I Booed Raffi

When I was 2 years old, I went to go see Raffi (who was my favorite singer at the time) at the Palace Theater in New Haven, Connecticut (where I then lived). I of course loved the music, so to show Raffi my great appreciation, I clapped my hands and said, "Boo!" I thought boo meant yay. This was due to my autism, which causes confusion of facts. Nobody knows why exactly I thought this, but there are a couple of theories out there. The first theory is that I heard someone say boo at a baseball game and just figured that it meant yay. Another one is that I knew that woo meant yay, so I just figured that boo also meant yay. I don't know which one it was, or if it was a combination of both. My parents didn't know that I was autistic back then, and they thought I was smart when I was in fact mentally retarded. They figured that I was just being snide and sarcastic and my dad even booed along with me, and that only added to my confusion. I didn't finally realize that boo meant boo until several years later, when I learned the Purim story. It was when I was in kindergarten (around the same time as the Sparky incident) and my mom was telling me how when you say the name of Haman (who is the bad guy), you say "Boo!" I naturally figured "Well, you wouldn't say yay for a bad guy," and that is when I figured out the truth. Another phrase that I thought meant yay was "schoff crunch." This was again in New Haven but this time we were at an orchestra concert on the New Haven Green where they played the Blue Danube Waltz, which is also played in the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Jellyfishing." Anyway, we were there with our neighbor Michal, and the concert was over, Michal started clapping and said "Schoff, schoff crunch." I figured that meant yay, and then went about my business. Then, when we were at an Easter party, I stood on top of the slide, started clapping and said "Schoff crunch!" My parents figured that I was mimicking bunny rabbit sounds (because it was Easter), but I was just saying yay. There you have it, folks. Had I been cured of autism via chelation at the Yale Child Study Center, I would not have subjected myself to this embarrassment.