Kim Peek and Daniel Tammet

Those with savant syndrome have “quite remarkable, and sometimes spectacular, talents”—such as being able to recite prime number after prime number or to draw the city of Rome with photographic precision—while also having “serious mental or physical disability” (according to one website). Garrett Heaney in Wishtank describes an exchange two individuals who have been diagnosed with savant syndrome, Kim Peek (the model for Raymond in the movie Rain Man, though Raymond is referred to as “autistic” and as an “autistic savant”) and Daniel Tammet, the author of Born on a Blue Day). In particular, Heaney considers this exchange of words between Peek and Tammet:

Towards the end of their first encounter, Kim hugs Daniel and says to him “Someday you will be as great as I am.”

To which Tammet responds, “that was a wonderful compliment, what an aspiration to have.”

Not a bad aspiration for many of us to have, indeed.