Chapter 1 - "The Thomas Family" - Part 2

Shani Wallis as Nancy in the 1968 Film Version of Oliver!

Oliver proved, to his mother’s disappointment, to be a decidedly normal infant. He was quiet and well behaved, attending his mother’s lectures, concerts, poetry readings and foreign films, with a benign passivity if not the keen interest she had hoped for. At first, with her husband’s encouragement, Eleanor adopted the philosophy that Oliver’s infant brain was still in the process of congealing and that all she had exposed him to would soon become a part of his mind 'like the vodka in a jell-o shot.' But on his third birthday Oliver had still not spoken his first word and Eleanor took a position as head archivist at the Stanislavski Library in Moscow. She left her son and husband in America.

John Thomas, quickly enrolled his boy in the day care center at the television studio where he worked. Each day John went to work, Oliver was put in front of a television for 8 hours of child-psychologist-endorsed children’s programming. By the end of the first week he was speaking in complete sentences.

At nights and on weekends, John Thomas, who had a tendency to be an optimist, devoted himself to the role of the loving single father. He tried to make up for Oliver’s unusual beginning by engaging him in what he considered traditional childhood activities such as visits to the zoo, puppet shows and cartoon-themed pizza restaurants. Every evening, father and son enjoyed friendly chats in front of the television and once a week, they wrote a letter to Eleanor explaining how they missed her, but not to worry they were getting along fine without her.

Nothing else worth noting happened to Oliver between his mother’s departure and the fifteenth of April, 1986. That day, the teacher, a Mrs. Hermann was explaining the significance of April fifteenth as tax day and she brought in copies of her tax forms to be passed around in class.

“See that very small number at the bottom of form w-2? That is how much money I made last year,” was what Mrs. German was saying at the precise moment that form w-2 was passed to Oliver. He stared at the number, wondering if anyone had ever counted that high. Right then, Oliver felt an urge to attempt the feat himself and he began to count silently in his head. He counted all through the lesson, through lunch, recess, the history unit, the story on the carpet, the bus ride home, dinner, prime time television, while he slept and so on.

In the end it took him two and half days to count from one to a second tier elementary school teacher’s salary. He might have finished sooner had he not taken the time to visualize each bill as he counted. When Oliver imagined himself placing the last of the dollar bills on top of the pile, he happened to be on a class field trip to a community college production of the musical Oliver!

Somewhere in the middle of the song “Who Will Buy,” Oliver realized that he was special. Not because we was able to count to five figures or even because he could accurately imagine what that many dollar bills looked like, but because he was able to do all of this and still concentrate on his other daily activities. Oliver realized that he possessed what amounted to two attention spans. He could devote all of his attention to two different tasks individually with no loss of concentration on either. As he realized this, his other attention span was discovering that he was in love with the young woman on stage playing the role of Nancy.

Somehow Oliver made it through all of the events of his childhood with a practical mind a even though he was six, he decided right then that he must take full advantage of his gift. He made two (simultaneous) promises to himself. One, to devote one of his attention spans to writing the most popular play ever written, and two, to one day marry that beautiful young woman. That he was only able to accomplish one of these tasks does not make his life any less remarkable.