Tonight during hoops, Curtis had some new found knowledge of Lady Gaga to share, so thanks to Jamie for that. Here is Curtis' unfiltered, unsolicited take on Lady Gaga. I did not fact check this so...I guess he is right.

"I didn't like Lady GaGa until I went bowling. Her first hit was "Just Dance". She is older than Taylor Swift. Taylor is 21. Taylor Swift is actually her first album. Lady GaGa put out albums when she was 23, and 24, and 25. Her name is Stephanie Germanatta. She will put out another album when she is 27. She can do like....one a year or something like Diary of a Wimpy Kid books come out like once a year. She has an inappropriate video named Judas, and wears bad outfits in the video, so I shouldn't watch it but, I don't think there's swears in the video, though. I should just watch the hits, right? You should watch "Born This Way", dad" . It's on demand, you know"

Greg, Dad
Curtis


      This blog entry takes me back to the entry titled “7:28 is not 7:30” and reminds me about Curtis’ need for stability and predictability. At the beginning of this summer, Curtis wanted to me to choose to do the same thing every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so that he would know what would happen each week. While I have cut him a lot of slack this summer, I was not willing to give him predictable adventures. In July, the Portland Red Claws started a summer kid’s concert series, which I have brought Curtis to every week. This past Thursday the weather report was grim so I decided we would do something other than a summer kids concert. Curtis is a busy kid and if there is something to do in the Greater Portland area for kids we have already done it. I looked outside our usual scope and saw that the Maine Aquarium had re-opened so I texted Laura about it before heading over. Curtis naturally did not want to go because it was something new and not the Thursday kid’s concert.

      After convincing Curtis to go, we hopped in the car for the hour and a half trip. I had been hiding my Lady Gaga CD's from Curtis because I agree she is not exactly the most age appropriate role model for him and I don’t quite know how to explain an unexplainable woman to someone who wants concrete answers. I do not know why she wore a meat dress and I do not know why she arrived at the Grammy's in a golden egg. The first thing out of his mouth when we got in the car was “Did you find the Born This Way album yet?” With Curtis it is all about a give and take balance, he had given and agreed to go to the aquarium, it was not my turn to give a little and let him listen to Lady Gaga. He wanted to look at the liner notes while we listened so I gave a quick look at the pictures and agreed. I found out she uses the word b**** once in that album and once in The Fame Monster album pretty quickly. Curtis wanted to know about every song and if there were videos. I answered and told him which ones had videos and that her videos were generally inappropriate for children. “Why?” “Because she wears inappropriate outfits.” “Why like what?” “They are just bad and you don’t need to see them.” “Well I’m going to look them up when my parents aren’t around and I’ll decide if they are inappropriate.”

        Curtis then wanted to know if her first name was Lady and her second name was Gaga. I told him no, that was her stage name, another difficult concept to explain to him, and that I knew her first name was Stephanie. Liner notes in hand he found her full name. Curtis likes to know how old people were when different things happened. “I don’t know,” isn’t an acceptable answer. I told him she was 25 now so he asked if the other CDs came out when she was 23 and 24. At this point I was winding around narrow coastal roads I was unfamiliar with so my answers to his inquires generally became “Yes.” At most times I try not to just agree with him because the world is full of “I don’t knows”, but in this situation he was already anxious about the aquarium so I relented and agreed that Lady Gaga was 23 when her first CD came out and that she would put out another when she was 27. It is interesting to see that Curtis, who likes concrete facts, regurgitated this information with his own spin, slightly different from the “facts” I gave him.

Jamie, Home Support

There are so many times in our life with Curtis that remind us how different we are.  As he grows, we have to alter our existence less and less to accommodate his different way of thinking, as he has learned how to live in our world.  Of course, there was a recent incident where he locked himself in a friends' bathroom during a playdate because "his stupid sister was crying like a baby and i didn't want to hear it!"  But I am not writing about those moments right now.  I am writing about one time when Curtis was just like every other kid in an arena packed with 53,000 people.

When I opened the Taylor Swift tickets on Christmas day 2010, I was so excited I could burst.  Greg got me and Curtis the perfect gift.  Then I started to wonder how Curtis would react to a screaming crowd, if he would understand that we have to sit in our seats and can't walk right onto the stage, and would he be able to stray from his 8:30 bedtime to stay up late for a concert.  But the months passed and Curtis began to change...a lot.  He seemed to be understanding "our" world in ways I didn't expect he could.  And so Sunday, June 26th, 2011 arrived and we spent all day waiting to leave for the concert at 4:30pm.  And when 4:30pm arrived, Curtis hid in my bed under the covers and said, "I don't want to go to the Taylor Swift concert."  Classic Curtis.  So we let him chill out for a bit and put on our "no big deal" attitude and got out the door.

That night I got to dance and sing with my little boy like there was no tomorrow.  He had the absolute time of his life...and so did I.  He was just the same as every starstruck kid around us, except he kept asking what song she was going to play next (as if I knew) and what time it was almost every time a song started and ended. He also thought I should know the exact time at which the show would end, so I made a time up and came pretty close. I thought the fun would come to a screeching halt when fireworks went off mid-show, but to my pleasant surprise, Curtis' fear turned to a smile when I covered his ears and showed him how beautiful the lights were.  The next day he insisted upon wearing his Taylor Swift T shirt and told everyone we saw that he was up until 11pm and Taylor wore a red dress, a gold dress, a green-blue dress, a purple dress, and a black dress.

I think back to the poem I wrote three years ago about how hard Curtis has to work to do the things other kids do, and this concert was no different.  He spent years learning the skills to survive in that setting and it all paid off when I got to see him kick back and have fun just like every other kid there.

Laura, Mom


I was waiting for them in an adjacent parking lot in case all was not so smooth. I was reading "Born On A Blue Day" and getting devoured by bugs when I left my car but managed to avoid the $40 Gillette Stadium parking lot fee by hanging out in the parent drop-off. I knew Curtis would be fine because his mom would navigate the scene to make him feel as safe as possible. Then Taylor Swift would take care of the rest. I was glad they had so much fun and happy to drive them home. Curtis fell asleep about 7 minutes into the ride shortly after telling me I should not be going south on route one because we live north of Massachusetts. He was skeptical it was necessary to travel south briefly before heading north but didn't have the energy to wait it out.

Greg, Dad