Hal reclassified from "A.D.D./damaged" to "Gifted" — the approval-aura

texture · UNDATED (childhood, B.S. 1990s Weston)

• When: early childhood, "early B.S. 1990s," Weston MA
• What: Key developmental record: as a toddler Hal "had been thought… to have some sort of Attention Deficit Disorder" (reading too fast, quitting games), and specialists "preconditioned to see Hal as also damaged" (from Mario) shuttled him around — but Brandeis's C.D.C. "not only retracted but reversed [the damage assessments] way out to the other side of the Damaged-to-Gifted continuum." Crucially, his high rank owed much to "monomaniacally obsessive interest and effort, as if… trying to please some person," and reciting memorized dictionaries at Weston "Battle of the Books" bees gave him "that same pale sweet aura that an LSD afterglow conferred, some milky corona, like almost a halo of approved grace." Roots Hal's lifelong approval-compulsion (and links the "Halation"/luminescence motif). See events 3, 56.