The Real Rainman

So here is a classic story from my past. In 1996 I lived in Omaha Nebraska and that summer for our church Youth Conference one of our guests was 'The Real Rainman' Kim Peek. Kim is actually LDS and is who the movie Rainman was made about, starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. I can't get the link to work but just google Kim Peek to see some of a clip of the recent documentary they did on Kim and you will see very quickly his 'Mega-Savant' abilities and nuances. Anyway, despite the incident I am about to share with you, to witness his amazing mind work is something I will never forget. They told us beforehand that we could ask Kim any question- he knows dates of literally everything- he knows zip codes (all 42,000 of them), addresses and phone numbers etc. He does not, however do Math so they told us to steer clear of that. So, recently in my math class we had been given the chance for extra credit for each number of Pi we memorized. You know, 3.14159.....and the numbers go on forever since it is a circle right? So I thought, wow, this would be great if he had memorized the numbers of Pi because he would never run out of numbers to memorize. So my 16 year old self waits for my turn to ask a question and I asked, "Do you know Pi?" and to my horror Mr.Peek, eyes characteristically on the floor, raises his voice and says, "I DON'T DO MATH!!!". I wanted to DIE! In front of all my peers the Rainman yelled at me! I've never really recovered. :) Looking back I should have known better. Even though I wasn't asking him to do math, it really kinda sounded like it. If you watched the clip, can you just see him shout at me? Ahh, good times. One of the highlights of my teenager-hood to be sure.