Sue stared intently from across the sandbox and asked, "Have you ever heard of Asperger's Syndrome?"
We had been getting together for weekly play dates with our same-age boys for about a year, and it was not the first time this well-educated and discerning expat friend had suggested my son might be handicapped.
Soon afterward, as I read the diagnostic criteria for Asperger's on the Internet, I suddenly felt very tired, as though I were standing at the beginning of a very long road, one that I had no choice but to follow. For here was the story of my son's life, complete in every major and minor detail, told as though the authors had known him personally.