People tell me that Ian is disabled, but most of the time, I don’t see it. He seems so normal to us. Sure, he’s a boy of very few words, but he uses those words pretty effectively. Since we spend nearly every waking moment together, I know that when he says “George. Helicopter,” he’s thinking about his Curious George book. I’ll repeat what he said, so that he knows I understood him and we’ll go back and forth chatting in our own way.

Ninety percent of the time, he has a big smile on his face. We went through six months of screaming frustration, but that is over now. He’s a happy kid who loves to snuggle in bed in the morning and rough house with his brother.

He keeps himself amused with his toys. Right now, he’s playing a train simulation computer program meant for ten year olds. (He’s three and a half.)

He goes to a special education school in the morning where they tell me that his speech is still very poor, but they don’t really know why. It could be faulty wiring between his mouth and his brain or it could between his ears and his brain or it could be both. The school is okay. I think that they should be using his Rainman visual skills to help him talk; they have firm ideas that three year olds shouldn’t read. But in general, it’s a warm fuzzy place, where they coo about how cute he is.

Between his warm, fuzzy school and warm, fuzzy home, we’ve kept Ian very safe. Other than the time he got chucked out of the bad pre-school last September, he hasn’t really been forced to do things that other three year olds do. He hasn’t been judged by critical eyes who only like the average. I haven’t had to watch the look of disgust or hear the sniff of disapproval from priggish nursery school teachers.

Until now. I signed him up for an exercise class at the local Y. He went off just fine. When I peeked in the door, he was climbing all over the equipment and seemed to be having a great time. But as it was time to go, I asked Miss Erica how it went. She said disapprovingly, “I don’t know. That one wouldn’t do anything I asked him to do. I don’t know about him.”

Vomit.