To play the game, you have to live by the rules. The rules in our house are sometimes a bit strange. They emerge from everyday situations and are adapted for interpretation by our 12-year-old, autistic daughter, Natalie. The number one rule to date, albeit a bit strange, is certainly one to abide by: No farting in a restaurant. Natalie repeats this mantra several times a day to remind herself and her extraordinarily gaseous father. Some other rules we have been working on this summer are: Don't touch people. Just say, "Hi!" and Not everybody's name is Tom. When in doubt, Natalie inserts "Tom" after the "hi" part in her initial greeting. This confuses Sam's friends, but they will grow to understand the absurdities of the LaFuria world.
Some other rules I came across several years ago are Bill Gates' Rules of Life, supposedly given to a group of high school students, I am assuming at their graduation ceremony (lucky students). I've saved it for several years, and again thought is was a good lesson for all of us. Read below the words of Bill Gates:
Rule 1: Life is not fair--get used to it!
Rule 2: the world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60, 000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool your thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give your as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping your FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
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