The Wild Boy Mordicai Gerstein
24, Except for one man.
Jeam-Marc Itard was a young doctor at the institute and thoughtful. He saw the boy ignored and uncared for, growing wilder than ever. Itard watched as the boy sat quietly by the lily pond and gazed in tot he water for hours. The boy's eyes were deep and sad. From time to time he gently scattered a handful of dry leaves onto the surface of the water ,and watched them float away.
25 Dr Itard saw the boy who had never been held or sung to or played with. He saw a child who had never learned to be a child. He decided to take the boy home and care for him ."I will be your teacher," The doctor said to him.
26 The Doctors housekeeper , Madame Guerin, a kind motherly woman , tried to hug the boy when he arrived and but he grabbed her hand and sniffed it all over. He sniffed everything. What's his name ?" asked madame Guerin, laughing. He's never been given one," said the doctor"but I've noticed that he like the sound of 'oh'. His name should have that sound in it.
"How about Victor?" asked Madame Guerin. The boy looked at her. "Victor!" said the doctor. "I believe it will suit him."
27 They took Victor for long walks in the country. He went wild with joy. They made him comfortable in his own room ,and gave him plenty of his favorite foods.
28 One morning, It snowed. The doctor looked out and was amazed to see Victor , naked and laughing ,rolling in the snow. He Hugged it to his body and stuffed his mouth with it.
29 "His Skin," the doctor explained to Madame Geruin has never learned the difference between hot and cold and rough and smooth. We have to teach him to feel ."
They gave Victor hot baths and massaged his scarred body. Victor began to feel the warmth of the water and care in their hands . After a few weeks , he wouldn't get into the water if was too cold.
30 On chilly mornings, he began to dress himself. He learned to use a spoon instead of his hands to take potatoes out of the boiling water, or the fire. He came to love the feel of Madame Guerin's Velvet dress.
31 But Victor still flitted from one thing to another, Only food got his full attention. The doctor had an idea : he showed Victor a walnut, then put it under a cup and mixed it up among other cups. Victor watched Carefully and immediately turned over the right cup. The doctor hid the nut again and again, and Victor laughed and found it every time. Even when the doctor replaced the walnut with a ball, Victor always found it on his first try. " Bravo Victor"! cried the doctor, you have learned to pay attention, and you have learned to play.
32 Day after day, the doctor worked hard with victor trying to teach him to speak . Months passed , but Victor seemed unable to learn . The doctor grew discouraged and finally impatient. "what the use?" He shouted one day, "go back to the forest, Victor! Live like an Animal!"
33 He saw Victor's eye fill with pain and then tears. Never before had the doctor seen him weep. He hugged and rocked the as the boy wailed and snd sobbed and the tears ran down his face. "forgive me, Victor . You are not an animal . You are a boy. A wonderful Boy.' He will never learn to speak , thought the doctor sadly. He as alone in the silent woods too long. But he has learned to have feelings ,and they can be hurt.
34 Victor learned to recognize different colors and shapes. Then he learned to recognize letters. The doctor made an alphabet of cut out letters, and Victor learned to spell Lait the French word for milk. He always took those letters with him when they went to a restaurant, and used them to order milk for him self. Victor learned to read more and more and connect them to thing and idea . He learned to write the words he knew.
35 One Spring morning ,Victor woke and with out thinking ran off to find the woods . He became lost in the suburbs of Paris and spent the night hiding in the park til the police found him. When Madame Guerin came for him , he hugged and kissed her and wept with joy. I believe he love Madame Guerin more than he love me ,the doctor said wistfully to himself. That's natural I suppose in a boy.
36 Victor loved setting the table ,or anything else he could do to be helpful. Sawing firewood filled him with happiness and pride. He love the fragrant wood and the sound of the saw. He was skillful at feeding and tending the fires. When he solved a difficult problem in his studies,or the doctor praised him , he beamed with pleasure. HE love order and straightened his room every day. He was a boy ,a person. He wasn't wild anymore.
37 But he did remain Silent ,and could never tell of his wild life. And something of the wild was always in him. He loved pure Icy water and loved to drink it slowly while looking out of the window at the sky and the trees. The sound of a rising wind, or the sight of a whirling snowflakes or the sun bursting from behind a cloud still made him tremble with excitement and a wild joy.
38 And every evening , when the doctor sat on victor's bed Victor took the doctor's hand cover his eyes and forhead with it and held it there, with out moving, for a long while. They sat like this for an hour sometimes and then the doctor would kiss him and say good night.
39 And If the doctor looked back in on him when the moon was full , victor was always gazing up into it, perfectly still , bathed in silver light. I wonder what he sees ,thought the doctor ,I wonder what he feels. I wonder....
38 And every evening , when the doctor sat on victor's bed Victor took the doctor's hand cover his eyes and forhead with it and held it there, with out moving, for a long while. They sat like this for an hour sometimes and then the doctor would kiss him and say good night. THIS IS THE MOST VITAL STATEMENT IN the whole book Victor was tyring to tell the doctor his EYES were OFF his optic vision was OFF and he "seen" his thoughts! By holding the doctors hands over his eyes he was trying to tell the doctor in the only way he could his OPTIC vision was not always on and When It was OFF he was thinking with "daydream" thoughts and they need to be converted to "normal thoughts"
I can hear it now as I write this in 2009 ,I can hear the experts of Psychology SCREAMING "hogwash" no one thinks in Pictures and who ever heard of a daydream based thought system. And indeed they haven't BECAUSE these daydream based thoughts are the foundation for your normal everyday thoughts. Normal Thoughts are shorthand Autism thoughts. Autism thoughts are the building blocks of the mind and if you learn all of them (invisible to normal thinkers) you yield normal thoughts. These building thoughts take place during the lack of eye contact thought process noted so well in autism circles.
Learn all of these Autism thoughts and you will see how humans form words , you will see how and way the mind works, why we have stuttering and dyslexia. You will see how autism keen senses works and where they come from . You will see where all of this cave man stuff is still here in modern humans,just absently ignored. Normal Thinkers ,just don't have the scope of mind to realize they have missed the boat and despite their best effort and most notable intention will never figure out the mind as they don't the insight to even know the building block thoughts exist let alone connect Mr/Dd to Einstein. That is not a shock when normal thinker only use 10% of the human thought spectrum. The worst news is Man is doomed to his fate, like many others before me from Einstein to Turing to Di vinci and many of our modern high functioning autistic anthropology ,we are from the "wrong planet" and often came up from the bottom of special education system. Despite figuring out life and it one by one invisible to you daydream thoughts that form normal thoughts we are too little too late. Expert man , Experts in general are not experts but rather stead fast zealots working too hard to protect one point of view. Humans are indeed in fear of change or real truth especially when it comes from the bottom of the gene pool.
RIch Shull on the blog Pre Rain Man Autism
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