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Jack isn’t an easy kid to buy presents for. He has cerebral palsy that affects all four limbs, which means bats, balls, boots and pads are out. He has cortical vision impairment that makes it difficult to see and scan text, so no books or comics. He’s scared of movies, even kids movies, because he has a sensory processing disorder, and movie soundtrack music freaks him out. He doesn’t like soft toys. He can’t hold or manipulate a game controller. He’ll play memory and trivia games for a bit, then lose interest. He spends much of his home life watching live music gigs on YouTube, and talking about whether we should go and see his favourite bands live, which we should, except when it comes down to it, he’s scared they’ll be too loud.
His other obsessions are Paddington Bear, Ben Whishaw, Jack Black, Tenacious D (yes I know, bad parenting) and the Hawthorn Football Club. He follows footy in his own idiosyncratic way. Sirens are loud, and he doesn’t like sudden loud noises, so he’ll watch old games that he knows the result of at the edge of our living room, while I watch the live match on TV. We do go to the MCG together, but only if Jack is reassured that we have his noise cancelling ear muffs, and that we’ll warn him when the siren is less than two minutes away. The most memorable game Jack ever attended was one with his sister and grandpa where he sat next to the booth containing the man who blew the siren. Sure, the Tigers pumped us by four goals, but Jack came home buzzing. ‘Dad. He sits in a room. He presses a button.’
Jack has his Hawthorn heroes. When he was four, he went through a phase of calling himself Cyril Rioli. ‘Is Cyril’s gran coming over tomorrow?’ and ‘does Cyril have kinder tomorrow?’. Years ago, I made a little video about young Jack’s love for Cyril, and after quite a bit of organising, Jack finally met Cyril after training one night. Cyril was lovely, he’d been told how much he meant to Jack. When I gave Jack the obvious videoed set up, ‘who’s your favourite player, Jack?’, he didn’t hesitate — ‘Paul Puopolo’.
