I delight in 'a blue day.'

Ever since I read "Thinking in Pictures" by Temple Grandin, I have become minorly obsessed about reading books written by people who have autism. My mom and I have always talked about how we wish we could step into Craig's (my older brother who has autism) mind for 5 minutes--to know how he sees life, how his brain processes information, how its organized, to learn why he does some of the things he does and why he doesn't do other things. Reading books by people with Autism is as close as I'll probably come.

Over the holiday I read "Born on a Blue Day" by Daniel Tammet. He is an incredible individual who is different than Temple because he is a savant. Savants are those who have incredible talents in certain areas. Daniel experiences numbers as colors, shapes and motions--this ability helps him to amazing things with numbers. Examples: Daniel recited Pi (3.14...) to its 22, 514th decimal place with no errors in 5 and a half hours on Pi Day (3/14) to raise money in the UK for Epilepsy awareness. He can also tell you what day of the week you were born on. And finally and possibly the most amazing--he knows and speaks 10 languages fluently including Icelandic (the most difficult language) which he learned in just a week.

My favorite part of the book however is when Daniel related his experience of meeting Kim Peek. Kim doesn't have autism but he was definitely a savant and had many autistic like characteristics. I learned while reading this book that Kim passed away from a heart attack while I was on my mission (December 19, 2009). I remember hearing Kim's name a lot growing up. I also remember seeing him once, I'm not sure if it was on TV or if he actually visited my school. He's from Salt Lake City so him visiting my elementary school wouldn't have been outrageous. You see, that was something he and his father felt strongly about doing-visiting schools and hospitals to teach people that:

"You don't have to be handicapped to be different. Everybody is different."

I love that. That is an important message we can all learn something from! Below I have posted a YouTube clip I found from the Documentary done on Daniel entitled "Brainman" not to be confused with "Rainman" the movie inspired by Kim Peek. It documents when Daniel and Kim met. I hope you're inspired as I was.