Elevators on His Mind

“Alex rides elevators on his mind” was written by my 10-year-old autistic son and taped to the wall next to his bed. Elevators are the central focus of Alex's attention at this point in his life. His form of autism is described as high-functioning, since his intelligence measures in the normal range. However, he has many typical features of autism, the most dramatic being an obsessive interest in narrowly defined topics. This bizarre and mystifying behavior is a daily reminder of his brain's remarkable capabilities and its frustrating limitations, reinforcing the notion of some critical derangement in the scaffolding that organizes and processes his thoughts. Alex, like others with autism, can't see the forest when standing in front of a tree. Rather, he is inexplicably drawn to minute details of one specific tree, a fixation that defies rational explanation. In Alex's case, the fixation is on elevators.

One early indication of something amiss with Alex was an obsessive interest in electric doors. As a toddler, Alex would become entranced by supermarket automatic doors, to the point of hysteria if his needs were not satiated. He would insist on sitting motionless for long periods, watching the doors open and close as people went by. At other times, he would repeatedly trigger the electronic sensor, as if to absorb some magical, essential energy that possessed the doors as they moved.

I don't remember when …