Who is Waldo?

Waldo is a 10-year-old boy who lives across the street from Ben. His father, Shenkman, finds it very difficult to connect with him, and lashes out at Waldo as a result, leading Waldo to live a life where he is constantly fearful of what his father might do or say. This leads him to run away from home in 2010, where he coincidentally meets Mimi, who has escaped from her retirement home and, confused, believes he is Theo. She dies next to him as he tells her about the stars, which informs his belief of the universe's connections. His father's behavior toward him leads him, in part, to live a quiet and emotionally distant life as an adult. He has a passion for astronomy, finding solace in the hugeness of the universe, but his father chastises him for the passion's intangibility. He becomes a very successful professor of astrophysics with a wife and children when he is an adult.