Just Visiting This Planet

The t-shirt read “Just Visiting This Planet.” David was three or four years old when someone bought him that shirt. It was a perfect fit, the sentiment I mean.

David had his own language. Some words sounded like English. Many didn’t. But if you didn’t understand him, he didn’t get discouraged. He worked with the words you did understand. He described things by color, texture, or comparison with unrelated objects until you got it.

His eventually learned to communicate. In fact he’s quite good at it. But adjusting to earth has been a lifelong struggle. This planet is overladen with customs and rules he’s always found restrictive.

School, for instance, interfered with social networking. Teachers were a constant bother. The lockers weren’t big enough to cram in all the books, papers and other assorted junk given to him throughout the years. Why haul that stuff around?

One night at camp when everyone else was sleeping, David built a booby trap that would entangle the first one through the door in the morning. In the middle of the night, the cabin leader needed to use the facilities. When I went to pick David up at the end of his stay, I briefly spoke to his leader. His eyes were glazed, and he laughed with a hint of insanity as he told me how “creative” my son was, and how he probably couldn’t volunteer for that camp in the future.

His aunt and uncle watched him once. They were walking through the park when they realized that everyone was staring at them. His uncle turned to see David limping behind them with a fake arrow through his head and fake blood dripping down his face. They never watched him again.

Once when we were moving, and the landlord was showing the house, David drew one of those homicide chalk outlines of a body in the driveway and put some caution tape around it. I never asked where he got the tape.

I never asked a lot of things. Like why his bed had more graffiti on it than a wall of an abandoned building in the Bronx. Or why his dresser, inside and out, had more graffiti than his bed. I like his art. I like his free spirit.

But I didn’t ask about the caution tape because I didn’t want to know the answer. Shortly before that incident, David asked his brother to cut his hair. He looked like an extra in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And it was around that time I had my last meeting (ambush) with his teachers. Rob went to all teacher confrontations from then on.

It was also around that time that Rob and I were driving somewhere. David was in the back seat reading a book, a very rare occurrence, when he piped up, “Hey, this Einstein guy was just like me – always getting in trouble.” 

Well, he’s not another Einstein. He is, however, a creative genius (yes, I’m biased). But he did graduate with honors from The Art Center, won some awards, had a Super Bowl commercial, and is well liked and well respected by his peers, some of which I suspect are just visiting this planet as well.