aso.jpg
Dec 8 2001
The above picture shows me at a
Christmas party for Autistic kids. I am the big kid with the grin.
The white
sign on R2s dome says Merry Christmas. Below is my account of the day.
I just came back from a Christmas Party for Autistic children. A co-worker,
who is part of the
executive of the society, convinced me to bring out R2 to
show the kids.
Overall a great time. A lot of kids absolutely loved seeing R2. Quite a few
of the parents
also went out of their way to thank me. At times it looked
like R2 was more popular than Santa.
Now I know my R2 can run almost
continuously for 3 hours.
I was very happy to bring R2 out but I have to say my nerves are completely
shot after this event.
First off I was up until 4am the day before getting
everything ready and fixing some of the electric's.
The majority of the kids
were great but the shear number of them buzzing around R2 was a bit
overwhelming.
The kids were all around R2 looking into his HPs and main eye,
grabbing this and that.
I was told later that autistic kids generally like to touch things. Boy did
these kids want to touch R2.
As I said before this was mainly no problem but
there were a few kids who wanted to manhandle R2. These kids
would grab at
anything, try and push or pull R2 around. One kid would every so often kick R2s
feet.
The majority of the time the parents would quickly jump in and stop
their kid and also apologize.
The ones I had to look out were the ones the parent let run around and do
whatever they wanted.
After a time I recognized which kids were unattended
and liked to grab R2. I would quickly jump in
and not let them touch R2. The
most worrying ones were the kids who would grab a HP and try and spin the
dome around. My wiring for the dome lights does not allow continuous 360 deg
rotation.
The worst damage was one kid who pulled off one of the vents in front and
dropped it. Of course all
the glue joints broke and R2 parts were all over
the floor. Some quick temporary repairs and R2 was
ready to go again.
Some of the kids were great and would stop other kids from touching R2. They
would even pull the
other kids back. Some of the kids were so great that
later on I let them control R2 for a bit.
Now I have one of those warm fuzzy feelings from making all those kids happy.
This makes all those
times I was cursing at trying to get R2 together and
working worth it.
But if you are doing anything like this I recommend getting plenty of sleep
the night before and
taking something like Valium before you go. ;)
If you want to build your own R2 go here --http://groups.yahoo.com/group/r2builders
or here --http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/astromechs
for an R7 go here --http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/r7droidbuilders
Email me ask@interlog.com