kickbol

i've got this little 7 year-old taiwanese girl that comes to the pool almost everyday. her name is Connie.
and everyday she runs up to me and yells, "KICKBOL!"

so i play kickball with her.
i do mostly all the pitching, but whenever i catch her kick i get a few at-bats.

however, if she gets tired of my kicking, she'll just randomly yell "THREE OUTS!" after one of my kicks, and i'll go back to pitching.

so usually i try to get in one or two good kicks, then the rest i try to lob to her so she can catch them and she can be up again.

the couple times i do get up, i kick hard.
she's got this cute laugh that she does everytime i kick it hard.
so i get my jollies from seeing connie's excitement.

but yesterday after a pitch from her, i smack the crap out of this ball and it did a B-line for her face.
*SMACK*
she got beaned hardcore.

but it was the funniest fucking shit.
she didn't even flinch. this ball bounced right off her nose and she didn't even bat an eye.
i was all concerned, running over to her to see if she was ok.
but she just nonchalantly goes, "i'm alright."

maybe this doesn't sound as funny as it is to me, so maybe you should know the background on this kid.

when i first started working there, before kickball days, she'd look up at me and go, "how many close?"

how many close.... what the fuck does that mean?
i took it to mean how many hours/much time until closing.
so i'd always answer with the appropriate amount of time.

the other thing she would ask was, "where's Brad?"
i asked around. he was an old lifeguard that used to make her swim laps.
so i would tell Connie, "Brad doesn't work here anymore."
to which she'd reply, "Brad is at home?"
"yeah, sure Connie, Brad's at home."

so i asked around about this girl, and i once heard that she was autistic.
i thought this for a long while, until about a month or two ago (i've worked there a year now) when connie started acting coherent and appropriately answering questions instead of asking for Brad or "how many close".

so, for being 7, she doesn't seem to be all there, but as time goes on, she seems to have more and more of a brain.
so maybe now you can see why the ball ricocheting off her head without a response is so funny to me: i can't figure this girl out.
is there something wrong with her, is/was she just shy, or is she just better at speaking taiwanese than she is speaking english?
cuz the other kids her age, you can level with them, tell them what they can and can't do. Connie didn't have this comprehension for the longest time, but i think i'm finally starting to get through to her.

before i would tell her we couldn't play kickball because there were too many people on the pooldeck that could get hit. she'd just stare up at me and present the ball like she had no idea what i was saying. but now she'll just grab a ball and run upstairs to play with herself until the people leave.

i'm still just really curious as to why this major step forward in comprehension skills has only presented themselves within the last couple of months.
maybe before she was playing dumb to get her way?

maybe i'll never know...