Thanks Jack, and yes I have read all the Feynman stuff and the books occupy a special place on the shelves and in my heart. For a man who claimed to know nothing of "social things" he was very insightful there too. The story of his first wife is one of the most wonderful and heart rendering love stories I can ever imagine.

Your story reminds me of my son Michael. He is a free thinker and sees things differently than most of us. He loves art and will spend hours upon hours making drawings. I need to buy stock in Meade!!! He's only 7, but very talented and what he "sees" is not the usual. He is having problems with basic alpha/reading things, perhaps owing to "Failure to Thrive" during the first year of his life. He came to us at age 9 months and its hard to tell how much the damage done befpre then is affecting him now. But he DOES have a very neat mind that is not classic in its approach.

When he was 5 and we went for "Kindergarten" testing, I sat and watched, but parents could not coach of course. On several tests he did not take the calssic approach and on one, the teacher (I use that term loosely) became extremely frustrated. She would stack blocks in a pattern and the kid was supposed to repeat it. He did this up to about the fifth one. She stacked the blocks in steps up to a little platform. Michael looked at it for about a minute and then came up with a way to use the same number of blocks to make TWO sets of steps to the platform. She told him this wasn't right and did it again. Unbelievably he came up with ANOTHER way of making TWO sets of steps. She said he was wrong and he asked her why? Instead of explaining that she was testing his memory or whatever, she got a tad angry and told him that he was supposed to build the step as she had done, "the RIGHT way." Michael looked at her and asked if it wouldn't be better to have two sets of steps instead of one.....things got worse after that. I couldn't help but laugh at her frustration, but she was rigid and that was sad. One of my foster children had her as a teacher and she was equally dogmatic in the classroom.

Spaw