The Boy

As a young child, the unnamed boy is active and curious. He loves to play in the woods, and he is especially drawn to the mushrooms that grow there. His senses are very much alive, and he discerns the way things and people smell. Although he is teased by his brother and sister, he does not seem to be unhappy. When he is sent to the home for the mentally retarded, he misses the sights and sounds of life with his family on the farm. The boy's difficulty is that he has intellectual disabilities that make it very hard for him to learn. At home, he cannot master how to use the tools in the woodshed and sometimes hurts himself trying. His language skills are also poor. He cannot connect words to things and feels that words belong to other people, not to him. At his first...