As a psychiatrist I often think of people I knew growing up who I thought were interesting, not only the ones who were impaired, but the ones who were gifted as well, to say nothing of those who changed my life forever. Standing out in my mind was Harrison. We first met when we were in college. He was an undergrad at an Ivy majoring in math. His professors loved him. He was quiet and competent. They kept telling him he was the best, and he kept telling them that he was leaving math, which he did, and became a premed student. Looking back now as a clinician, I realize that Harrison was, as the autism people like to say, “on the spectrum.” He was a brilliant loner with extremely narrow interests. He had an affinity for mechanical things. He was an accomplished pianist who only played Bach. When his grandfather died and left him some money, the first thing he did with his inheritance was to buy an old harpsichord and rebuild it. When he was done, it was a thing of beauty. When it came to a machine, he could not stop himself. He fixed his car, built hi-fi equipment, fixed my refrigerator, and on vacation fixed a porch door that wouldn’t close. For one project he installed a custom tone arm for a turntable because, he said excitedly, “it oscillates down to nine cycles!” There weren’t many who visited his planet.
I complained one day that I had to take my Volkswagen Bug in for routine maintenance. The cost was going to kill me.
“Why don’t you do it yourself?” said Harrison assuming that everyone else in the world could rebuild harpsichords.
“Harrison, all I know about cars is how to drive one, and I’m not very good at that.” (At the time I was on the Insurance Watch List after I plowed into a line of three Yellow Cabs.)
“You can tune up the engine for starters. The tools only cost a few bucks.”
“Stop right there. The t-word isn’t in my vocabulary.” I needed help from the pharmacist to fix my electric toothbrush.
“And a book. How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual for The Compleat Idiot.”
Fix a car? That was a quantum jump. But he insisted, and off we went to Pep Boys.
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