The Blind Side by Michael Lewis Page A

“It is what it is,” she said. “The past is the past.” In her big talk with Michael she told him, “We’re just going to go forward. There is nothing I can do about whatever might have happened to you before now. If it’s going to cause you problems, and you’re not going to be able to go forward without dealing with it, maybe we need to get help from someone smarter than I am.”
He just looked at her and asked, “What does that mean?”
She tried to explain about psychiatrists, but it was obvious he didn’t know what therapy meant. So she said to herself: Oh, what the hell. There’s no way he’s ever going to lie on some couch and talk about himself.
And, she half thought, his past actually didn’t matter all that much to him. “Like the way a woman blocks out childbirth,” she said, “I think he just blocked out a lot of his childhood.”
Sean had a different take: Michael’s mind was finely calibrated to get from one day to the next. Whatever had happened to him in the past he couldn’t afford to dwell on it. He couldn’t afford to be angry, or bitter. “Michael’s gift,” Sean said, “is that the Good Lord gave him the ability to forget. He’s mad at no one and doesn’t really care what happened. His story might be sad, but he’s not sad.”
But even if they had decided not to interrogate him, there was nothing that said she couldn’t notice the little tics and quirks about him. Information took many forms and both Leigh Anne and Sean had a talent for acquiring it. When they stopped in at the Taco Bell just around the corner, for instance, Michael would order more food than he wanted. The next morning Sean would open the refrigerator and find the coagulated, extra Mexican pizza. “He was in the habit of guaranteeing himself an extra meal,” said Sean. “I had to explain that he didn’t need to do that. That he could get it whenever he wanted it. He said, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Michael, I own the restaurant. You can go over there any time you want and eat for free.’” But the habit was hard to break. Sean would see him come into the house, extra free Mexican pizza in hand, and “it was like he would catch himself. He’d come in with the extra pizza and see me and go, ‘Oh, man, I forgot.’” Collins noticed, “He hoarded everything: food, clothes, money. He’d get stuff and he’d hide it away.” It was as if he didn’t actually believe that this free stuff would remain free.
There were tiny revelations that had Leigh Anne upset for days, for what they implied about his childhood. She took Michael with her and Sean Junior to a Barnes & Noble. As they walked through the store, Sean Junior spotted Where the Wild Things Are and said, “Look, Mom, you used to read that to me when I was little.” To which Michael replied, in the most detached tone, “I’ve never had anyone read me a book.”
There were also things about him that caused Leigh Anne and Sean to think of him as an even deeper mystery. He refused to wear clothes that, in his opinion, didn’t match. He refused to wear clothes that had even a spot on them. He ironed his T-shirt; and if he wore the same T-shirt every day, he ironed it every morning. “That ain’t a socioeconomic issue,” said Sean. “That’s a where-the-hell-did-that-come-from? issue.” Sean had him out one day, buying basketball sneakers for himself. He asked Michael if he’d like a pair and Michael said, sniffily, he didn’t like the colors on display. “I said, ‘Michael you have none. How can you turn down shoes when you don’t have shoes?’ And he said, ‘Well, I don’t want those unless they have it with the blue stripe.’ ‘For someone who has no shoes you’re pretty damn picky about what shoes you get.’” When they finally found the sneaker shoe color that Michael liked, they had another argument about his shoe size. Michael refused to wear the size 15 shoes that the salesman proved he needed. He insisted that he wore a