Food for thought.
If you have a 12 year old who can talk about nothing except dinosaurs, and knows all sorts of arcane facts about them, the kid is considered strange. Take that same intensive, narrow interest about 20 years down the road, and you have... a PhD scientist in paleontology.
Not all people on the autism spectrum are high functioning. But some are. Those who are, are often found in careers related to science, mathematics, engineering, information technology, and the arts. (Notice... all the careers where "geeks" and "nerds" show up, seem to end up with some on the autism spectrum 
)
