Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant Read Online Free PDF Page A

never tried to make me play with the other children. Perhaps they hoped that I would begin to acclimatise to the children around me and interact with them, but I never did.
    My father would always drop me off at the nursery and sometimes pick me up too. He would come straight from the factory, often still wearing his work clothes. He wasn’t self-conscious at all. He was necessarily a man of many talents. After arriving home, he would change and then make a start on supper. He did most of the cooking; I think it helped him to unwind. I was a picky eater and mostly ate cereal, bread and milk. It was a fight to make me eat my vegetables.
    Bedtime was always a struggle – I often ran around or jumped up and down and it took a long time for me to settle down to sleep. I would insist on the same toy – a small red rabbit – to sleep in bed with. Sometimes I wouldn’t sleep at all and cried until my parents relented and let me sleep in their bed with them. When I did fall asleep, nightmares were common. One example remains with me to this day. I woke up after dreaming of a huge dragon standing over me. I was tiny in comparison. The same dream recurred night after night. I became petrified of falling asleep and being eaten by the dragon. Then one night he was gone as suddenly as he had appeared. Though I continued to have nightmares, they became gradually less frequent and less frightening. In a way I had vanquished the dragon.
    One morning on the usual route to nursery, my father decided to take a different turning. To his surprise I began howling in my buggy. I wasn’t yet three, but I had learnt every detail of the journey from home to the nursery centre. An old lady walking past stopped and stared and then remarked: ‘He certainly has a good pair of lungs.’ Embarrassed, my father turned back and went the usual way. In an instant my crying ceased.
    Another memory from my time at the nursery centre is of watching one of the assistants blow bubbles. Many of the children stretched their hands out to catch them as they floated over their heads. I didn’t put my hands out to touch them, but stared at the shape and motion and the way the light reflected off their shiny, wet surface. I particularly liked it when the assistant blew hard and produced a long string of smaller bubbles, one after another in quick succession.
    I didn’t play with many toys at the centre or back at home. When I did hold a toy, like my rabbit, I would grasp it rigidly at the edges and move it from side to side. There was no attempt at hugging or cuddling or making the rabbit hop. One of my favourite pursuits was taking a coin and spinning it on the floor and watching it as it spun round and round. I would do this over and over, never seeming to get bored.
    My parents remember me striking my mother’s shoes repetitively against the floor, because I liked the sound they made. I even took to putting them on my feet and walking gingerly around the room with them on. My parents called them my ‘clip clop’ shoes.
    On one of my father’s walks down the street with me in the buggy, I called out as we passed a shop window. He was reluctant to take me inside. Normally when my parents were out they never took me inside a shop, because on the few occasions they had done so in the past I had burst into tears and had a tantrum. Each time they had had to make their apologies, ‘He’s very sensitive,’ they would explain, and leave in a hurry. This time my cry seemed different, determined. As my father took me inside he noticed the large display of Mr Men books. There was the bright yellow shape of Mr Happy and the purple triangle of Mr Rush. He took one and gave it to me. I wouldn’t let go of it so he bought it. The next day we walked past the same shop and I called out again. My father went inside and bought another Mr Men book. This soon became a matter of routine, until he had bought me every character in the series.
    My Mr Men books and I soon became