he first time I met my cousin Oliver Sacks I was fourteen. He was twenty-four, huge, shy, with a voluminous black beard. He was family but, as he grew up in London and I in Bath, somehow our paths had never crossed. I’d been warned he was a bit weird. We found ourselves seated next to each other at a family wedding. We each made a few timid attempts at conversation and then, with an air of slight desperation, he asked me the question that all grown ups ask. “Um … what are you doing at school?”
“Taking my O-levels next year.”
“Um … um … which ones?” I listed them all, including Botany. His eyes lit up. “Ah! … Um, tell me, what do you think of Mendel’s Theory?”
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