Love of an Elevator

When frazzledmomma asked me to guest post on Living with Logan I knew I couldn't refuse.  I mean, she has seven kids.  I just had to help her out.  I've been blogging about life with my 13 year old autistic son for a few months now. Early on, my posts got no lovin because I had no readers. So, for this guest post appearance, I decided to pull out a post I am particularly proud of which went up on my blog real early on.  Please enjoy .....

Love of an Elevator

No matter how fun we try to make sports seem, Griffin always returns to his true love – elevators.  I bet you didn’t know there are various sites on the internet dedicated exclusively to riding elevators.  That’s right, type in the word “elevator”, and you will find that there are people who travel the world filming themselves riding elevators.  More than a few of these folks post their videos on You Tube  and get thousands of hits.   Little do they know that most of these hits are coming from our play room.

Several of these elevator aficionados give themselves clever nicknames and get creative with their filmmaking techniques. I am sure none of them has a bigger fan than Griffin.  He watches the lift jockeys riding elevators in strip malls, department stores, hotels, office buildings, parking garages, colleges, hospitals, and airports.  He talks about his favorite elevator filmmaker’s work as if it were as important as Spielberg making Schindler’s List.  It is going to be difficult to break it to Griffin that, somehow, the academy overlooked Elevator Farts in its Oscar nominations again this year.

Watching videos of elevators is not nearly as satisfying for Griffin as actually riding in them.  We make trips to malls, office parks and tall buildings for the sole purpose of surfing the vertical tube.  He emulates the style of his favorite heroes when pushing the buttons and almost always comments on the décor and condition of the elevator car.

On a recent elevator safari to the local mega mall, we had to travel through the Woman’s Lingerie Department in Macy’s to get to the elevator.  As though he was seeing the bra clad mannequins for the first time, Griffin exclaimed loudly,

“Oooh.  Macy’s sells boobies!?! Do you believe that?!?”

Upon reaching the elevator, Griffin channels his inner Captain Elevator and launches into his narration:

“Wow!  That was a great hallway.  I am now pushing the 'Up' button.  Here comes the elevator.  Ooh!  It is a very nice elevator.  It is a General.  Time to push the button for the 2nd floor.  I am now pressing the 'Door Close' button. The door is closing.  Here we go.  It smells funny in here.  Here we come to the 2nd floor.  I am so sweaty.  Here we are.”

Sometimes we get strange looks and sneers from other passengers who are used to the silence people customarily observe when riding an elevator.  But the smile on his face and the pure joy Griffin gets from this simple pleasure is worth every leer and snicker.

I would love to say that the mouth breathing Neanderthals who judge Griffin without knowing him don’t bother us at all, but we are human.  By now, we should easily be able to shrug this sort of thing off.

Mrs. Big Daddy usually replies to the idiots who are visibly taken aback by Griffin’s love of elevators by declaring,

“It’s cheaper than taking him to Disney World!”

Big Daddy is the genius behind bigdaddyautism.com.  He spends his days Tweeting, enjoying his kids, doing crossword puzzles, riding elevators, yelling at the TV, thinking about what to eat for lunch, and trying to get his humorous book about his autistic son published.  He has several very nice tattoos which his mother pretends don’t exist.