One of the autistic traits my son Siddhu exhibits is single-minded obsession on some select objects, often objects that exhibit motion (cars, bicycles, trains, buses and so on). Siddhu is particularly and obsessively fond of cars. Even when he was 3 years old, he could identify most cars by their brand name and logo - and he learnt even to pronounce "Mitsubishi" - we tried retaining his cute pronunciation "Mrs.bishi" but alas, he learnt the "correct" pronunciation way too soon. The three diamand logo was his favorite for a while.

Around the same time that he was obsessed with cars, I started my obession with databases. In my data modeling presentation, I quote the famous "The key, the whole key and nothing but the key so help me Codd" rule for data model normalization. I don't know if Siddhu listened to my presentation, but over time, his obession shifted from cars to .......... to car keys! May be realized that the key to the whole thing is the key (Dr. Codd would love him!).

May be he realized that the key was a good substitute for carrying the whole car, so he started carrying a car key (confiscated from me or his mother) in his pocket, sometimes even taking it to his play school in his backpack. He was very careful not to lose the key.

Then over time he started asking us to draw various keys - the "small key" is the manual key, and the "big key" is the remote door opener; we have to draw the whole key bunch with the ring going through the keys. We also need to put the correct logo in the middle of the small and the big keys. He will demand "Draw Toyota Key", then he will erase it and demand "Draw Nissan Key" and then announce finally that he really wants me to draw a Volkswagen key. He will try to mentally compare them. I need to do a correct job, or else he will ask me to do it again. I must have drawn keys for him thousands of times! He started drawing the keys himself, and would spend hours on end drawing and erasing, trying to reach that elusive "key nirvana".

Even now, whenever a visitor arrives, he checks out two things first: first, he would run outside to check what is the brand of their car, and then he would shamelessly insert his hands in their pocket and take out the key to examine it. He would only return it when they leave. His mental hashtable stores the name -> car-brand mapping, and he remembers that for ever - he remembers (name, car-brand) mapping for friends we haven't met in 2 years! I don't know if the key is the key to that hash table.

My wife, as usual with wives, thinks his whole key obsession is my fault - she even credits his autism to me, but to be very fair to her, I liberally share the credit with her. The key is in the genes, you see ...