Story Of Runaway Asperger's Boy Proves Futility Of Trying To Keep It Together

If you’ve got tissues nearby, get them out now: A 13-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome ran away from home and spent nearly two weeks in the NYC subway system before being found by a MTA worker who recognized his face from a missing-person poster. Apparently afraid of being scolded for not concentrating at school, Francisco Hernadez Jr. ducked into a subway station near his home in Bensonhurst and rode the D, F, and No. 1 trains for 11 days, surviving on snacks bought at newspaper kiosks.

His parents scoured the boroughs by subway and bicycle, and posted more than 2000 home-made signs imploring their son to come home. “Franky come home,” one pleaded in Spanish. “I’m your mother I beg you I love you my little boy.” (Excuse me, I seem to have a speck of dust or something in my eye.) He’s back at home, back at school, back to drawing and playing video games. But still friendless and rarely speaking, still, as his neurologist put it, struggling with situations that demanded a “verbal or social response.” Asked by the Times’ Kirk Semple how he felt about the efforts to find him, Francisco said, “Sometimes I don’t know how I feel,” he said. “I don’t know how I express myself sometimes.” Asked what he took from the fact that no one approached him during his time on the trains, he said, “Nobody really cares about the world and about people.” His mother said, “I tell him: ‘Talk to me. Tell me what you need. If I ever make a mistake, tell me.’ I don’t know, as a mother, how to get to his heart, to find out what hurts.”

Oh, that’s not a speck of dust after all. I’m sobbing hot tears.