Hopes and Desires: Marriage

Standing in line, you can over hear a lot of strange conversations; drug dealing, date nights, sex, parties, engagements. That last ones a bit strange huh? Well there were legit, people arguing over under what circumstances they would get married. One of the girls for instance insists that she will only say yes if the ring is bigger than 2 karat. I've heard of planning out a "perfect" wedding, but seriously? A necessity on the ring?! And her reasoning is that if the guy truly loves her it wouldn't matter to him. Well sweetie, if you truly loved him it wouldn't matter to you! None of it would! If you truly loved each other you wouldn't even care about getting married, you'd just want to spend eternity with him; no extravagant wedding, ring, or honeymoon involved.
The same applies to long distance relationships. Some people complain about the distance but if you truly love each other and want to be together you would forget about the gap in-between you and know that there will be a way for you to be together.
So while yes, I have my own fantasies about my future and how I'd vision my wedding to be; I understand that if you really care, nothing else matters.
Getting married outside in the snow blanketed forest, doesn't matter. Having Termini's make a gorgeous cake for the occasion, doesn't matter. Only having close/true friends and family there, while greatly appreciated; isn't necessary.
All that does matter is that each person is happy living with each other, sometimes it's even better if you don't have the wedding.
Just some food for thought.

Autism Awareness

There's always going to be a controversy to what I say and believe or what others say and believe but there's till going to be a truth to it all.

Every one person out of twenty has autism. One of those people, is my brother, he has aspergers; and so does his best friend. I can't tell you much about the life of my brother from his perspective or the life of his friend, but i can tell you their involvement and impact in my life.

My brother is a mere one and a half years younger than me, so not much is different between. We've both always been very argumentative. We've both always excelled at math. And we both have always enjoyed being whisked away to magical realms through books. There are some differences however. For one, I love to help my dad out with anything and everything. He however prefers to stick by my mothers side, always a bit more picky. But that's how most kids are. We choose our sides, and stick to them.

As we grew up together we didn't see anything extremely different about one another, nothing out of the ordinary at least. But that's to be expected isn't it? Autistic kids are just like everyone else, or they seem to be from the outside. They do however, take things a little differently mentally.

Everyone gets bullied at some point and for us it was most days. I've gotten used to it and just repress the feelings but it's a little harder for my brother. One day he just couldn't take it anymore. He took the threats toward him a bit too seriously and cracked. He jokingly agreed that he had the resources and would do as they wished. He would go kill himself. This caused him to be unwillingly taken away from my family for a week before my dad was fed up and required they give him back; seeing as we couldn't pay their bill anyway.

During his time away from my family my brother was officially diagnosed. Although everyone tries convincing you that being diagnosed makes you no different, everyone tries to take advantage of it, even the diagnosed. Even if you are told not to treat them any different than a regular friend they get some form of special treatment. Such as extensive video game time or the ability to eat as much as you want whenever you want.

It gets ridiculous.

Now my brother sees two therapeutic psychologists at our house each week and has a "ghost" follow him at school.

Never the less, autism can be a very serious problem and there is no permanent solution. You can be drugged like my brother's friend but then you're like  a zombie.

Be careful what you say and do to people, it could be their last straw.

The Case of the Sudsy Stream

I slowly walk down the edge of the stream looking for any clues that the criminal may have left behind; footprints, residue, anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Like any good detective called to the scene of a crime I questioned any and all witnesses. I had to make sure I had everything straight before I could make any assumptions. This is what I found out.

Jack woke up at 6 o’clock every Sunday morning to go fishing at Clear Creek but when he showed up at 7 o’clock this morning there was a massive amount of suds occupying the water. It seems as if the suds have diminished some what since Jack first discovered them, they only spread out for 20 feet in either direction and are only about a foot high. The closest buildings are the detergent factory three miles down stream and the new art studio a mile up hill. The buildings are not quite close enough to have caught anything on tape so I’m going to have to solve this case the old fashioned way.

