Life, Animated Page #3

I see Owen on the bed,

flipping through a Disney book,

and I see,

sort of over to my left...

I see Lago, the Funnel.

Now, lago is the evil sidekick

to the villain Jafar from Aladdin.

- Now, I know Owen loves this puppet.

- Jafar, Jafar! Get a grip!

I grab the puppet,

I pull it up to my elbow,

and I begin to crawl across

the rug as quietly as I can,

and Owen turns to the puppet

like he's bumping into

an old friend.

I say to him, "Owen, Owen,

how does it feel to be you?"

And I said, "Not good,

'cause I don't have any friends."

Now, I'm under the bedspread,

and I just bite down hard,

you know.

I just say to myself,

"Stay in character,"

and I say, "Okay, okay.

"Owen, when did you and I

become such good friends?"

And he said, "When I watched Aladdin,

you made me laugh."

And then we talk, Owen and lago,

for a minute, minute and a half.

It's the first conversation

we've ever had.

And then all of a sudden,

I hear him say...

I love the way

your foul little mind works.

That's the next line of dialogue.

That's Jafar, the villain,

to his evil sidekick, lago.

I love the way

your foul little mind works.

And then I run down and grab Cornelia.

I'm like, "He's memorized

all the movies.

"I mean, he's memorized them all.

If you throw him a line of dialogue,

he'll throw you back the next line."

And at that point,

it was like a window opened,

like a light went on,

and we began to speak to him

in Disney dialogue, the whole family.

I memorized every Disney

animated movie ever made.

I memorized the credits,

and that's how I taught myself to read.

It felt like a great, wonderful...

world of enchantment.

When we'd be down in

the basement watching movies,

when it would kind of

all come together where,

you know, that's when

we drew Owen out.

And these were hand-drawn figures

with exaggerated expression,

exaggerated emotion.

It was easier for him

to interpret all of this.

I think the idea

that it never changes,

and everything else

is changing constantly...

Every other part of his life.

Our lives, as his parents,

we're getting older.

You know,

Walter's getting older.

You know, people are dying.

Everything's changing,

and that's the one thing that he can

hang onto that never changes.

- What's Mommy doing?

- I'm making plans

for our trip to Disney World

in two days.

Are we gonna want to go to

the Beauty and the Beast show?

- Yeah.

- Ls it too scary?

- No.

- I think Mickey has a friend.

There's Mickey, Goofy, Donald,

and blah, blah, blah.

He began to use different

movie scenes to express his feelings,

like Hercules for not giving up,

The Jungle Book

for wanting friends,

and Pinocchio for learning

what it feels like

to be a real boy.

Cornelia and I are not therapists,

but we're kind of faking it here.

And the goal was...

Whatever works to get to Owen.

These are

for you.

- Thank you, Owen.

- You're so welcome, Emily.

I love you.

"To Owen.

"Thank you for always

being there for me

"in the happy times

and in the sad times too.

I love you more than anything."

And I also have

this necklace for you too.

Thanks, Emily.

And... And I made it myself.

Wow, what a wonderful thing.

- It's Mickey Mouse on it.

- Yeah. Yeah.

Emily is wonderful

and cute and adorable

and sweet, soft, and gentle.

When I move into my apartment,

Emily will move

into the apartment above me,

and we'll be neighbors in love.

Another day, another day.

Hi, how are you?

- Hi.

- Good.

Good to see you again

this morning.

- Good to see you again.

- Hey, Owen, good to see you again.

- Come on back.

- Okay.

Owen, here's one of the things

that gets hard for you.

Not easy for you to talk to people.

So we are going to just

say things about our lives

we don't think

someone else knows.

Okay, so I'm gonna make a comment,

and my comment is,

my 27-year-old daughter

rescued a kitten recently.

My girlfriend Emily, she has a pet cat.

I didn't know that. That's perfect.

Put that on there.

That's great. And we're not

working on questions right now,

so I'm not gonna ask you

any questions about it,

but that was the perfect comment

to follow that up.

- Yeah.

- I grew up with cats.

I thought I only liked cats.

I never liked dogs,

and it turns out I love dogs.

- I love our dog, Gus.

- That was a perfect comment.

Owen, given his autism,

he really likes things scripted.

In fact, things that are unpredictable

make our folks really anxious,

so they really like the script.

So can we pull out your phone,

and you show me

your text history with Emily?

Yeah, my girlfriend and sweetheart.

You kind of get in a routine of telling

her that you really care about her.

- Yeah.

- But you don't really

- give her anything to think about.

- Well, but I want to.

- So could we work on that?

- Yeah.

But Owen, he's just filled

with the desire to relate,

and he's born to a brain

that makes it hard.

That does look...

This is for putting your thoughts on,

'cause I'm pushing your brain

to do some stuff that's hard.

At his age, he wants to have

a job. He wants to grow up.

And he tries to make sense of the world

by fitting it into a Disney script,

right,

whereas we grow up,

we try to go,

"Okay, we just can make sense

of the world on our own."

So for Owen, I think

it keeps things neat and tidy

and fits into the black

and whiteness of the Disney.

But the real world

is not a Disney script.

I kinda have a lot going on.

Yeah. ls it also

about how you feel

in terms of moving

and all the changes going on?

- For sure.

- So does that also kind of feel...

Does it feel scary?

- A little bit.

- Yeah.

I think it's easy,

when a kid has had so much therapy,

and is 23,

to think that the trunk

is a lot stronger

than it is, you know?

And the roots are stronger than the are.

Yeah.

But when I see him working with you and

really on these very basic conceptual...

Ability for conceptual thinking,

it makes it very clear how...

How great the deficits were.

You know, 23-year-olds

are off graduating from college.

You know, moving

around the world independently.

- Right.

- No one expects that

of Owen at this point, but the question

is, what can we expect for him?

- Right, right.

- What do you think

Owen's contributions are

to his community, to his family?

We asked ourselves that

for so many years,

and at one point,

Ron just looked at me and said,

"So who decides

what a meaningful life is?"

- Clap.-

.Yay-

This is my Disney friend

Jonathan Freeman.

- Yeah! Hi, Jonathan.

- Hi, how are you?

How's it going, my friend?

- How are you?

- Good.

Jonathan Freeman

is a great actor

who also does voices

for animated Disney films.

Your father's charged me

with keeping peace in Agrabah.

The boy was a criminal.

He is the voice of the evil

Jafar in Disney's Aladdin

and now my official buddy, pal,

and friend of the family.

So, Jonathan and I first

became pals and friends

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