The extent of Jake’s ability to imitate was fully disclosed to me when my parents bought him drum lessons for his seventh birthday. Jake tended to mimic beats with his hands when I played music and we figured he would enjoy learning an instrument. But to his instructor’s surprise, Jake needed only one lesson to figure out how to play. He calmly watched his instructor teach the basics, and then observed as the instructor combined the techniques to show off an elaborate array of complex rhythms and crashing sounds. In a matter of seconds, Jake was able to copy the instructor’s every move and follow along seamlessly and without mistake. This also occurred when I brought home a how-to-draw book. Jake spent hours at the dinner table drawing each example from the book, with such perfect detail and flawless color and line, that one would think a machine had made the copy.
Jake’s skills were limiting, however. Once he knew how to draw the Eiffel Tower, he could do it again, but if I asked him to free draw something like flowers or a smiley face, he would not know how to do it unless I drew the image first. And even then, his artistic skills would only be as good as mine, with shaky lines and a simple cartoonish quality. Jake’s talent was not in music or in art, but in mimicking with literal precision. He was a mirror, a shadow, but his talents didn’t stop there. As my son got older, he exhibited other strange behaviors that would puzzle even the most trained professional in the field of autism.
