That kid

He would have been the nerdy kid at school. The one with the National Health specs held together with Elastoplast and the clothes that didn't quite fit him, spending playtime with his head buried in one of the Ladybird books from the top class, even though he was still a first-year. Walking around with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets and his mind stuffed just as deep into his thoughts, which were of problems so esoteric for an eight-year-old that none of his contemporaries would have made it past the first sentence, even if he could have put them into words.

In years to come he would gravitate to a group of like-minded individuals, occupying the corner table in the library and sharing no more than a few words of conversation. Preferring to point at passages from hefty pictureless tomes with a knowing grin that passed around his contemporaries faster than a headcold in the PE classes he was always trying to duck. But at age eight, in a small suburban junior school, there were no like-minded peers. The jousting they dreamed of wasn't mental. It might be contemporary - five a side in the playground when he'd be the last one chosen - or historical - an ad-hoc re-enactment of King Arthur's clash with the Green Knight, when he'd be cast as the wizard and condemned to stand alone in the bike sheds pretending to assemble potions from left-over school milk, playground moss and berries from the tree that hung over from Mrs Washowska's garden - but it was totally physical and hence by definition excluded him.

And today, when you see him walking along the balcony and heading down the stairs to lunch, the deep-rooted echoes of the nerdy kid remain. The intervening years have covered him with the shell of an adult - taller, greyer, wearier. But his hands are still stuffed into his pockets. He still gazes unseeing at the floor as his mind grapples with a thorny, high-concept design problem, the latest in a lifetime of arcane solutions that still leave his contemporaries floundering. His gait is the shuffling near-skip of the man who, having always played the wizard or the goalie, never quite gained total control over his physical self. His clothes still don't fit properly. If you knew him back then, you would recognise him now. And knowing him now, you can still see him as he was then.