying and making funny noises, something like a cross between a dolphin and an owl, and she watched her videos and finished her ice cream. I barely noticed it, as long as they were happy sounds I paid it no mind.

But then I happened to catch a glimpse of the father’s face in the group next to us. He was looking angrily at my daughter, whispering to his wife, and I could tell he was annoyed by the sounds.

I stared back at him, hoping he would catch my eye. He didn’t. As it was the end of our meal and we were leaving anyway, this autism Mama Bear let it go! We walked away without saying a word to the jackass.

But as you can tell, it pissed me off.

When my daughter was a toddler, and I was a single mom, I used to never go out to restaurants with her. She was super cranky, uncomfortable with crowds, didn’t understand why she had to wait, and it was a very rushed and awful experience.

But then I began dating my (now) husband, my kids’ stepfather. He had “normal” kids, and I wanted us all to be able to go out to dinner like “normal” people.

So we started off all going out to eat at strange hours when barely anyone was in the restaurant. My husband and his kids didn’t really mind, they were kinda fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants people who didn’t keep “normal” eating schedules anyway. So we’d go at like 3 pm for dinner. We didn’t have to wait for a table, the food came out faster. If my daughter got upset I didn’t have to immediately shush her. And I could let her get up and walk around without bothering anyone.

She learned to love going out to eat. If she started acting up, I would say we were leaving, and she would calm down because she wanted to stay! We gradually went later and later, until we were eating like “normal” people.

(You see I keep putting the word normal in quotes, because there really is no such thing as normal. Who is normal? What is normal? I’m not. My husband isn’t. Our mixed family of my two kids and his four aren’t. We are perfectly abnormal).

So anyway, these days my girl is a champ at restaurants. We go a lot, and she’s often the most well-behaved kid in the place. She knows what she likes at each restaurant we go to. She likes to watch videos on her iPad and dance along to them while she sips on her drink and waits for her food.

If she gets loud, 9 out of 10 people around us smile. If she got super loud and disruptive, I would leave. But if she’s just swaying a bit, singing a bit, bouncing in her seat, I leave her be.

But every once in a while, I encounter a jackass. The worst of them all was several years ago, when we were sitting in the middle of a loud sports-themed restaurant. As I turned to get something I caught this woman — a mother — staring at my daughter, who was probably about 9 or 10. The woman was sitting across from her daughter, who couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4.

I tried not to let her annoy me, but I couldn’t help glance over there every once in a while to see if she was still staring. And one time I did, I observed her looking at my daughter (who has two protruding front teeth) and making bunny faces at her daughter. It was quite clear she was teaching her tiny daughter to make fun of mine. I was flabbergasted. Not only was she rude and ignorant, she was teaching her daughter to be rude and ignorant.

I stared at her with disgust. And then she caught my eye. I stared back, making it clear to her that I saw what she did and I was angry as hell. She looked down embarrassed, then she tried to look like she didn’t care that she had been caught. Oh, but she did.

I did not get up and punch her in the face like I really, really wanted to. Did I mention I really, really wanted to? But I knew I had to focus on my daughter, my family. So I did. And later that night, when I was alone in my room, I cried.

They’re out there, ladies and gentlemen. I encounter them at restaurants, at the supermarket, walking in the mall. Thankfully, my daughter doesn’t notice them. I do, though.

I will not sit home because some man is uncomfortable with the sounds my daughter makes. I have as much right to be in that restaurant as him. And so does she. I need to food shop just like everyone else, and sometimes I don’t have a babysitter. And the more I take my daughter out, the more she learns, the better she is.  I will not keep her home. She is part of her community. She is happy to be out and about, and that’s all that matters to me.

There is a happy ending to this store. More and more people we encounter are aware and tolerant. They smile instead of  get angry. They offer help instead of stare. They get it. Thankfully, it’s the jackasses who are becoming the exception to the norm.