AUTISTIC TEEN-AGER HAS GIFTED MEMORY

Taylor Crowe can play almost any melody on the piano after hearing it just once.

Music teacher Beverly Reece has been giving the autistic Cape Girardeau teen private piano lessons for about a year. When he came to her, he could already pick out tunes on the piano but played so quickly the music was almost unrecognizable.

She said he raced through melodies as quickly as he calculates dates, another of his skills.

"He can sight read music but he doesn't think in half steps and whole steps," Reece said. It's up to her to teach him to sort out the jumble of notes.

"He looks at music differently than most people," Reece said. "I don't quite understand how he does it."

The two have been practicing for an upcoming recital.

At his regular Monday lesson, the 16-year-old Crowe agreed to play a few songs for visitors.

After a round of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and "Luck be a Lady Tonight," Crowe turned to the strangers and asked their birth dates.

Within seconds he had accurately calculated the day of the week on which they were born.

Despite his penchant for playing quickly, he said he doesn't really like modern music, preferring the more melodic tunes of Ira Gershwin and Irving Berlin.

"I kind of wish rock 'n' had never been invented," he said.