I had forgotten all about Charlie by the time the darkness started closing in. I remember playing “Over the Rainbow” for him, while he looked on with equal measures of horror and wonder. One time, he explained to me how he’d taken a household clock apart, gear by gear. “I like disassembling things,” he said, “and then putting them back together.”Eventually, Charlie went off to Brown, and I headed to Wesleyan. By the time I arrived in my 50s, I was living in Maine, teaching at Colby College.

Source: New York Times March 20, 2019 15:00 UTC