Iss'waining

The Toronto temperatures fell below severe and then changed their mind, so now the fall weather is mild, not unpleasant, but typical. Today, a bit of rainfall from a mostly white sky. Sitting safely inside the dry engineering building of Ryerson campus, I feel exceptionally dry as I look at the wet, twitchy maple leaves outside the window. Suddenly in my mind I hear my little brother's carefully rehearsed echolalia on the subject of rain, often taken from different cartoons and without using the letter R.  "Iss'waining, iss'waining!" "Look at that, the wipers are stuck!" "It's getting kinda spooky."

His repertoire on what to say during a downpour stems mostly from Charlie Brown cartoons, where the threat or fact of rain always seems to be coupled with a strong emotion.

Like the autistic he is, he has a very serious take on how to do certain things, and is very careful about saying the lines in exactly the inflection and tone of voice that the original character had. Still, the words sometimes get modified because he pronounces them in his own way (I have a theory that his mouth motorics are a bit too relaxed).

So while I sit at Ryerson, trying to look like I'm reading a PDF full of interview transcripts, my mind is hearing a very young voice go through the whole repertoire... (Watch the clip from 4:15...)