"You've got three seconds..."

Girlfriend and I are leaving the play room one day and in comes Marcus holding her water bottle; no cap.

I decided to let him give it to me of his own volition.

"Marcus, you have three seconds before you are in time out."

Most people would perceive this as a threat, Marcus perceived it as a challenge. I hadn't started counting before the bottle was inverted and he was chugging. I think his thought process was that he was likely going to be in timeout anyway, so why not quench his thirst?

I yell "Marcus!" but in my head I'm counting. Sure enough, he finished it off in about a second and a half.

The best part though, was that after he chugged it, he triumphantly spiked the bottle. It isn't possible to get real mad at him.

"No..."

I put Marcus in timeout one time, and I leave and comeback into the living room in a span less than thirty seconds.

He's holding a large wrench (which had been on the table; who knows why) with two fingers out away from his body like they smelled bad or something, and he is just looking at it. He doesn't see me.

I wasn't expecting him to be holding a wrench. I was surprised.

"Marcus! Are you holding a wrench?"

I meant that as a rhetorical question.

He startles, drops it, it makes a loud clatter, and he looks at me and goes "No...".

Understand, he didn't lie to me. Marcus is the quintessential literalist.

"Can you help me?"

The standard timeout for things like hitting or not listening is a five minute timeout. And whenever we send them to time out we have to tell them what they did wrong specifically, so can have them tell us what it was they did wrong after the time out.

We've dubbed those little Q and A sessions "Exit interviews".

Now you see, Marcus is an enterprising individual, and we don't catch everything he does. This becomes blatantly obvious in the exit interviews.

"Marcus, can you tell me why you are in timeout?"

"Because I hit Katelyn."

"What? When? No, thats not why you are in timeout."

"Because I said 'fuckers'."

Everytime he does this I have to surpress a laugh.

"No Marcus, try to remember why you were in timeout."

At this point usually I'm sitting across from the time out chair, and he'll do something like randomly kiss my nose. But I don't break that easy.

"Come on Marcus, what did you do RIGHT before you were in time out."

"I don't know, can you help me?"

The Girlfriend always about dies at that one. He says it all very innocently.

"Did you climb on the back of the couch?"

"Yeah, I climbed on the back of the couch..."

And this process is repeated at a bare minimum of four times a day when I'm home.

"If you leave..."

Marcus has my girlfriend wrapped around his little finger, and he knows it.

We are leaving one night for dinner or something after they are put to bed. Marcus hears us.

He appears in full-body pajamas trying to look timid behind the hallway door. Earlier that night, he had streaked through the house laughing after he escaped from the nightly bath. Timid is not a true show of expression for Marcus. I am not fooled.

The Girlfriend is.

"Where are you guys going?"

I'm a hard-ass when it comes to this stuff: "We are going to dinner, go back to bed."

Girlfriend is less so. She gives him a hug. Then tucks him back in.

Another time we were leaving to go back out of state. Apparently Marcus didn't get this memo till we were almost in the car.

We see the door open and Marcus does a full headlong run right towards Lauren. She picks him up.

"If you leave, I'll be sad." He says this while holding her face and looking really distraught.

We did manage to leave, but it was a close call.

"I need a hug..."

My girlfriend was playing tag with my younger siblings; and I guess Marcus doesn't like people running from him. So he goes to her:

"I need a hug. I just want a hug."

To be fair, he asked for a hug when she was it too.

"Pooh jumped"

Marcus has a bad habit of throwing things into the fan and watching them get hurled to the other side of the room. If you hear giggling and two loud cracks you generally can assume one of his hot wheels is impaled in a wall somewhere.

My mom hears a louder than normal crash one day. From Marcus's room.

When she gets there there is a big stuffed pooh on the floor with a fan blade lain on top. And Marcus is looking at the fan with surprise.

He looks at her. He looks at the fan.

"Marcus, what happened?"
"Pooh went into the fan."
"... How did Pooh get into the fan?"
"He jumped."
"Did you help him?"
He gives mom a look like shes stupid and goes "Well, yeah."

"So If I say that word..."

I have serious cause to believe that anyone who thinks my little brother is autistic is being had. This is one of the reasons why.

Anyone who has been around Marcus for any amount of time knows that he has a penchant to drop the f bomb when he gets upset. I think he started doing it when we told him to "Use your words" because he used to hit people instead. In that way, it's an improvement.

To stop this, my mom has implemented a "I'm gonna smack your mouth" policy for cuss words in the house. I'm not going to smack his mouth though because I know damn well he will pee on me if I do.

So he calls me a fucker one day and I send him to timeout. As I'm letting him out, Mom comes in and says "If I catch you using that word, I'm going to smack your mouth." I guess she wanted to make sure he knew it was a general rule, because she added "And if Justin uses that word, I'll smack his mouth too!"

Marcus takes an inquisitive posture.

He looks at me. He looks at mom.

"Wait. If I use that word... You smack his mouth?"

He smiled mischievously.

"No Marcus, If you use that word, I'll smack your mouth."

"Oh." Clearly broken-hearted.

"Marcus, were you going to have mom smack my mouth?!"

He looks at me, giggles a little and goes "No..."