GREAT FALLS — Max Watson is a unique 18-year old. “He’s a sweet boy,” said is mother Jenny. “Who wouldn’t say that about their kid?”
Max is deaf and does not communicate much. He likes two things: folding paper, and, for the past five years, watching traffic.
As his mother, Jenny Watson just wants to make her son happy.
“The reason he’s out here is because this is the one of just a handful of things he truly enjoys in life,” Jenny said.
For Max’s siblings, this is nothing new.
“I went into my mom’s room for a while, but when I came back… out of the room, Max was fully gone,” said Summer, Max’s sister. “I checked outside and he was right there, looking at the traffic.”
“Yeah, there’s nothing really extra to it,” said Meliora, another of Max’s sisters. “I feel like for some people it might be, but because we grew up with him its just like, ‘Oh, this is my brother’.”
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And so going outside is Max’s routine. He goes to the window or grabs his shoes, and to the backyard they go, where a gate in the fence allows him to get out and watch the passing cars.
It didn’t take long for drivers to notice.
“Somedays it's multiple cars, sometimes you might get one,” Jenny said.
Cars began to honk and wave as they pass by Max.
“To feel the kindness from strangers or even people we know,” Jenny said. “I needed to thank Great Falls, I didn’t want them to stop.”
Max goes outside every day the weather is nice, and has been enjoying the last few days of warm weather in the year.
You can look for Max when you're driving along Northwest Bypass in Great Falls.
