When someone tells you that Down Syndrome children are delightful, they never mention one thing: shotgun. It didn't matter if he was the first to the car or last to the car, Johnny claimed shotgun. It was like the barrel seat we used for musical chairs. There was only one, and it was his. We could have fought back, but John had no shame and he had Mom wrapped around his finger. If he failed to wheedle a concession from us ("C'mon. I'll be your best friend!"), he turned on the waterworks and Mom stepped in. Once we got underway and Mom's attention was on the traffic, he would turn and give a delightfully demonic wave. Delightful.
In the early 1980s some of my freelance work involved going to the homes of celebrities and doing "home shoots." An important part of these sessions was making sure that each setup included important and subtle clues about the subject's life. After a while I couldn't turn it off. Everything turned into a home shoot. John didn't have an Emmy, he didn't have an Oscar, he didn't have a Nickolodeon Kids' Choice Award. He had a TV, a cup of coffee, a stack of books, a bottle of Cuervo, and a Shrimpenstein statue adorned with a Mickey Mouse hat. Just like any other 17-year-old in 1981.
St. Vincent's was a Catholic school, and John was naturally exposed to the story of Moses parting the Red Sea. He thought that was a pretty cool trick, and once he mastered it he liked to show it off. One day when we picked him up for the afternoon we asked what he wanted to do. "Tide pools, El Capitan" he said. We told him it was high tide, and he just shrugged. So we went. It was high tide. And then it wasn't. He laughed. "Aha! I got you!"
