Endnote 76 — Hal reclassified from damaged to gifted

As a toddler Hal was briefly thought to have Attention Deficit Disorder, and specialists who had worked with Mario were primed to see him as damaged too; Brandeis's Child Development Center reversed that, rating him between "Borderline Gifted" and "Gifted" (p. 998). The note quietly reframes his gift as monomaniacal effort to please his parents, recalling the school-district "Battle of the Books" (p. 999) recall contests where faultless performance earned him a warm halo of approval from his mother.