Words of Wisdom

My little brother, Danny, says some pretty amazing things. We would never have expected it five years ago -- Dan is mildly autistic and has other learning problems. Ten years ago you could barely get more than a couple sentences out of him; five years ago he was still very shy, preferring to talk only to family. Most of his coversations revolved around the weather, his computer game and phrases parroted from my mom.

Something changed when puberty set in, and now he's downright chatty. He calls all his friends in the evening to talk, and he's hard to shut up when we come out to visit. It's like he enjoys small talk.

But he also whips out some amazing statements and turns of phrase, bespeaking some sort of wisdom behind the mask of his disabilities. Or at least a budding Yogi Berra. Some examples:

(This Christmas in Arizona)
Me: "What's on your mind?"
Dan: "Not much."
Me: "Why not?"
Dan: "It's all back home."

"Life will always be with you, every step of the way."

"Let's just drop the shoe."
(Said to my mom, trying to get her to drop the subject at dinner one night.)

That last one I find particularly intriguing. Is he playing off the cliché "waiting for the other shoe to drop," or is he admonishing my mom like a dog chewing on a shoe? I've been mulling this over, and I just can't decide.

Mind you, it's not all deep thought -- his favorite way of indicating an extremity of something is to the bone, as in "I'm hungry to the bone!"

My mom likes to refer to him as Mrs. Malaprop.

Posted by Andrew Huff at January 28, 2004 10:48 PM