James Guttman: 0:14

hi pod, I am dad. He's not just hi dad, he's my dad. James gutman folks, james gutman, hi pod, I'm dad. I am here. It is friday, it is mid-may. I am being handed an ipad. What happened here? Oh, there you go. Welcome back to the podcast. I got lucas in the background. Can you say hi double mouth tap. That's the best you guys are getting. Um, yeah, this is. This has been a day.

James Guttman: 0:41

I've had a lot going on in terms of getting ready for the book release, in terms of getting ready for the book release, in terms of the podcast and the blog. All these different things are working out. I appreciate you guys joining me. If you found me in any streaming service, please like and subscribe. If you found me on hypodondadcom, bookmark it, tell your friends, tell everybody, tell them all about it, every single Trying to give you guys as honest of a commentary as I can. That's the whole idea of what I do here. That's the whole reason why I do this podcast.

James Guttman: 1:10

In the beginning For those of you guys who don't know my story is somewhat usual in the beginning, I was a father. I saw delays in my son. I was concerned about him. It worried me and I was really on this path of just being this worried, concerned dad. Now I know, looking back, that how I see Lucas today is kind of probably how I was always going to end up seeing Lucas. But I kind of credit, in some ways, the quintuple bypass when I was 35. It was a year after Lucas was born. A little over a year. He was showing his delays. I saw them, we knew of them, I was prepared for them. I remember specifically because Hurricane Sandy was a month before my surgery and I remember I remember, you know, staying behind in the evacuation zone and say I'm going to fight the hurricane.

James Guttman: 1:58

I was not in a good mental state and I don't know when I came out of that surgery. I came out with a new lease on life. I had been healthy, I had never had any health problems, never had a surgery, and I had a quintuple bypass and I thought about life. I thought about all the things that annoyed me and how they seemed stupid when I thought I was going to die and I thought about what I wanted, and I wanted my kids. I I don't know, I just wanted to feel good and I knew this because I went online. I remember I don't talk about this a lot, but I went online after I came out of the surgery. I was in the hospital at one point at home, and I couldn't even read news or that online discourse. There was something about it that just bugged me People genuinely obsessing over their hatred of TV shows and celebrities they never met and it just felt so.

James Guttman: 2:59

And that's not me. I'm not now. I'm not, and it's funny because I feel like when I was younger maybe I was I was a little bit more sarcastic, a little bit more like that's life, I don't know. I I think there's a realistic way to look at the world. Right, I'm street smart, you know I. I know how to carry myself on the streets, I know what to look out for. I don't really I don't trust a lot of people at face value, but I want to, I'd like to, and I think that's the. That's the difference.

James Guttman: 3:30

There are some people who are dying to hate you. They're just, you know, they're just dying to hate people. Oh, I hate him. Why, I don't know. Why do you? What's wrong? Why do you hate him, something like that?

James Guttman: 3:41

So I came out of the surgery and I watched my son and all of a sudden I was no longer really just obsessing about like how do I change him. I'm obsessing like what is he doing, what is that? And I've told the story about the car under the seat and watching him play with his toys in ways that didn't jive with how they were in the instruction manual and how it used to bother me. And here I was, post-surgery, happily trying to figure him out. And over the last few years that's just become what this blog has been about. I mean, autism appreciation is the way I see my son. I don years, that's just become what this blog has been about. I mean autism appreciation is the way I see my son. I don't. It's funny because I don't really think I remember when I first thought of saying that as it was.

James Guttman: 4:23

I think it was during the whole debate, the autism acceptance and autism awareness debate, which bothers me, and I've said this before, I'll say it again. They're both positives, right, they both support people with autism. And it always amazed me, especially early on in this blog, how like aggressive people would get about it. They'd be like happy autism awareness month. You mean autism acceptance month. Okay, all right, sorry, and I get mad and I'm thinking like, but I'm not mad about anything, I don't. It's not about acceptance. I accept my son, I'm aware of my son. I like my son. I like the way he acts. I think the stories I tell about him I mean in many ways I talk about autism appreciation being something that built up as this blog went on.

James Guttman: 5:06

But one of the main reasons I remember early on, the very beginning, of why I wanted to write this blog was that it was hard to tell people stories about Lucas without them being sympathetic at times where they shouldn't be. There was a story I always thought was so cute where he's running through the house. He's just a run around in like I forget about this. He's a run around in circles through the house. He would go through the kitchen, into the front room, down the hallway, back to the dining room, up through the kitchen and it was like a circle and my daughter would chase him. She'd be like Lucas catch me. That was so sweet because it was like he was doing it anyway, so she would jump in there and then he would play with her and sometimes he would be doing it with her and sometimes he'd just be doing it and she'd be there. But it was his thing. He loved to do it.

James Guttman: 5:51

So I'm sitting there in the kitchen and I'm eating hard pretzels, the little ones on the bag, and I knew he hated these pretzels because he's tried them before and he hated them. So he's running by at full speed and he stops and he almost skids right Like he's going so fast. It was a cartoon. There'd be a little smoke coming out and he stops and he double taps his chest, which means give me, I want it. And I was like buddy, I'm like you don't, you don't want this pretzel. I'm eating the pretzel and he goes double tap. I'm like you don't want this pretzel, you don't like pretzels. Again, all right, buddy, here and I hand it to him and he takes it in his fingers and he lightly puts it on his tongue. He sticks his tongue out and he licks it and then he hands it back to me and runs away full speed.

