Tater Tots

I just got Tater Tots for the first time in my life. I never used them when my children were young; in fact I don't think I was particularly aware of them. They were not around in my childhood and I never had to eat in a cafeteria until I was at university.

So....I have a son who will soon be 45. He is on the spectrum. After all these years I still don't understand him. Yesterday he asked me for "Tater Tots". He said that they were incredibly special to him.

Today I went out and got two bags of Tater Tots. I thought he might really appreciate it.
But I came home and he accused me of trying to murder the entire household.

I'm upset because this kind of thing happens too often. He seems unable to live independently and he refuses to find a job. I hate that. I have worked as a cashier, a waitress, a home health care aide, an assistant librarian, a teacher, and I even spent a couple of months working in a screw factory and inhaling metallic shards. But this is not about my past: I always knew that I had to earn money no matter what.

So it's not really about the Tater Tots per se; it's about the difficulty of living with the irrational and the inconsistent.

I keep telling him that he must prepare for his parents to die and he thinks it's some sort of gimmick to force him to work. He thinks he will just stay in this house. He thinks I'm being annoying when I tell him that we have to pay slightly over $500 a month in property tax. I don't think he even knows about things like water bills, gas bills, electric bills, cable bills.

And today I went out innocently thinking that my little boy (he will be 45 in November) would be pleased that I listened to him wax nostalgic about Tater Tots. And now I am being punished for bringing them in.

OK: here it is: if I am going to take my time here at Spark seriously, I should say that both my husband and myself are afraid of our two sons. We were young when they were born. We told ourselves that by our mid-40's we would be independent and still young enough to travel and enjoy life.

The younger one (who will be 43 soon) manipulates us by threatening suicide when things happen to throw the spotlight off him. When his father had a stroke he said he would kill himself unless we sent him to England. Then when my brother died our son could not handle the fact that I was in grief so he went to a bar the next day, got drunk, and called us saying he planned to kill himself.

But the fact it--people do kill themselves. I would never threaten to do it.

Right now I am huddled in my study because the Tater Tot son is commanding the kitchen like a world-famous actor playing Hamlet.

Who knows what will happen there?