ABSTRACT
Interacting with a bright and verbal autistic child can be an eye-opening experience: One discovers one is talking in metaphors! A request to "Stick you coat down over there" is met by a serious request for glue. Ask if she will "give you a hand, " and she will answer that she needs to keep both hands and cannot cut one off to give to you. Tell him that his sister is "crying her eyes out" and he will look anxiously on the floor for her eyeballs. Ask her to read a passage "out loud" and she will obligingly shout through to the end of it. These overliteral interpretations are made in all earnestness, and they tell us something important about autism and about the way in which we normally communicate.
