To explain here, my son is autistic. High functioning, but autistic nonetheless. He tends to get enthused about things that, frankly, don’t enthuse me much at all. Take cartoons. Clearly there is something not quite right about a mom who has no interest in them. We have the same issues over things like infomercials, something he absolutely loves. The following is an almost word-for-word conversation we had awhile ago.
Saturday night my boy came peeling out of his bedroom extremely excited over an infomercial he’d just seen. About a knife set, of all things. Unfortunately for him, I didn’t get very excited about it.
“You get a LOT of knives, Mom! Stainless steel knives that won’t get dull no matter what you do with them. You can cut cans, you can cut wood…all for just three easy payments of $13.33.”
“That’s cool, son, but I don’t spend a lot of time cutting cans or wood.”
“But Mom, you get a lot of knives, and it comes with not one set of steak knives, but two, in case you have a lot of company.”
“Sorry, but if we had that much company we’d be having Sloppy Joes. And you don’t need any knives for those.”
“But Mom! That’s eight steak knives, all for just three easy payments of $13.33.”
“I’m sorry but we don’t need more steak knives.”
“But it comes with kitchen scissors, so you can cut up chickens and other stuff, Mom. And the first knife they showed is guaranteed so if it gets dull they’ll replace it. But only the first knife. The rest of them aren’t guaranteed.
“We don’t need knives!”
“But you can have them all for just three easy payments of $13.33!”
“No!” (By this point he is getting extremely annoyed with me)
“Those knives sell for $840.00 and you can have them for just three easy payments of $13.33!”
“I don’t really care. I’m not buying them.”
“That’s just stupid, Mom! You’d waste $800.00 when you could have had those knives for just three easy payments of $13.33? That’s just stupid!”
“Well, I’m not wasting $800.00 on any set of knives, so you don’t have to worry about it.”
(Now he’s walking back to his room muttering…)
“That’s just stupid. You could have had all those knives for just three easy payment of $13.33….”
And he actually said the phrase, “three easy payments of $13.33” all those times. I should have written the company to let them know they could have a new spokesperson for their knives, all for just three easy payments…
