Autism | Calderism

Hello, my name is Dash and with Jack’s departure to college, I will follow in his footsteps and hope to expand Calderism. I would like to call myself the more engaged brother. Calder and I like going on car rides to Chick-fil-A or Panda Express, while listening to what he calls, “dirty music.”

“Dirty music,” by the way is rap music. Once when my mom asked Calder what he wanted to do, he said he wanted to listen to “dirty music” with me. I was expecting to get into a lot of trouble when Calder explained to my mom that he meant the music has a lot of curse words in it, but she let it go as long as we both promised her we wouldn’t swear. We try not to.

Hanging out with Calder is always fun except if the laundry room door is open, in which, Calder will treat himself to a couple pairs of socks that he will decide to chew on. Thus, leading me to pick them all up and throw the, what were once clean, socks in the washing machine. Besides his desire to chew socks, he also loves to hangout on the windowsill and stare at everything that passes by. Every day when I get home from school, I look into the window and Calder is always there standing and looking out. I go inside and greet him with a hug, and we go our separate ways until I finish my homework. Then, it’s time for us to play. We’ll roughhouse, hang out by the window, or go on a car ride.

I play with Calder not because I must, but because it’s fun. He laughs at jokes; he appreciates my driving and watching him absorb 3 large orders of Chick-fil-A fries is always a fun mess. Especially because when we get home, he will still desire more food.

I don’t know if our relationship is different from the average middle brother – little brother dynamic or if I would treat him differently if he wasn’t autistic.  I feel protective of him, but I also feel like together we can break a few rules, like listening to dirty music. And with Calder, I feel like we accept each other and don’t judge.