First thing I need to do is state what my problem is. And today my problem is who and what caused the bubbles in Clear Creek. Now that I have my goal in mind I can take time to thoroughly exam the crime scene. I slip on my gloves so that I don’t risk contaminating anything and grab my Kodak camera to take pictures with. I walk the perimeter of the stream looking for prints in the dirt, being careful of where I step. On the east side of the stream there was a short trail, as if something had been dragged. *Click* My camera takes a photo of the trail. Being slightly inexperienced I can’t be positive but the print looks as if it was made by something roughly 107 lbs in weight. I follow the trail but it only last for about 10 feet and then it stops, maybe the object was carried but then the carrier became tired and dragged it the rest of the way. Thinking this was a dead end that I could come back to if necessary, I turned to walk away but something caught the corner of my eye. Stuck on a tree limb was a small piece of cloth. *Click* Another photo for the file. Carefully I removed the cloth and examined it, it seemed to be a piece of tarp but there was something waxy on it, the evidence was placed in a plastic bag to be further examined later.

It is starting to get dark by the time I return to the stream. After finding the tarp I stopped at Mike’s hoagie shop to grab lunch then I headed to my home lab to test the waxy residue left on the cloth. The residue was from a bar of soap, not the fancy stuff you use in the shower but the kind you would normally carve things out of. I couldn’t be sure that the person would come back and do the same thing tonight but I wasn’t going to give up a chance to have a stake out. With a video camera hidden in a bush, I climbed up into a sturdy tree and patiently waited for something to happen. Sadly have been staying up the night before playing video games it wasn’t long before I fell asleep. The next morning when I woke the bubbles were there again, sitting on the water as if someone had just taken a very large bubble bath. I climbed down from the tree, my butt aching, and walked to where I had placed the video camera. As I watched the recording all seemed quiet until 6:34 am when a mysterious figure approached the stream and dumped something into the water. If you looked very carefully as the figure dumped the contents something bounced out and landed in some brush.

Slowly I walk over to the brush and I hear some rustling, a squirrel jumps out with white around its mouth. Instinctively I jump back thinking it has rabies but after I get a closer look I realize it is more soap residue. Perhaps the squirrel was eating some and thought it was an acorn or some other type of nut. Just as I’m pulling my arm out of the brush, holding the soap, the deputy walks up behind me. I spin around and nearly whack him in the face.

“What are you doing!? You are supposed to be solving this case not poking in some overgrown weeds,” the deputy spurts out in anger.

Waving the block of soap in the deputy’s face I tell him that I am solving the case. He snatches the object from my hands and questions why I haven’t turned anybody into the custody of the town then. I thoroughly explain what I think is happening to the deputy.

I believe that a sculptor from the new art studio has been practicing on some soap blocks. But all of the ruined ones eventually pile up and need to be moved. Not having any where to stick the soap blocks the sculptor carries them down to the stream and dumps them. Walking up to the art studio I think of what I’m going to do once I find the culprit. Entering the art studio is like entering a college for the first time, there were at least 100 students speeding through the halls. Among those students one seemed to stand out to me, she was an average 19 year old but that wasn’t what I cared about, I was more concerned with the supplies she was holding. With a dozen or so soap blocks in her arms I was almost positive this was the person I was after.

I followed her and when she finally walked into a room I shut the door behind me. I needed to ask her some questions without being disturbed. She was very startled when she first noticed me but she answered my questions with no hesitation. She admitted to dumping the soap blocks into Clear Creek but that they weren’t her creations. Just then an older man, around 26, came into the room and was about to make a run for it when I blocked his path.

I walked both of the criminals back to Clear Creek where the sheriff and deputy were waiting. Our small town isn’t big on cruel punishments so the culprits were given two weeks of community service each. After finishing up my report I handed it into the sheriff. My first real case solved and who knows maybe this could be the start of my own detective agency.