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examining test data in my temporary office when I heard the knock, soft and tentative.
    In the time it took me to get to the door he'd backed away into the corridor, and now stood pressed against the wall as if trying to recede into the plaster. He was almost
    thirteen, but slightness of build and a baby face made him appear closer to ten. He wore a blue and red striped rugby shirt and dirty jeans and clutched a book bag stuffed so full the seams had spread. His black hair was worn long with the bangs cut ruler-straight. Prince Valiant style. His eyes were slate-coloured - blueberries floating in milk - and too large for a face that was soft and round and at odds with his skinny body.
    He shifted his weight and stared at his sneakers.
    'If you don't have time, forget it,' he said.
    'I have plenty of time, Jamey. Come on in.'
    He nibbled his upper lip and entered, standing back stiffly as I closed the door.
    I smiled and offered him a seat. The office was small, and the options were limited. There was a musty, moth-eaten green couch of Freudian vintage on the other side of the desk and a scarred steel-framed chair perpendicular to it. He chose the couch, sitting next to his book bag and hugging it as if it were a lover. I took the chair and straddled it backwards.
    'What can I do for you, Jamey?'
    His eyes took off in flight, scanning every detail of the room, finally settling on the tables and graphs crowding the desk top.
    'Data analysis?'
    'That's right.'
    'Anything interesting?'
    'Just numbers at this point. It'll be a while before patterns emerge - if there are any.'
    'Kind of reductionistic, don't you think?' he asked.
    'In what way?'
    He fidgeted with one of the straps on the book bag. 'You know - testing us all the time, reducing us to numbers, and pretending the numbers tell the truth.'
    He leaned forward earnestly, suddenly intense. I didn't yet know why he'd come but was certain it hadn't been to discuss research design. A great deal of courage building had preceded the knock on my door, and no doubt, a rush of ambivalence had followed. For him the world of ideas
    was a safe place, a fortress against intrusive and disturbing feelings. I made no attempt to storm the fortress.
    'How so, Jamey?'
    He kept one hand on the book bag. The other waved like a pennant in a storm.
    'Take IQ tests, for example. You pretend that the scores mean something, that they define genius or whatever it is we're supposed to be. Even the name of the study is reductionistic. "Project 160". Like anyone who doesn't score a hundred sixty on a Stanford-Binet can't be a genius? That's pretty lame! All the tests do is predict how well someone will do in school. They're unreliable, culturally biased and according to my reading, aren't even that good at predicting - thirty, maybe forty percent accuracy. Would you put your money on a horse that came in a third of the time? Might as well use a Ouija board!'
    'You've been doing some research,' I said, suppressing a smile.
    He nodded gravely.
    'When people do things to me, I like to understand what it is they're doing. I spent a few hours in the psych library.' He looked at me challengingly. 'Psychology's not much of a science, is it?'
    'Some aspects are less scientific than others.'
    'You know what I think? Psychologists - ones like Dr. Flowers - like to translate ideas into numbers in order to look more scientific and impress people. But when you do that, you lose the essence, the' - he hugged at his bangs and searched for the right word - 'the soul of what it is you're trying to understand.'
    'It's a good point,' I said. 'Psychologists themselves have been arguing about it for a long time.'
    He didn't seem to hear me and continued expounding in a high, child's voice.
    'I mean, what about art - or poetry? How can you quantify poetry? By the number of verses? The metre? How many words end with e? Would that define or explain Chatterton or Shelley or Keats? That would be stupid. But psychologists think