Hi, There!

Hi! My name is DD. At least, that is what everyone calls me. I do have another name. It is Doah Donald Mahlou, but almost no one calls me that.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I like to organize things and to manage what other people do. Most especially, I like to make plans. Mommy says that my favorite phrase is "I've got a plan!" Well, I've got a plan now. My plan is to tell you some stories about my mommy. She says they're embarrassing. Daddy says they're normal for Mommy. I say they're funny. You decide!

Now, let me tell you about my mommy. Perhaps you have met her — my mommy? She's like the lady next door except that all kinds of strange and funny things happen to her. She rushes to the bus stop, ready to attack the workday with a vengeance — except that she seems to have forgotten something that leaves everyone staring. Airplanes fall apart on her, and road trips somehow end up in the wrong states. Then, when she is exhausted, she flops into bed and finds a "stranger" there.

Mommy says that there are two kinds of people: the detail-observant and the detail-oblivious. Some folks are detail-observant. They notice immediately if a neighbor has purchased a new truck, someone has rearranged the living room furniture, or the house is on fire. Other people don't seem to notice the little (uh, sometimes big) details—but they might notice a house on fire if it is their own and they are sitting in it and starting to feel hot. Mommy calls these people detail-oblivious.
My mommy is detail-oblivious. I like that because odd things happen to detail-oblivious people. Life with a detail-oblivious person can be a whole lot of fun.

This book contains only true stories about my Mommy, but mommy made me change the names of her friends (and her bosses). She says that I should protect the innocent — and her. I don't quite understand that because most all of the people I talk about in this book are guilty of the things I describe, including Mommy. Well, Mommy says that they have to be treated as if they are innocent. So, I did that.

I got the idea for this book from Jacqueline Reuss. She was my mommy's secretary, and she thought funny things happened to Mommy. She said that someone ought to write a book about Mommy. So, I did. Thank you, Jacqueline. That was a fun idea! We got you, Mommy!

I dedicate this book to Dr. Joan Landy, Karen Lindstrom, and Sue Scott, who were some of my teachers, and to Julie McGlinchey, my reading tutor. They all thought there was hope for me to become something called literate, but they were the only ones who thought so — except, of course, for my mommy, my relatives, and my family's friends. As for me, I'm starting to believe now.

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This story is excerpted from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah, my severely mentally challenged youngest son, to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading.

Since several readers have commented on the human interest aspect of this "project," I thought you might be interested in reading the introduction to the book that Doah and I worked out together, talking about the origin of the book and the reason for his enthusiasm. He really put in a lot of hard work. It took us all weekend every weekend for a full year, with him relating to me the stories he remembered personally or remembered having been told by various relatives and friends and my typing them up and reading them back to him for his approval and editing ("no, no, I not say that," he would pronounce when my words did not meet his approval). It was a great mother-son collaboration -- and Donnie, the daddy here who is a computer graphics specialist, did all the graphics, again with Doah having the right to final approval.