A Wish Come Clear

You may be asking yourself: Why the name, “A Wish Come Clear?” If you’ve wondered about the origin of the phrase, you can watch the video, or read on below!

The phrase is in fact my younger brother Willie’s brainchild. He has autism, and his favorite humor involves purposeful mistakes. He loves plugging the ‘wrong’ word into the ‘right’ phrase, such as, “A dream is a wish your…fart…makes!” or “I’ve been dreaming of a wish come…clear!”

Willie’s ingenuity always amazes me, yet what’s more astonishing is how our silly games got us through our worst times. You see, when Willie entered puberty, he began to engage in aggressive and self-injurious behavior. These behaviors often occur with greater frequency in individuals with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities, and they are heartbreaking to witness.

I remember car rides when all my parents and I could do was keep trying to make him laugh or he’d be banging his head against the windows. Granted, we had to time it right; we couldn’t just toss a joke in anywhere. We learned how to watch for signs of anger, how to spot a violent train of thought and give Willie’s mind other material to work with in time.

It seemed as though he couldn’t use the angry part and the funny part of his mind at the same time. He could apologize and then throw a fork at you; he could take deep breaths and then punch a hole in the wall. But he couldn’t laugh and do those things. So many times, it was the humorous mistakes, the ‘wrong’ phrases, that saved us.