#17

So, one of my clients made my day on Friday. He's great, I've been working with him for almost four years now and he is one of those kids I'd love to keep in touch with all throughout his life. He is wacky and I love it. He is also 17. In the years that I've worked with him there have been several milestones in his treatment, I'm not sure yet if Friday was a milestone, but it was sure interesting and may lead into some other great work with him. This kid likes to avoid difficult subjects and he will say nonsensical things just to change the mood or get a reaction. I usually have some type of whitty comment back to him, he laughs and then I direct the converstation back to where we came from, this is just something interesting about him, not what I wanted to write about....So Friday we are sitting there talking about his excitement for the weekend, he is going to see some cousins that he hasn't seen in a few years because they moved out of state. As we're talking about his last interactions with his cousins, he jumps up and starts to unbutton his uniform shirt. I look at him perplexed and he says "I couldn't sleep last night, I was so excited about seeing my cousins, so I made this..." he unbuttons his shirt to reveal a black body suit, with a cowl neck....on the back it has the emblem from a cartoon....he made himself a frickin' NINJA outfit and he wore it under his school uniform. I dunno, I laughed on the inside and it took us into a fascinating conversation about Ninja's, which I was able to relate back to a lot of his behaviors. We also reviewed his motivation to dress like a Ninja and his plans for the costume. At this point, nothing to be worried about. Anyway, I'm glad that this kid feels comfortable to share his "secret identity" with me. Hopefully he won't go all "ninja" on someone someday. I really don't foresee that, but I do foresee him being on Project Runway someday. I love my eccentric wonderful clients!