On the way to the last day of after-school basketball, Zak Bazzel is jamming out. His hulking body vigorously rocks front to back, hands reaching double body width apart before smacking back together in rhythm to the South African beats of Juluka on the radio.

Once at the gym he strips off his T-shirt courtside, switching into a new light gray shirt like his teammates are wearing and immediately reaches to rip out the neck tag.

Zak pulls the tags out of any shirt he can get his hands on, something that has proven problematic as his parents are trying to teach him how to do laundry. Consequently the entire Bazzel household is tagless. Some shirts haven’t held up to the de-tagging all that well, ripping at the seams or giving way to a hole.

The Bazzels are trying to break the habit. That, or they’ll just keep buying Hanes and Gap, which have caught on to the whole anti-tag movement and just stamp their sizes where the tag would have gone.

Out on the basketball court, Zak attempts a few shots. Looking at the coach rather than the basket he misses. At the next skills test station, he leans against the wall, eyes slightly squinted, hands clapping widely and makes loud, unintelligible noises at no one in particular until it’s his turn. He dribbles down the line and bounce passes the ball to a waiting coach.

And the end of the practice, the coaches collect the team and hand out superlatives. When they call Zak’s name he doesn’t notice until a teammate taps him on the shoulder and points. He lumbers up to accept his ribbon; handshakes are given all around.

Back at home, Zak’s mom, Joan, hangs the ribbon on the side of the refrigerator along side the others. Zak goes to change and the same loud, unintelligible sounds echo down the hallway.

Diagnosed with moderate to severe autism when he was 4, Zak, now 17, can barely read, write or speak. He signs his name in inch and a half letters complete with a smiley face. His drawings, often done in crayon, feature happy bugs — fat bees, red and yellow butterflies, big-footed ladybugs.

His words are forced, as though his mind must struggle to assemble the syllables. The memorized sentences, saying hello, thank you and so on, come easier, said dutifully, purposefully.

Diagnosis, however, wasn’t easy. Until he was 18 months old, Zak exhibited fairly normal developmental behavior. He was learning words, playing, eating the occasional green bean from the garden. But at 18 months those behaviors stopped.

Although Zak was Joan’s first child, she knew that something wasn’t right.

“When I noticed Zak trying to participate it was obvious that he was not developing normally,” Joan said.

In an effort to help facilitate social interaction, Zak was placed in day care two days a week. Unlike most toddlers who cry when their parents leave, Zak paid no heed. Eventually a daycare worker gave Joan a Reader’s Digest article about autism, and the information contained therein rang a few bells.

Joan took Zak to a doctor, who recommended seeing a specialist, who recommended another specialist. The efforts appeared in vain.

“They said, ‘He’s a boy, he’s slow, don’t worry about it’,” Joan said.

When Zak was 4 the family moved to Franklin, where they met a speech therapist who took time to observe Zak. After watching him take his clothes off or sit in the sandbox and sift sand for hours, the therapist scheduled an appointment with the Developmental Evaluation Center at Western Carolina University.

Workers at the DEC took their turn observing Zak and a week later called to recommend an organization based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill called Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication handicapped Children (TEACCH).

“That was the beginning of a long journey,” Joan said.

For the first three years of school — one year of kindergarten and two years of first grade — Zak had a one-on-one facilitator who encouraged him to become more sociable, outgoing, flexible to changing situations.

In second grade, Zak was transferred to another school and placed in a special needs classroom.

While the grades passed, the life skills were slow to come. It takes abnormally long to teach Zak to do things on his own. It wasn’t until May 30, 2001, that Zak finally learned how to tie his shoes. He was 13.

“It really makes you aware of your own limitations,” Joan said.

These days Joan and her husband, Mike, are still working on teaching Zak the skills he will need to live a more independent life. Each task has its pitfalls however. Like pulling the tags out of all the shirts in the laundry, Zak can cook, but he cannot turn on the stove. Zak will never drive a car and he’ll probably never hold down a 9-to-5 job.

But that doesn’t mean that Zak cannot at least work towards living on his own. Although he can stay in school at Franklin High School until he’s 21, Joan and Mike have decided to move Zak to a group home for autistics in Asheville. The move most likely will not occur until Zak is 20, but in the meantime, Joan has started working on developing a support system to help ensure that Zak is never lonely or in need.

Bazzelbuddies is designed to locate people who are willing to drop by, say hello, maybe take Zak out for a Coke.

The idea for Bazzelbuddies stemmed from the mother and son’s Bazzelbugs, little wire and bead creatures bedazzled with a pair of Joan’s handmade earrings. Zak helps create the bugs by collecting river rocks and coloring them. The bugs are then mounted on a pair of the rocks and sold for $12 at Twigs & Leaves Craft Gallery and Pottery Studio in Waynesville.

“This is the kind of thing that I think people will embrace,” Joan said.

To become a Bazzelbuddy contact Bazzelbug@yahoo.com.