Deadlines

3 Years:
“Mama, are lines alive?”
“No. Lines are inanimate. That means not alive.”
“Then how do they die?”
“They don’t.”
“Then how do you have dead lines?”

Since I work from home, my daughter was always very involved in, and interested in, my job. Until she was at least five years old, her understanding of my career was a sort of cargo cult. I made invisible money by sitting at a computer and churning out words called “articles” for invisible forces called “clients.” I had something called “paydays” and bowed to overlords called “deadlines.” She knew, and could talk about, everything having to do with my career. She just didn’t know what any of the words actually meant.

One of the classic signs of autism, especially among highly verbal children, is a tendency to take everything literally and at face value. So, when my daughter heard repeatedly about deadlines, she was certain that I had a collection of lines, and that they were dead. I’m not sure what she imagined when she heard me talk about missing deadlines or meeting deadlines, but I like to think that she thought of them as friends or masters of mine, with whom I had a close but traumatic bond. How that played into her idea that they were dead, I’ll never know.

No matter how many times I tried to explain what a deadline really was, there just wasn’t a way that her three-year-old, literal, autistic brain could sort it out, so she had to settle for just not understanding. I tried to minimize her confusion by not mentioning deadlines around her anymore, but that didn’t keep her from taking other words and phrases hilariously literally!