Thursday, October 20, 2005

The Real Rain Man....

I had the opportunity to meet the "real rain man", Kim Peek. Peek is the one Hollywood modeled for the Dustin Hoffman/Tom Cruise movie, "RAIN MAN".

Peek is incredible.

Just some of the things I learned today....

When he reads, his left eye reads the left page and his right eye reads the right page....at the same time!! And with 95+% comprehesion.

NASA says his brain is smarter than their computers and made him an honorary astronaut.

His father said that at age 7, Kim had four retired teachers as tutors. Taking "classes" at 45 minutes at a time, two or three times a day, he finished high school but the time he was 14.

When on of our reporters gave his birthdate, Kim told him what day it was, what day his next birthday would be and what day his birthday would be in 2020!

Listening to him I was struck how similar he was to ADHD people. His mind would jump ahead and answer the question before someone finished asking it. He would hear a word and his mind would immediately jump off the topic of conversation and he'd go on about whatever he was distracted by. Socially, he fits in about as well as the rest of us ADDer's, sometimes blurting out things, laughing at something he thought was funny (I got it...the host of the talk show didn't!!), and putting things together that most people wouldn't understand the connection (again...I caught it but our host and some of the callers were astounded....)

That's Kim Peek on the right. He was being followed around by a Japanese news crew for the Japanese equivalent of the "TODAY" show...




Eric

1 comment:

Eric said...

Thanks...yeah..fascinating guy!

Eric