Endnote 115: Mario's brady- glossary
Himself and the Moms got plenty familiar with these sorts of congenital-challenge terms and many more, re Mario, particularly the variations on the medical root brady, from the Greek bradys meaning slow, such as bradylexia (w/an online forum reading), bradyphenia (practical-problem-solving-type thinking), nocturnal bradypnea (dangerously slow breathing during sleep sometimes, which is why Mario uses four pillows minimum), bradypedestrianism (obvious), and especially bradykinesia, an almost gerontologic lentissimo about most of Mario’s movements, an exaggerated slowness that both resembles and permits extremely close slow attention to whatever’s being done.
Context
Medical appendix to the definitional Mario text (071): the parents' acquired fluency in "congenital-challenge terms," run out as a Greek-root riff. The payoff clause is the theme's tenderest move — bradykinesia reframed from deficit to method, the slowness that "both resembles and permits extremely close slow attention," i.e. the clinical term for exactly what makes Mario the book's best attender. ("[B]radyphenia" quoted as written — note the missing r.)