James Guttman: 6:35

And it just made me laugh out loud. It made me laugh out loud in the moment. It makes me laugh out loud to think about it, maybe now I've told the story so many times. It's been so long, but it's still funny because I can see it. I remember what it was like. You weren't there to see it. It was funny.

James Guttman: 6:48

And before the blog, and I couldn't, because when I would get to the part about like you know how he first, how he taps his chest, it's always like it was just sadness to the fact that he couldn't talk, that they had for him. And don't get me wrong, man, early on, when my son was little, I was sad, I was worried about him. I wanted him to be okay, but it wasn't at a certain point Like all right, he's not going to talk. So what am I going to cry every time I look at my kid for the rest of my life? Are we going to find things that work for us? And we did that and that's what the story was. It was a cute, funny story. But to tell people like, oh, he didn't understand what pretzels were, I'm like no, he made me give it to him and he didn't let. It's a whole and I didn't want to keep doing that. He's fun, he's great, he's sweet, he's kind and every positive thing I could possibly say about him. He is right, that's who Lucas is and that's why I write this blog about autism appreciation. But over the last, at this point, eight years. Oh, I got that wrong. I meant to say that Last week I talked about how Lucas was seven.

James Guttman: 7:58

When I began this blog, my kids were little. It was 2017. He was seven. You've seen seven years of Lucas. You haven't seen seven years of Lucas. Lucas was five Five when I started this blog right, because it was February of 2017. He turned six in 2017, but in March, so he was five years old. So I've raised Lucas from five to 14 in front of everybody, in front of all of us together on this. You guys have seen the things that he's done. You've seen his achievements. You've seen his successes. You've seen my failures. You've seen the things that worked and the things that didn't. You've heard my story and you've watched it play out.

James Guttman: 8:35

There's things that I wrote about when he was little that I don't even think about anymore Running Even now, telling the story about him running around the house in circles. That's like 100,000 years ago, but for a while, that was our life. You know Lots of things I wrote about him. I have one of my favorite ones. It's called no Eating the Laundry. Like when Lucas was little, he would chew on this blanket and he loved it and he would like. It was like a teething thing, and this went on for years. He was still into it. I don't know if he still does it with his mom, but he doesn't do it here. But he would go into a laundry pass. If it was sitting there and just start chewing on a t-shirt. I'd be like, oh my God, so many times, dude, between that and drinking from cups of strangers, this kid should have had hepatitis X, y and Z and he made it through. But that was an old story from a long time ago, things he doesn't do anymore, and I've watched him grow and you've watched him grow too, and I've had this opportunity to write this blog and to do this podcast and share him with the world, because it means everything to me.

James Guttman: 9:34

Autism appreciation is I don't know. It's not about anything. It's not about money and it's not about careers. It's not about, it's just it's about. Let me tell you about this kid. I spent 15 years writing about pro wrestling. I loved it. It was fun, it was great, but it wasn't my thing. It was something other people did on television that I then wrote about.

James Guttman: 9:57

A lot of the writing that I do is about things other people do, whether it's a stock market or TV shows and things like that that I've written about in the past Las Vegas Lucas's. This is our life, this is my life, this is my first person narrative and I'm so blessed to get to do it. And honestly and it's all, I guess I didn't mean to go back here, but honestly it goes back to the book High World I'm Dad how fathers can journey from autism awareness to acceptance to appreciation. That comes out in a month, that is. I've never been more proud of anything I've written and put out there for people. I'm so looking forward to sharing this with you guys and telling you all the great things that are going to be attached to it and all the wonderful things coming ahead. I've been blessed and I've been really grateful for this opportunity.

James Guttman: 10:44

I'm at a point in my life where I don't know I'm happy and I'm glad and I thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to talk to you, to share my son with you, and for doing this blog, for allowing me to write it and just the feedback. Man, it's so overwhelmingly positive. But even when, once in a while, I'll get something that's not positive, I'm not talking about trolls. I'm talking about people who have issues, issues with their own lives, of dealing with autism. And I try to write back to everybody Because, at the end of the day, that's what this is about. This is about support and sharing what we have going on at a time where sometimes people don't get what we're trying to share. You guys don't make the sad, sympathetic faces to me when I tell you the stories you tell me about your stories. You tell me about, you know, your kids, your grandkids, your friends' kids, whoever who does the same thing, and it makes me feel less alone. It makes me feel proud of what I've gotten a chance to do and I'm so thankful for that. So, guys, I appreciate it.

James Guttman: 11:47

Go to the blog highblogomdadcom Monday, wednesday. I got new blogs every week. I got highpodomdadcom all the streaming services every single Friday. Follow me on social media H-I-HiJamesGuttman HiJamesGuttman at Instagram. I'm over on Facebook. I'm not on Twitter, but c'est la vie, that does it for me. Guys, thank you so much for taking the time. I'll be back. That big announcement's on the way. I told you Got about a week. Hopefully by next week I'll be able to talk all about it. Until then, be well, bye, pod, I'm Dad. I'll see you next time.