I was running some errands with my sister, and my niece is autistic, and she, she’s not nonverbal. She’s starting to get her words more and more, here and there, but she still doesn’t use them all the time, and she especially isn’t always a “hello,” “goodbye,” react-to-her-name kind of girl. But she was saying more and more and more things recently, and especially when we’re driving around, if me and my sister go anywhere together and she’s of course with us.
And I was going to get my – we pulled in the driveway for my sister to drop me off, and I was just getting ready to head out, and grabbing my things, and my sweet little niece kinda just made a noise, like – I don’t remember exactly what the noise was. I don’t even think it was really a word, but it was very obviously, like, getting my attention. Like, “Ey, ey, ey”’ you know. But not like that, you know. So I turn around to see, to say, “Oh,” you know, “goodbye.” And I look, and she’s got one little finger pointed out. And she’s looking at me like she wants me to like poke her fi- – do it – like, the only way I can describe it is to do the ET thing. You know, to like put your, put one pointer finger to one pointer finger and just kinda touch. So, I just do that with her, and the second I do it and say, “Bye, sweet [name]!” she smiled so big, and it just melted my heart because she doesn’t, you know, always show that kind of reactive emotion like that. So that was really, really special, and I hope she continues to do little ET goodbyes with me. That would be so precious.