978-1572305441

A William Mind Apart
Chapter 6
William
A World without Metaphor
William is very tall and very thin. He wears a blue sweatshirt,
blue jeans, and a white turtleneck. The sweatshirt has a logo of a
cartoon character, Sailor Moon, on it. William is fourteen years old and
is visiting me today because his parents are worried he might be depressed.
They report that he spends a lot of time in his room, asks the
same set of questions over and over again, and generally appears more
anxious and withdrawn than usual. I notice his long, finely tapered fingers
and his clear, almost blue fingernails. He is as delicate as an antique
China vase. William looks down at the carpet, a posture that accentuates
his long eyelashes. He rarely looks at me during our conversation.
I try to find out if William is depressed. The difficulty is that he
prefers to talk about other things. “How are you today?” I ask politely.
“I saw the round doors going east at 8:50,” he replies.
“I beg your pardon, I missed that,” I answer. “The round doors of
what?”
“The subway train,” he informs me. Now I understand. William
has always loved the subways. He has memorized the subway map of
Toronto and knows the names of all the stations, what color they are,
and in what direction the trains travel from station to station. Since
there are over fifty stations in the system, that is quite an accomplishment.
Every Saturday for years, he and his father traveled the subways
as a treat. William would sit in a seat by the window and look at all the
stations going by, the people coming in and out, noticing the individual
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