Today at Chino

I suspect this is the place where people will "get" this post. Today was one of the happiest days of my life. I got to meet my grand nephews, Nathan and Sam, for the first time, and they're like me. Their father's like me. We're all Aspergian together. Nathan and Sam both spoke around 11 months (early), and talking to them, they're not their age group. Sam just turned 3 in August, and he communicates like a 6 year old. Nathan is 7 and he held Buzz Aldrin in a 30 minute conversation about the future of humans in space for 30 minutes in a crowd of adults who wanted to talk to the Second Man On The Moon this past summer. He already knows he wants to get his Bachelor's and Master's at Cal Tech and go to work for Space-X, and science comes as naturally to him as writing comes to me (like it did for his great grandfather, among whose 150 independent patents was the secret to being sure that pre-stressed concrete is solid without breaking it open - why you never ever worry about the freeway dissolving under your tires). Sam is a live wire interested in everything. His Aspergian superpower hasn't manifested yet. I gave them a book from my library, "The Encyclopedia of World War II Airplanes," about as big and heavy as the two of them, and they both dove into it (thank goodness SWMBO helped choose which book to give them - lots of great pictures and artwork, just right). They both went "A book!"

My modeler friends will be happy to know they found my models in the glass cases as interesting as the 1:1 real ones in the hangars, and they loved each getting a model of a Blue Angels F-18 (they both saw the Blue Angels at Miramar last month and are Superfans).

Finally, I have humans on the planet who share 50+% DNA with me, who aren't strangers ranting on a street corner you cross the street to avoid and want to be "family.".

And since I'm the Aspergian who has learned how to use the superpower, I can help them learn a helluva lot earlier that I did, without all the doubt of whether or not I was actually crazy.

I don't know what Sam's going to do, but I'm putting money down at Vegas that Nathan will be a crewmember on the first Mars expedition.

As regards the photos - Memo to self: have the friend who takes a picture of the four of us take more than one - Their dad said "Say Cheese" and they both looked at him at the exact wrong moment. Still a cool picture.

1 additional image. Click to enlarge.