Sunday 20 July 2014

Aspergers - and keeping calm in a crisis

Drove into a multi-storey car park last week with a roof box on the top of the car. Trashed the roof box and got myself wedged in there, under a concrete beam, with no way of going forwards or backwards without smashing the roof box up even more.
I cried, of course, and phoned Ethan. He didn't come rushing to my rescue, even though he was at home, with a car, and an afternoon off work, so easily could have done. But neither did he shout at me, get stressed or tell me I was an idiot. He was, in fact, remarkably calm and nice about it, talking me through what I should do. Even saying (once he'd worked out that he could bodge the box back together again with duck tape and fibre-glass putty) that it was 'just a metal box'. This is the thing with Ethan. He can stomp out of the room, slam a door and sulk because Sam's pyjamas aren't where they're 'supposed' to be, but if I burn the house down he's amazingly calm and, if not supportive, then at least not accusatory. It's the little things that other people would barely notice that try his patience and cause multiple small eruptions.
I'm immensely grateful that Ethan can keep calm amidst an actual crisis, and that he doesn't berate me when I do something really stupid. But, actually, life's full of the 1,001 little things that go wrong rather than the occasional big disaster. And sometimes I feel I'd rather trade in one big explosion every now and again rather than the daily sighs, sulks and shut-outs that we all live with.
If you're wondering how I ever got out of the multi-storey by the way, a lovely old man and a rather attractive young man took pity on me as I struggled, through my tears, to try and remove the box from the roof of the car. They helped me get it down and then carried it to the roof of the car park as I drove and met them up there. Once free of the concrete beams, the box could be reunited with my car. The old guy's parting line to me as he drove away was: 'If your husband gives you a hard time, tell him he's crazy for leaving it on there!' Didn't go down the route of blaming Ethan for my mistake though - not sure which one of us would have been behaving more like the person with Aspergers then!

1 comment:

  1. Laura, many many years ago I ripped the wing off my 1st husbands car, 2 days after passing my test! He didn't speak to me for about a week, but my lovely neighbour at the time said "hopefully that will be the worst accident you ever have. No-one was hurt ". It made me feel better.
    Hannah x

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