Looking for Girls on Craigs List

“Will you help me find me some nice friends?” pleaded Matthew last summer. In the past I’d advertised at a local college for friends for Matthew, but now that he was 22 and older than most college kids, I needed to look elsewhere and decided to try Craig’s List.

“Seeking a mentor, friend type for my autistic son” said the ad. The replies came quickly and I was impressed with the great field of applicants. As I started setting up interviews, Matthew asked me if any girls were on the list.

He said it was so hard to find nice girls that he could hang out with. I was worried about what I was getting into -while I knew that Matthew was interested in girls, he came on way too strong and scared most of them away. But I decided to risk it, hoping that the one girl on the list could befriend him in a sisterly way.

She was Katie, 22 like Matthew. She seemed like the perfect candidate, as her brother ran a program for disabled young adults and she was clearly compassionate. We scheduled an interview for the next day.

Katie turned out to be very attractive, and during our talk, I told her that Matthew might develop a crush on her. She said not to worry, that she’d learned how to set boundaries with the disabled young men in her brother’s program. She met Matthew – he blushed and asked her which states she had been to- and she agreed to take him for a bike ride the next day. Matthew told her he liked girls a lot, and he looked so happy as he watched her drive away. I wondered if I was setting him up for heartbreak.

Katie must have been wondering the same thing- she called later that day and backed out. “I couldn’t bear to hurt Matthew’s feelings,” she said.

As I hung up the phone, I was transported to the day in the ninth grade that I invited a boy named Joe to a dance. “Just as friends, right?” he said and I was crushed. So when I went to tell Matthew that Katie couldn’t come after all, and he buried his face in his hands and cried, I told him what my mother told me all those years ago.

“You can do better than Katie, anyway.”

And thankfully, Matthew believed me.

Laura

Laura Shumaker (www.laurashumaker.com) gives readers a peek at the future,writing stories about raising her autistic son Matthew, now 22, every Friday. She's the author of A Regular Guy: Growing Up With Autism.