Nikki and Aedan got this paper airplane book, and uh, Aedan just asked me to go into his room and help him. And he was trying so hard to make paper airplanes himself out of this book. And it’s one of those ones where it has pictures that you cut out, of the planes. Each one has a different design you do it. It’s really not that hard, but for ME, uh, it is. It’s one of those types of things. And um, so I was in there with him and he was asking me “How do I make this?”. And I’m thinking to myself “Aw shit. I know this is going to be a problem for me (making it) and I can’t field his questions and give him the answers he needs because  I don’t understand either”… So I was trying to look at the 4 or 5 pictures,  simple pictures there was in the book on how to make this thing. You know, just fold the bottom and fold this, fold that.

And it’s just so hard for me, I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s just visual or… but it’s hard for me to look at this and associate that with the paper I was holding. And then okay… how do I fold this… and where… and it gets real confusing. And then it tires my brain, so as I try longer it seems my brain gets tired and it gets harder. And uh, it can be frustrating, you know, because when he asks me “why can’t you do this Dad?”, uh I don’t want to tell him. You know? What do I say?

You know and I try to tell him “I can’t do this with you buddy”, and he starts to cry. And I’m like “no, I – I – I really – I would LOVE to, uh, I want to. So bad. I do. “ How do I tell him? What do I say? You know? I don’t know what it is. But it’s no different really than when he had this simple train track set. A Playskool plastic train set that even had a giant picture on the box of it, you know it was a super simple toddler train track set.  And I just couldn’t seem to understand how to put it together. But then there are things I can do sometimes. It takes me very long, if it’s a familiar task maybe I can get through it. It takes me a lot longer, but I can. It just seems like something new that I have to figure out is extremely difficult. Which is odd considering what I used to do for a living. But… same reason I have a hard time, besides the visual part, I have a hard time understanding how to make myself a profile, uh and get on Facebook. Until about a year ago or so (Nikki set it all up for me). Same mechanism and I hate it… I hate it.