Dear M,

Nope. I am just a writer. Not that I haven't read my share of horror yarns.

My last completed work is a screenplay adapted from a novel "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin. It is currently in development by a production company.

As for your statement about trust... That's good. Can you tell me more about how that trust comes to be?

One of the things I've seen with Marshall, the 7-year old with Asperger's that I live with, is that his mom, who is great, talks to him a lot, and explains in words what she is feeling, and what others may feel. So it seems to me that she is decoding the emotional communications for him. I might note that he seems to have no trouble expressing his emotions. And too, friendly appropriate touch (patting) gets through to him just fine.

One of the "symptoms" of autism is that a child does not seem to respond to expressions of maternal affection as expected.

Now I'm guessing that a good analogy would be, say, red-green color blindness, to smile-frown expression blindness. In the case of color blindness, if I am expected to respond to traffic lights innately, and I run a red light, I could get a ticket, or even killed. But if I learn that the light on top means stop, and the one on the bottom means go, I'm cool. So I'm not keying my response to color, but rather position.

In red-green color blindness, both colors look gray. At least that is my understanding. So in the case of smile-frown blindness, what do those expressions look like? What is the alternative key?

Am I making any sense? Am I even close?