ERIE, Pa. -- Nick Pusateri drapes himself across a couch in a bunker-like room in
the basement of his apartment building at Mercyhurst University in Erie.
His arms, legs and shoulders bend around one another as if hinged on
extra joints. His neatly cropped, reddish-brown hair lies forward,
toward his square-rimmed glasses. Pusateri, 22, stares into the Greek
mythology book, his face impassive, and his voracious mind begins to
feast.
When he was 2, doctors diagnosed Pusateri of Sewickley with autism, a
spectrum of disorders characterized by social impairment and
communication problems. He's not intellectually impaired; his professors
say he's among their brightest students. He just
lacks an intuitive understanding of the unconscious gestures, invisible boundaries and tiny signals that weave into our social fabric.
But he's learning.
No comments:
Post a Comment