Part Three

One would think that after one of the Stewart Home "kids" took a deuce in the pool that they would be my least favorite group to lifeguard. After they came back they were very apologetic and I enjoyed ligeguarding for them.

The autistic kids who would come in to swim laps were much worse.

I don't remember who they were or where they came from, but they weren't anywhere near as pleasant.

The Stewart Home always brought along enough supervision, but the autistic kids only ever brought two adults for three children. These were actual children, or at the oldest, teenagers. I remember that there were three of them, although the details of the third have left my memory.

The first was a black girl, I would guess between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. She would rock back and forth in the water until ten minutes before she had to leave and then explode into laps. She was mechanical and focused and easily the fastest swimmer which I ever guarded for.

The second was a male teenager who looked like Leonardo DiCaprio. I will remember him until the day I die.

I mean, I remember him now and I had a stroke. I even forgot the Down Syndrome kid dressed as a clown for a while, but I will never forget the autistic kid who looked vaguely like DiCaprio.

The woman who was in charge of him came running out of the boys locker room. She wanted me to go in and check on him, because I was male and she wasn't.

She seemed nervous.

I bounced into the locker room not knowing what to expect. I mean this was a YMCA where board members used to hang out in the sauna naked for hours at a time, and one time one of them came downstairs without putting his swim trunks on.

"Oops," he said. "I forgot to put on my drawers."

As I turned the corner into the locker room, I saw the boy on the other side of the showers. He was completely naked and completely erect.

He also had pulled some lockers loose from the wall and detached a water fountain.

I don't remember what happened next (I was stunned by the image of a naked, aroused autistic kid; nothing will hold after that sudden shock) but I imagine I told the handlers what he was up to in the locker room and she apologized profusely.

To this day, autistic people frighten me. When my wife worked at the Stewart Home, all the females were obsessed with babies. I was outside in the parking lot with my son in his car seat and the car was surrounded by girls going, "Baby..."

It was like something out of a zombie movie, except these were mentally handicapped individuals and not the undead. I did consider running them over with the car but only as a last ditch escape.

Robin came out of the building and shooed them away. I was glad.

The focus of an autistic person makes them freakishly strong and they make me nervous to this day.