Saturday, August 18, 2007

Terrific piece in 8/20 New Yorker by Tim Page

Again, can't link to it but still have to recommend the Personal History, "Parallel Play: A lifetime of restless isolation explained" in this week's New Yorker (Aug 20, 2007), written by Tim Page.

When John handed it to me , I got about a paragraph and a half in when I burst out laughing.

My second-grade teacher never liked me much, and one assignment I turned in annoyed her so extravagantly that the red pencil with which she scrawled "See Me!" broke through the lined paper. Our class had been asked to write about a recent field trip, and, as was so often the case in those days, I had noticed the wrong things:
  • Well, we went to Boston, Massachusetts through the town of Warrenville, Connecticut on Route 44A. It was very pretty and there was a church that reminded me of pictures of Russia from our book that is published by Time-Life. We arrived in Boston at 9:17. At 11 we went on a big tour of Boston on Gray Line 43, made by the Superior Bus Company like School Bus Six, which goes down Hunting Lodge Road where Maria lives and then on to Separatist Road and then to South Eagleville before it comes to our school. We saw lots of good things like the Boston Massacre site. The tour ended at 1:05. Before I knew it we were going home....
The attention and precision to time alone! A familiar preoccupation of our own son, and at times, his father. The article is a beautiful recounting of a youth outside the norms, yet ultimately serving well the professional journalist who, as an adult, realized he had Asperger's Syndrome. It's a wonderful piece of writing, and a great look into the gifts and trials of this condition. Highly recommended.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I just read that article and loved it - put it aside to make copies for the preschool teachers and for Gloria at Garrison School. It's much better than some of the academic articles on Asperger's that I've read.
Cheers.