Things To Wonder About (no survey needed)

How or why were the nine counties in California (San Diego, Sonoma, Orange, Sacramento, Marin) and in Oregon (Multnomah, Marion, Jackson, Lane) for the Generation Rescue “Cal-Oregon Unvaccinated Survey” chosen? (My California geography is not what it was—it’s been 17 years since I lived full-time in my native state—but a quick glance at where the California Rescue Angels are located does not suggest a correlation with the five California counties surveyed.) (Sorry, I don’t know what the counties in Oregon are.) (But I do know that New Jersey has 21 counties; Verona, NJ, where SurveyUSA—-the market research firm hired by Generation Rescue to conduct the survey—is in Essex County—not Bergen County, where the now somewhat infamous borough of Northvale is located.)

Will similar surveys be conducted in other states?

Is it just a coincidence that this survey was announced on June 26th, the last day of the hearing of Michelle Cedillo’s case?

Have you ever heard an autistic child on record saying “I became autistic because of a vaccine”? Do autistic children wonder about how they became autistic?

So far, my son has not—–it is the case, he does not have a lot of language and, since we tend to work on him saying phrases that he will use a lot, “how did I become autistic?” is not one that comes into the conversation with him too much. Questions that we do work on include “what would you like?”, “what shall we do now?”, “what is your name?,” and—-the question Charlie has been waiting since Friday afternoon to hear—-”who are you going to see at school tomorrow?” (Charlie has had all of two days off from school, and starts summer school tomorrow, and his anxiety about this change was one reason for getting the stomach flu.)

Here is Charlie’s answer to my question: “OT, [name of speech therapist]; speech, [name of OT]; [name] [name] [name] [name] [name][name]…. !” (I know it would be more effective to include their names, but concerns of privacy prevail.) This is the first time Charlie has reeled off everyone’s name; I think he reversed the names of the OT and the speech therapist because they sometimes collaborate.

I think. I wonder. (Will I catch Charlie’s stomach flu? The wages of motherhood…….)

But I don’t have to wonder, nor do you, why Charlie went to bed with a big smile on his face tonight.