Some people are visiting this note to find out how I could have misspelled Mickey and to find out how our trip to DisneyWorld was. Well I didn’t misspell and we haven’t done Disney yet…but I’d say our latest adventure was a small step for autism-kind. We scored free tickets to a Nashville Predators game from our friends over at ASMT (Autism Society of Middle Tennessee). I had never seen a hockey game and can’t say it was on my bucket list, but I really enjoy taking my brood out into the world to see what we can see and I totally count this as broadening their cultural horizons. So off we headed to downtownland and the Bridgestone Arena.

The first thing we learned about hockey is that it costs a small fortune to park anywhere near the arena. I considered hocking one of the children to pay the $20 parking fee but that would have been a waste of a ticket and Supermoms do NOT waste. So we drove around for 20 minutes and found a free meter a few blocks away. As we were piling out of the van I realized that it is winter in Nashville. I’m not sure when that happened, but I missed the memo and we had about 5 blocks to travel in 30 degree weather. The next lesson we learned about hockey is that two-year olds have lots of questions and opinions about it on the 5 block walk…and they call it “mockey”.

Mama, where are we going? What’s a mockey? I don’t want to go to the mockey! Can I have french fries in the mockey? Pick me up mama! And on and on and on, ad nauseam.

Once in the stadium and in our AWESOME row KK seats in the 117 section, mockey became VERY cool. We laughed and danced and ate popcorn and goldfish. We learned to yell, “YOU SUCK!” whenever a Phoenix coyote was mentioned by name. And we learned that nice ladies sitting in front of us do not care for autistic children pulling off their gym shoes, not wearing socks, and resting their feet on the back of her chair. Can’t say I blame her for that…unsocked toes in tennis shoes probably stink, but she eventually scooted over a few seats and turned back into a nice lady. Crisis averted.

So the predators won the game, and my oldest son got to take pictures of and get autographs from various…ahem…cheerleaders. My middle son was entranced with the jumbo-mega-tron thing, was very calmed by all the loud noises; and my baby girl danced, laughed, and ate herself silly.

I didn’t really mind that Savion randomly took his shoes off as we were waiting at a light on the walk back to the car though I didn’t notice until we were about a half block away. I did mention that it was approximately colder than a deep freezer right? It also wasn’t TOO perturbing that Sariyah screamed about half the way back to the car because I refused to carry her. We ate Taco Bell and everyone is now asleep 20 minutes after being put to bed. That mockey is all right with me…