The autistic boy clutched my leather vest and screamed relentlessly for forty minutes while his mother struggled to pull him off me in the McDonald’s parking lot.
I’m a 68-year-old biker with more scars than teeth, and this random little boy had latched onto me like I was his lifeline, shrieking every time his visibly shaken mother tried to pull him away.
She kept apologizing, tears streaming down her face. “He’s never done this before,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I’ll call the police if you want.”
Other customers were filming the scene, probably assuming I’d done something to provoke him, while his mother pleaded for him to release the grip on the “scary biker.”
Then, suddenly, the boy stopped screaming and spoke his first words in six months: “Daddy rides with you.”