The day we almost saw

How to Train your Dragon.
Except that Luca had a panic attack in the lobby of the cinema complex in Dun Laoghaire.

Not at the ticket machine where I bought the tickets for the 12.30pm show.
Not at the counter where I bought the special 3D glasses that make him look like Austin Power and me like Elvis Costello.
Not at the popcorn counter where I managed to downsize from a wheelbarrow of the sweet sticky stuff to a mere bucket.

No, he had his panic attack at the door of theater 12, when he realised that the earplugs that I bought specially for the occasion did actually let some sound pass through.

About six months ago, Luca was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome (the Asparagus thing, as we call it in the family circle). A form of high functioning autism according to the ever reassuring Dr Michael. Or a form of low functioning normality, depending whether one is of the glass half full or glass half empty persuasion. We thankfully belong to the former.

As the first kid of the family, he had been cataloged by his untrained parents as a rather sensitive pain in the arse. There were quite a few patterns of behavior that we could not quite explain (other than as acute paininthearsedness).
In fact, the poor little guy suffers from Sensory Integration Disorder. And that SID is vicious. He can feel totally overwhelmed by certain stimuli (sounds mostly in his case) and he is now slowly learning how to cope with them: loud music, passing trains, brother and sister organizing screaming matches in the living room, Powerpoint presentations and conference calls (oops, no, the later is my own personal SID).

We are very fortunate that he goes to a school where the teachers have been very helpful in:
a- helping us on the steps that ultimately led to the diagnosis
b- integrating him with the rest of the mainstream class
They have been brilliant so far and have shown a lot of patience and understanding.
Fair dues Caitriona, Anna and Paul!

We have not taken him to the cinema for years, as the whole experience is far too much for him to handle. He has been twice before, once for Shrek and the second time for Drowning by Numbers during the Greenaway retrospective. He survived no more than 15 minutes of the former and I escaped after 20 minutes of the latter.

This week he actually asked us if he could go and see How to train your Dragon, and I was delighted to take him for an afternoon out.
His old demons came back to haunt him at the door of the theater though and after trying to gently coax him into at least giving it 10 minutes, just to see, the rivers of tears had not stopped and I knew that there was no point insisting.
There were some young kids getting seriously worried seeing him so upset at the door of the cinema and they were suddenly getting doubts about the desirability of 3D dragons jumping at you out of the screen.

So instead we went to the nearby Dun Laoghaire library, where he managed to spot one scary picture in the Ice Age 2 book that he picked.
Because it reminded him of the scary music of the end credits...

We finally headed back home and made our own animation movie instead.
It is called How to Train your Dinosaur. It is full of stegosauruses and silent meteorite explosions. Brilliant.

Pity he'll never be able to attend the premiere in Cannes, they tend to play the films way too loud...


He was delighted to handle the Big Camera to take my portrait after I took his.