My brother, who got a PhD in pure mathematics at age 27, is someone I suspect of being, if not autistic, at least neurodivergent. Last year, I was being accused by several of being autistic and had relayed that to him; we were discussing each other’s tendencies and trying to decide, among other things, whether they mattered.

Then one morning I woke up to an unprompted text from him containing one of my favorite sentences ever:

It just occurred to me, if I do have some species of autism maybe it doesn’t disturb me too much because I like trying to figure out the rule sets in complicated systems ….