In his life, Sammy didn’t listen very well, and he certainly had a knack for proving people wrong. I often described him as “consistently inconsistent”. It never failed that when I expected him to not tolerate something, he proved me wrong by loving it. When I expected him to like something or do well with an experience, he would pull out all stops to prove me wrong.
I remember one hospital stay in particular when the admitting nurse asked me what his daily routine was like. I told her about his sleeping patterns, what he enjoyed, what he didn’t like. Over the course of the hospital stay, he slept when I said he would be awake and was awake when I said he would be sleeping. “Uh, mom, are you sure he’s your child?”, the nurses would jokingly ask.
Sammy’s neurologist made rounds one afternoon, and as we talked about Sammy, I joked with him about Sammy always doing the opposite of what I said he would do. His doctor quipped with the humor you might expect of a neurologist, “I could diagnose him with Oppositional Defiant Disorder.”
Another label…ODD? Uh, no thanks.
Sammy Yammy and HoPE 