Quid Pro Quo

Who knows if he remembers that time? It's not something we talk about, even in our family which is kind of infamous for saying exactly what's on our minds. As I said, it was long ago. I probably wouldn't think about it that much, myself, except that every now and again, we will have occasion to dine together, whether at a family gathering in one of our homes, or in a restaurant.

He always picks out and lays aside the cucumber in every salad you set before him. He says it upsets his system.

Author's note: It has been widely accepted in the autism spectrum community that such conditions as Asperger's syndrome, HFA, and other PDDs run in families. However, Adam and Zandra's parents were incorrect in supposing that whatever condition their son might have had was the result of inbreeding further back in their line. That is not to say that incestuous unions would not lock the condition in. In the time in which this story was set, autism spectrum disorders were neither clearly understood nor were they diagnosed. Even a dozen years ago, information about them was not easy to come by. Today, you can type the keyword "Asperger" into a search engine and come up with upwards of two dozen sites dealing with it and related conditions. You could say that autism spectrum people constitute a family of their own. But to assign the word incest to their couplings and breedings would defining the word much too broadly.