The Scene:  Interior of a suburban family home. The autistic teen has been spending most of a Saturday afternoon in his bedroom, at his computer, playing a CD-Rom game in which the player constructs and runs a Jurassic Park-themed attraction. He has owned this game for about eight years and goes through phases in which he plays it for days on end, and then moves on to some other Obsession of the Week. But he never lets more than a few weeks go by without playing this game again. It is his favorite “video” game. He studies the screen now, makes some changes to the sauropods’ feeding schedule, and gets up out of his chair. He walks down the hall and enters a room on the right – his mother’s office. She sits at her desk staring at her computer screen; spreadsheets surround her. He stands at the open door, and she looks over at him with an expression of confused amusement as he makes his announcement.

Autistic teen:  My deepest desire is to build a Jurassic Park and have a girlfriend.

Mother: Okay. We’ll see what we can do.

Image credit:  Nadia Szopi?ska