second part of "Please leave your message after the out of tune tune"

I thought when I met him, that he was different and a little weird in how he behaved, but put this down to the circumstances, where he was and how he felt. I watched him for a few weeks as he attended a centre that I ran and observed that he had some ways of being that were different to others. He found it almost impossible to make eye contact with people; he tended to walk the same route in the building and became distressed if he was made to change direction. He could not do two things at the same time. Sometimes he arrived and clearly had not washed or cleaned himself and was offended by this. He was sometimes so distressed at the world that he could not get into the car to drive the ½ a mile to the centre and then at other times he was able to make decisions and do things and then it would almost seem as if the energy had been sucked out of him and he would go to sleep on the sofa in my office. He was and is exceptionally intelligent. He has the ability to become completely absorbed in one task or in computers, he appears to be able sight read and memorise words and yet not understand their meaning. He takes the literal meaning to heart. He copies other peoples’ behaviours. He writes lists and more lists and becomes distressed if they are not followed to the letter.
After a few weeks of him coming to the centre he started to talk to me and I asked him if he had ever considered he had autism. At first he was defensive and said that he did not think he did and then he began to tell me that he had thought that but had been told by his doctor that this was rubbish. I was running a group and he joined it, clearly able to understand the meaning underneath the surface in the groups, asking questions and quickly working out if I was upset or distressed at all. He also started to become aware of how I looked and was starting to look at me when I was not looking at him. He did not like it if people became upset as he said he absorbed their pain like a sponge and if he cared at all for people and they were unhappy he felt unhappy as well.