The Promenade, Broomfield CO. "Do you want to see Everest?" I say to my friend Lori. "Do you think Mia would like it?" She replied with a doubtful smirk on her face. I already had a plan for that "We can just put a movie on my phone for her. The movie is in IMAX so she may even find some of it interesting." "Ok, let's go."
I stick a juice box, two packs of goldfish crackers and a ziplock bag full of honey grams in my purse and we walk out the door. When we get to the theater, there are roughly twenty people in line ahead of us. Mia patiently waits in line, and moves forward with us. I start congratulating myself in my mind on what a good girl she's being.
We find our seats. We sit on the second row from the top in the center three seats. We put Mia between us so there are two sets of hands to help her if she needs anything. There's still about ten minutes before the movie starts. To keep her in a good mood, I open the bag of honey grahams and set them in front of her. I find Cars 2 on my phone and push play. She is perfectly content... for about half an hour.
Just as the first team is summiting Everest, Mia starts to giggle. She has a great laugh, and it makes Lori and I both chuckle. The giggling then evolves into a full on belly laugh. We both shoot each other a look that says "that's funny but she's going to start disrupting the other people in the movie". Everest isn't supposed to be a comedy. I lean in to whisper into Mia's ear "Quiet honey, shhhh." The laughing doesn't stop, I think it even gets more loud and intense. At this point we have all shared the goldfish, honey grahams and Mia had drunk her juice box. "I'm gonna go get her some popcorn" Lori says. Hoping that eating something will occupy Mia's mouth and she'll forget to laugh.
Lori returns with the popcorn and starts feeding it to Mia. "Bwahaha" Mia exclaims spitting popcorn out of her mouth. "I'm gonna take her out for a bit" I say. Mia and I go into the lobby of the theater. Her laughing persists. We stay there for about ten minutes and I realize she can't stop laughing.
A couple months ago I read a book called "The Reason I Jump" by Naoki Higashida. The author is a thirteen year old boy on the Autism spectrum. He talked about hysterical outbursts like this. He said he couldn't control them, sometimes he would simply remember something funny and it would replay in his head. He just couldn't help but to laugh at it. It can also happen with sad or scary memories that would make him break down crying.
We leave the movie, Mia is still laughing on the drive home. I apologize to Lori repeatedly. She's my best friend and has known Mia since she was born. "What are you apologizing for? "she says. "I'd much rather she were laughing than crying." I wasn't sorry that Mia was laughing, I was just sorry I didn't see that something like this could've happened.
